Henry Lawson wrote some poems
Nearly eighty years ago,
About the joys of droving
Where the breezes come and go.
Bill Ogilvie and Patterson
Wrote songs about the track,
And tragic tales of bad old days
In lonely huts outback.
You read them when you were a kid
You can hear them every day;
And they all got round to shearing sheep
Along the Castlereagh.
Of Jackie Howe who rung the shed
In eighteen ninety two,
And shore just two hundred head
Before the day was through.
And thirty bob a hundred then
Is what they used to pay ;
But any shearer on the Downs
Gets two bob each today.
Two bob a head is mighty dough
For those barbers of the Downs;
So what price all these shearers
In the Territory towns.
I walk into a barber's shop
Just like a sheep that's sick,
And then he only shears my head
And charges three and six.
And he doesn't have to chase me round
Or hold me down at all ;
I just sit quiet, without a bleat
With my back against the wall
Then the barber yaps and bores me stiff
While he's trimming up his flock
And all the while he's counting up
The sheep he's got in stock.
The squatter has to pay two bob
A head his sheep to shear ;
Why should a humble sheep like me
Pay four pounds ten a year.
And listen to the barbers skite
While you're sweating in his shop :
"By jove old man you really are
Getting very thin on top."
Well thank the Lord I'm going bald
I've nothing more to fear;
I'll be like any other sheep
And get shorn once a year.
BILL ARMBRUST.
Notes
From the Darwin Newspaper The Northern Standard 15 Feb 1952 p. 5.
Top