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Please Shut the Gate

The roads are rough and lonely
Where the Out-back wand’rers go,
From Tuckumbil to Broken Hill,
From Bourke to Jericho.

The houses stand some leagues apart,
And oft where none can see;
But wire and rail across the trail
Occur quite frequently.

At each there is a crude device
That horsemen execrate,
And ‘long the bar on top in tar
Is writ, “Please, shut the gate.”

E. G. McNutt, of Sundown,
Had one on his boundaree
Which badly dragg’d and where it sagg’d
That notice all could see.

Below was scribed, when Sundown run
Was in a barren state:
“He’s ‘fraid the drought may wander out,
So shut his bloomin’ gate.”

Then one upon the bar beneath
In large, neat letters cut:
“You hog unskil’d, why don’t you build
A darned gate that will shut!”

The fourth broad bar this legend bore,
With some nickname and date:
“You lazy louts and rouseabouts,
Please shut the squattah’s gate.”

Upon the last was painted this
Lack-reverence for pelf:
“Old Herrin’-gut, of Sundown, shut
The blessed gate yourself!”

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