2nd poem from Homer

The Outback Cattle Drive - 2002
4/5/2002 - 9/6/2002
© Neil Hulm
"There's a cattle drive, six hundred head,
Deliver them all;" the boss man said.
"It's a charity run, there's work to do;
down the Birdsville Track, Two Thousand and Two."

The mob was mustered up Queensland way
from the channel country day by day:
where the Cottonbush and Georgina flow
and the desert oak and coolibah grow.

Thousands of visitors came along,
they laughed and cheered and some sang a song;
a few rode on horses and cracked their whips,
while others rode in on their Desert Ships.

There were four wheel drives and jeeps and utes;
many station hands and young recruits
and the planes wheeled in on the landing track
for this is the year of the Great Outback.

From overseas came the cam'ra crews,
the journalists came to spread the news;
down the Birdsville Track to the Marree Pub;
five hundred odd k's through desert and scrub.

With close to two hundred horses there,
and all in use, but a few to spare;
when I looked them over, greys, blacks and bays
my thoughts took me back to my droving days.

To stock routes down on the Kosci' slopes;
the old stockyard and the greenhide ropes;
mustering in the mountains far and wide,
with my trusty pack horse close by my side.

I soon returned to this dried out land,
this waterless waste of desert sand
where a man might leave for a far off run;
another might die `neath the burning sun.

Where the camel trains of long ago
came through the sands where the west winds blow;
with a bale each side of a tortured back,
from the shearing sheds down the Birdsville Track.

Now the camels graze with kangaroos,
with native dogs and the wild emus,
where the bushland horses are running free,
and the Cooper runs to the inland sea.

We hear the cry of a young curlew,
the screeching call of the cockatoo,
and the black swans fly from the river bed,
the water is low and the stream is dead.

A heeler sniffed at the sun-bleached bones;
a beast had died on the desert stones;
he turned away and went back to his job,
and hunted the stragglers up to the mob.

Along the Birdsville day after day,
on through the dust where the whirlwinds play;
ev'ry beast there knew if it made a slip,
it would feel the sting of the drover's whip.
I ran my eye `cross a drover's horse,
his coat was long and dusty and coarse,
but don't be fooled, he's slippery as grease,
he can spin around on a five cent piece.

He'll give you a ride in dust or mud
and he'll swim the river's raging flood;
he'll make you ride and you'll hang there tight,
when the northern bullocks rush off at night.

There's up and down in the droving game,
some livestock wild and others are tame,
and a good day turns to a better night
if the yellow belly are on the bite.

With winter rains the wild flowers stand
in a carpet clear across the land;
then the heat waves bounce `neath a cloudless sky
and the soft young flowers wither and die.

At last we came to the town Marree
where the thousands turned up there to see
drovers, cattle and the big caravans,
blue cattle dogs, red dogs and black and tans

Now town dogs growl with a nasty frown
when the drover's dogs invade their town
and they chase and snarl and turn on the heat,
but the dogs from the bush are hard to beat.

As the sun went down the mob was penned,
the Great Cattle Drive had reached its end;
then the draft was over early next day
and the Charity Sale was on its way.

The Auctioneer in his high-peaked lid
called to the buyers, "What am I bid?
There's a hundred penned and a few to come,
they will grow and fatten, round as a drum:"

"Raise up your hand or give me a word;
what am I bid for this first class herd?
Just put them away and give them a feed
for none do better than the shorthorn breed."

The buyers bid and they stuck like glue
and raindrops fell before night was through.
The corellas were screeching back and forth
and the magpie geese flew back to the north.

Then an old man asked, "What's doing, son?"
I spoke about the Charity Run,
then silently turned and took off my hat
and I knew it was more, much more than that.

We camped around for a few more days
but the crowds had gone their diff'rent ways
and the droving team said they'll all be back -
for the next big Drive down the Birdsville Track.

Boss Drover: Eric Oldfield 2002