The Billy-Goat Overland

Come all ye lads of the droving days, ye gentlemen unafraid,
I'll tell you all of the greatest trip that ever a drover made,
For we rolled our swags, and we packed our bags, and taking our lives in hand,
We started away with a thousand goats, on the billy-goat overland.

There wasn't a fence that'd hold the mob, or keep 'em from their desires;
They skipped along the top of the posts and cake-walked on the wires.
And where the lanes had been stripped of grass and the paddocks were nice and green,
The goats they travelled outside the lanes and we rode in between.

The squatters started to drive them back, but that was no good at all,
Their horses ran for the lick of their lives from the scent that was like a wall:
And never a dog had pluck or gall in front of the mob to stand
And face the charge of a thousand goats on the billy-goat overland.

We found we were hundreds over strength when we counted out the mob;
And they put us in jail for a crowd of thieves that travelled to steal and rob:
For every goat between here and Bourke, when he scented our spicy band,
Had left his home and his work to join in the billy-goat overland.

Andrew Barton Paterson

Andrew Barton Paterson, also known as Banjo Paterson, was an Australian bush poet, journalist, and author. Renowned for his poignant and humorous depictions of rural Australia, he wrote iconic works like "Waltzing Matilda" and "The Man from Snowy River." His storytelling, deeply rooted in Australian culture, has cemented his legacy as one of the nation's most beloved literary figures.

Andrew Barton Paterson

The Matrimonial Stakes

Andrew Barton Paterson, Simple Poetry

The Last Parade

Andrew Barton Paterson, Simple Poetry

A Dream Of The Melbourne Cup

Andrew Barton Paterson, Simple Poetry

An Answer to Various Bards

Andrew Barton Paterson, Simple Poetry

English

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The Overlander

Theres a trade you all know well
    Its bringing cattle over
Ill tell you all about the time
    When I became a drover.
I made up my mind to try the spec,
    To the Clarence I did wander,
And bought a mob of duffers there
    To begin as an overlander.

                            Chorus

    Pass the wine cup round, my boys;
        Dont let the bottle stand there,
    For to-night well drink the health
        Of every overlander.

Next morning counted the cattle
    Saw the outfit ready to start,
Saw all the lads well mounted,
    And their swags put in a cart.

All kinds of men I had
    From France, Germany, and Flanders;
Lawyers, doctors, good and bad,
    In the mob of overlanders.

Next mornin...

Andrew Barton Paterson

Saltbush Bill

Now is the law of the Overland that all in the West obey,
A man must cover with traveling sheep a six-mile stage a day;
But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood,
They travel their stage where the grass is bad, but they camp where the grass is good;
They camp, and they ravage the squatter's grass till never a blade remains.
Then they drift away as the white clouds drift on the edge of the saltbush plains:
From camp to camp and from run to run they battle it hand to hand
For a blade of grass and the right to pass on the track of the Overland.
For this is the law of the Great Stock Routes, 'tis written in white and black,
The man that goes with a traveling mob must keep to a half-mile track;
And the drovers keep to a half-mile track on the runs where the grass is de...

Andrew Barton Paterson

Saltbush Bill On The Patriarchs

Come all you little rouseabouts and climb upon my knee;
Today, you see, is Christmas Day, and so it's up to me
To give you some instruction like, a kind of Christmas tale,
So name your yarn, and off she goes. What, "Jonah and the Whale?"

Well, whales is sheep I've never shore; I've never been to sea,
So all them great Leviathans is mysteries to me;
But there's a tale the Bible tells I fully understand,
About the time the Patriarchs were settling on the land.

Those Patriarchs of olden time, when all is said and done,
They lived the same as far-out men on many a Queensland run,
A lot of roving, droving men who drifted to and fro,
The same we did out Queensland way a score of years ago.

Now Isaac was a squatter man, and Jacob was his son,
And when the boy grew...

Andrew Barton Paterson

An Answer to Various Bards

Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in,
Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin,
With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp,
How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp;
And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom,
But you know they're fond of writing about "corpses" and "the tomb".
So, before they curse the bushland, they should let their fancy range,
And take something for their livers, and be cheerful for a change.
Now, for instance, Mr Lawson, well, of course, we almost cried
At the sorrowful description how his "little 'Arvie" died,
And we lachrymosed in silence when "His Father's mate" was slain;
Then he went and killed the father, and we had to weep again.
Ben Duggan and Jack ...

Andrew Barton Paterson

The Old Australian Ways

The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
We drive her through the haze
Towards the land we left behind,
The good old land of `never mind',
And old Australian ways.

The narrow ways of English folk
Are not for such as we;
They bear the long-accustomed yoke
Of staid conservancy:
But all our roads are new and strange,
And through our blood there runs
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
And westward of the suns.

The city folk go to and fro
Behind a prison's bars,
They never feel the breezes blow
And never see the stars;
They never hear in blossomed trees
The music low and swee...

Andrew Barton Paterson

Old Australian Ways

The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
We drive her through the haze
Towards the land we left behind,
The good old land of "never mind",
And old Australian ways.

The narrow ways of English folk
Are not for such as we;
They bear the long-accustomed yoke
Of staid conservancy:
But all our roads are new and strange,
And through our blood there runs
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
And westward of the suns.

The city folk go to and fro
Behind a prison's bars,
They never feel the breezes blow
And never see the stars;
They never hear in blossomed trees
The music low and swee...

Andrew Barton Paterson