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Project Gutenberg Australia HomeReturn to Index of Poems
Over the range where the sun-god dips
Down in a fire-like glow;
Out where the touch of a white girl’s lips
Seldom the white men know;
South’ard the drovers by light-long day,
And under the splendent stars,
Ride up with their mobs from the runs away
Up by the northern bars.
Over the hills and the downs untracked.
Lonesome and wild and grey.
Or ‘mid deep forests and scrubs close-packed,
Patiently on ride they;
Summer and winter, with winds and rains
To temper the wilding blood,
Fighting the drought on the inland plains,
Crossing the far land flood.
Sons of the open who know no roofs
While green grass turns to brown,
Whose saddles creak to the tramp of hoofs
From dawn till the sun goes down;
Travelling over the long, lone-miles,
On from the Flinders’ mouth.
Always the yarn or the pipe beguiles,
Ever they face the south.
Watching the mob when the shades are wide,
Out from the camp-fire bright;
Stemming the rush with a reckless ride
Hard through the storm-racked night;
With ears attuned to the cattle call,
They pass the slow hours away,
Watching the stars as they rise and fall
From dusk to the break of day.
Or barren the route or through tall grey grass,
Flanked by a clear lagoon,
Under the mist of the morn they pass,
And the shimmering haze of noon;
Onward for months, and whate’er betide,
Loitering days are banned,
For twice six miles must the camps divide,
By the laws of the overland.
And ever in quiet as daylight fades.
Wherever the drover be,
His fancy flits to the Lachlan glades,
Or down by the Southern Sea.
Where wistful-eyed at a cottage stands.
As the travelling mobs go past,
Watching for one from the northern lands,
The girl that he claims at last
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