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Scooter’s Cook

Edward S. Sorenson

Sum Soo was cook at Scooter’s pub,
    Of Speckers’ Flat the crown,
Where diggers worked with dish and tub
    And fossicked up and down
The gullies ‘tween a mulga scrub
    And round about the town.

There gold specks glittered after rain
    About the broken ground
Where Scooter’s chooks for grit and grain
    Went fossicking around;
And many a speck, in dump and drain
    And washaways they found.

They wandered far like feral fowl,
    Their run a wilderness;
But that they’d strayed or foes might prowl
    Not once did Scooter guess
Until he noticed with a scowl
    Their numbers growing less.

Then came a day when none was left,
    To Scooter ‘twas a shock;
And whilst he wondered at the theft,
    And searched by scrub and rock,
His neighbour was likewise bereft
    Of all his feathered stock.

From otherwhere prime specimens
    Were taken one by one,
Until were found some buried hens
    With but their gizzards gone;
And then the angry citizens
    Traced why the deed was done.

Sum Soo, engaged in kitchen craft,
    One day discovered gold
Amongst the grit of camp and shaft
    That from a gizzard rolled,
Which made him act as though half-daft,
    And dream of wealth untold.

Then forth went Soo by track and ford,
    A wily cove was he,
And added to his secret hoard
    On nights too dark to see,
Whilst loud complainings went abroad
    Of fowl mortality.

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