(Forwarded by "The Prisoner's Sweetheart")
There are white box and pine on the ridges afar,
Where the ironbark, blue gum and peppermint are:
There is many another; but clearest to me,
And the king of them all, was the stringy-bark tree.
Then stringy-bark slabs were the walls of the hut,
And from stringy-bark; sapling the rafters were cut ;
And the roof that long sheltered my brother and me
Was of sheets of bark from the stringy-bark tree.
Now still from the ridges by ways that are dark
Come the shingles and palings they call stringy-bark ;
Though you ride through long gullies a twelve-month you'll see
But the old whitened stumps of the stringy-bark tree.
Notes
From the NSW Newspaper The Northern Star 21 2 May 1928 p. 12.
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