Call this hot? I beg your pardon. Hot!you dont know what it means.
(Whats that, waiter? lamb or mutton! Thank youmine is beef and greens.
Bread and butter while Im waiting. Milk? Oh, yesa bucketful.)
Im just in from west the Darling, picking-up and rolling wool.
Mutton stewed or chops for breakfast, dry and tasteless, boiled in fat;
Bread or brownie, tea or coffeetwo hours graft in front of that;
Legs of mutton boiled for dinnermutton greasy-warm for tea
Mutton curried (gave my order, beef and plenty greens for me.)
Breakfast, curried rice and mutton till your innards sacrifice,
And you sicken at the colour and the smell of curried rice.
All day long with living muttonbits and belly-wool and fleece;
Blinded by the yoke of wool, and shirt and trousers stiff with grease,
Till you long for sight of verdure, cabbage-plots and water clear,
And you crave for beef and butter as a boozer craves for beer.
Dusty patch in baking mulgaglaring iron hut and shed
Feel and smell of rain forgottenwater scarce and feed-grass dead.
Hot and suffocating sunriseall-pervading sheep yard smell
Stiff and aching green-hand stretchesSlushy rings the bullock-bell
Pint of tea and hunk of browniesinners string towards the shed
Great, black, greasy crows round carcassscreen behind of dust-cloud red.
Engine whistles. Go it, tigers! and the agony begins,
Picking up for seven devils out of Hadesfor my sins;
Picking up for seven devils, seven demons out of Hell!
Sell their souls to get the bell-sheephalf-a-dozen Christs theyd sell!
Day grows hot as where they come fromtoo damned hot for men or brutes;
Roof of corrugated iron, six-foot-six above the shoots!
Whiz and rattle and vibration, like an endless chain of trams;
Blasphemy of five-and-fortyprickly heatand stink of rams!
Barcoo leaves his pen-door open and the sheep come bucking out;
When the rouser goes to pen them, Barcoo blasts the rouseabout.
Injury with insult addedtrial of our cursing powers
Cursed and cursing back enough to damn a dozen worlds like ours.
Take my combs down to the grinder, will yer? Seen my cattle-pup?
Theres a sheep fell down in my shootjust jump down and pick it up.
Give the office when the boss comes. Catch that gory sheep, old man.
Count the sheep in my pen, will yer? Fetch my combs back when yer can.
When yer get a chance, old feller, will yer pop down to the hut?
Fetch my pipethe cookll show yerand Ill let yer have a cut.
Shearer yells for tar and needle. Ringers roaring like a bull:
Wool away, you (son of angels). Where the hells the (foundling) WOOL!!
Pound a week and station pricesmustnt kick against the pricks
Seven weeks of lurid mateshipruined soul and four pounds six.
Whats that? waiter? me? stuffed mutton! Look here, waiter, to be brief,
I said beef! you blood-stained villain! Beefmoo-cowRoast BullockBEEF!