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The Farmer’s Carriage

Edward S. Sorenson

The slide was cut and fashioned from the forked part of a tree;
    We made it when we started on the farm;
‘Twas the cart for pioneering and the carriage crude and free
    That the roughest bushland tracks could never harm.
We decked it with a slab or two and thought it mighty fine
    When through the frosted paddocks we could ride,
Our tracks to school and elsewhere through the coolabahs and pine     
    Were made by odd-time journeys with the slide.

It wobbled up the ridges and it slithered down the hills;
    It slipped serenely o’er the boggy flat;
And, though at gully crossings we got many nasty spills,
    The slide was never much the worse for that.
We drew the wood for burning, and we took the pigs to town;
    We brought the water from the gully side;
At harvest time with spuds and corn we skidded up and down—
    There was always something doing with the slide.

Companion of the dog-leg fence and huts of stringybark,
    It was suited for those early, careless days;
And down the tracks of time it left its everlasting mark,
    The rouseabout that smoothed the rugged ways.
And, little changed, that pioneer still stood beside the door
    In after years with covered cask astride;
For, no matter what the seasons added to the farmer’s store,
    The water still was fetched with horse and slide.

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