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Gibberagee

Edward S. Sorenson

Where the station roofs had reared no stick was showing,
    There was little of the place we used to know;
        Some old gateposts where the big yards used to be,
    Where the crack of stockwhips echoed long ago;
And a lonely peach-tree growing
Where the creek was ever flowing,
        Twisting round among the hills of Gibberagee.

Ghosts of old bush-mates seemed with us, long years after,
    As we camped again beside the broken yard;
        Whilst the curlews wailed around us eerily,
    As if for times when life was never hard,
When the stockmen’s hearty laughter
Seemed to shake each boxwood rafter
        In the huts when day was done on Gibberagee.

There was jesting Jimmy Baxter from the Bogan,
    Ever working with his bullock-team and slide;
        Payne, the splitter, who had felled a bigger tree
    Than the biggest known in all the country-side;
And the breaker, Long Mick Hogan,
Who was after Kitty Logan,
        Then the merry little belle of Gibberagee.

She was always in the front rank at the muster,
    When we wheeled the wild mobs through the ironbarks,
        Where the horses sped with bridles swinging free
    And their hard hoofs from the flint stones striking sparks;
Though she got a stunning buster
Where the honeysuckles cluster,
        And we carried her on bark to Gibberagee.

Bucking Buckland, too, was well up in the battle
    When the call was for the smart and skillful hand;
        It was he who rode, the old hands swore to me,
    The outlaw that bucked off the station brand;
Reckless ‘mong the wild bush cattle,
He would make the ranges rattle,
        Swinging to the old bush camps on Gibberagee.

In the smoke-drift Fancy pictured grinning faces,
    Dusky cohorts led by big Gohanna Bob.
        Of old Frying Pan and Billy Budgeree.
    In corroborees gay-dancing with the mob;
And abroad in whirling races
After scrubbers, and in chases
        Through the myrtle scented glens of Gibberagee.

Thus around the blazing logs we sat and listened.
    To the curfews and the ‘possums by the creek,
        And called back the station’s vanished company,
    Where the clans were wont of old to hide and seek;
Whilst the wild eyes watched and glistened,
As they did when wild men christened
        That green camping-ground of ages—Gibberagee.

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