Digital Tradition Mirror

Australia's on the Wallaby

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Australia's on the Wallaby

Our fathers came to search for gold
The mine has proved a duffer
From bankers, boss and syndicate
We always had to suffer
They fought for freedom for themdelves
Themselves and mates to toil
But Australia's sons are weary
And the billy's on the boil

cho: Australia's on the wallaby
     Just listen to the coo-ee
     For the kangaroo he rolls his swag
     And the emu shoulders bluey
     The boomerangs are whizzinq round
     The dingo scratches gravel
     The possum bear and bandicoot
     Are all upon the travel

The cuckoo calls the bats and now
The pigeon and the shag
The mallee-hen and platypus
Are rollinq up their swaq
For the curlew sings a sad farewell
Beside the long lagoon
And the brolga does his last-way waltz
To the lyrebird'd mocking tune

There's tiger-snakes and damper, boys
And what's that on the coals?
There's drouqhts and floods and ragged duds
There's dried-up waterholes
There's shadeless trees and sun-scorched plains
All asking us to toil
But Australia's sons are weary
And the billy's on the boil

note: From Old Bush Recitations, collected by "Bill Bowyang" and
     published in 1933. To go "on the wallaby" or "on the wallaby
     track" or to "hump the drum" is to travel outback as a
     swaggie or sundowner, ie a tramp or itinerant worker.
     John Meredith notes that the tune "is a variant of the tune
     used in northern Queensland for Lawson's 'Freedom's On
     the Wallaby' of which this is clearly a parody.

IP

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!