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Out From The Port Of Hay

Edward S. Sorenson

Old bullock days, as the teamster tells,
    Were the golden days outback,
When the nights were loud with the bullfrog bells
    At the camps on the sunset track;
And waggons, piled with their great grey loads,
    Strung over the plain by day,
In sun and dust on the rutted roads,
    Out from the port of Hay.

The Booligal Blaster, Jacky Lee,
    Long Jimmy and Hellfire Joe,
Mick Quinlan, who smashed on the lonely tree,
    And Harry from Ivanhoe
Would roar and yell as their greenhides swung,
    Urging the slipping heels,
In times of wet when the blacksoil clung
    In lumps to the straining wheels.

There was Paddy the Priest—the teams he drove
    The best on the western road—
There were Bunyan, Giddins and Eades, who strove
    To carry the record load;
All followed the ruts in the golden years
    O’er the One-tree, wide and grey,
When wool was falling from speedy shears,
    Out from the port of Hay.

When the heat-haze danced o’er the tussock grass,
    Or pastures were bare and brown,
The shadeless way was a hell to pass
    With the duststorm sweeping down;
But the fruits looked good ‘neath the sheen of stars
    For the rovers of road and run,
And money flowed at the shanty bars,
    Through rollicking nights of fun.

Now Mick and Paddy and all their mates,
    Jimmy and Jack and Joe,
Have hit the track to the Jasper Gates,
    Or wherever the punchers go.
Their old bones rest in the last long camp,
    Where the town goats browse and play,
Hard by the track that they used to tramp,
    Out from the port of Hay.

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