The Gabanintha Beer Strike

The Gabanintha Beer Strike.

I wonder if you chaps as writes the papers ever thinks
about the price of beer a up here and other sorts of drinks
It seems to me you fancy that the centre of the earth
and the end of all creation is a thripney bar in Perth.

And when you’s as yer pewter filled with Harry Marshall’s beer,
It mighty little time yer has for us poor blokes up here.
Yer paper never mentions of the troubles we endures
at the hands of our oppressers, viz, ‘the publicans’ an ‘brewers’.

You’s makes a holy rumpus when the price of bread is ris,
an you’s says the bakers grabbin of the gilt that isn’t his!
And DON’T yer go to market when a judge as doesn’t know
reckons wages should be lower than they wos some yeres ago!

But here, in God forgotten, we is lift to fight alone—
To struggle with a dreadful thirst, upon a “Pat Malone”
Wots the use o’ Labor members, Labor papers an the like,
If we don’t get no assistance for the Gabanintha strike?

We struck the blow for freedom at the dawnin’ of tho yere,
An’ we took an affydavy that we wouldn’t drink no beer
Till pewter pints upon the top of Nestor’s bar wos seen.
An’ the beer reduced to sixpence by the houghty Paddy Green.

We holds a public meetin’, and decided then and there
That every mother’s son of us would keep upon the square;
We wouldn’t touch nor taste the stuff till Paddy gave it best,
And anyone as blacklegged—he’d to shout for all the rest.

An’ then we sits outside the pubs, a singin’ all the nite,
An’ statin” as in future all our drinks wos “water brite” ;
Water from the kristall fountain, where it bubbles cool an’ clear,
And we’ll drink it—tho we’ll perish—as a substitute for beer.

Then Paddy Green and Nestor, like the cruel men they are,
They fills sum casks with water an they puts em on the bar;
They gets a namel bucket, which they fills up to the brim,
And they brings it to our leader, and they offers it to him ! !

Well, we thought our noble leader would have tumbled down and died,
When we heres the voice of Paddy say “There’s plenty more inside” ;
The pubs, is free and open to yous strugglin workin men,
And when the casks is empty—we will fill em up again!”

When we sees the fatal fiuid we was holdin of our breath,
And our leader’s knees was shakin and is face was white as death;
Then he gave a scream and vanished in the darkness an the scrub,
While yer umble went and fainted on the doorstep of the pub.

Does yer think that pair’d a minded if I died an’ gone to heaven?
Would their stony hearts have melted if I’d gone and chucked a seven?
Suppose me ghost had done a bunk, and left me cold and stiff
Would that wicked pair of publicans have sent me out a sniff?

Have a sniff ! The cruel scoundrels, they was larfin up a sleeve,
A tellin of the other coves as how twas make-believe;
They kids a dirty blackleg, as they gets upon the spree,
For to go an fetch some water, an they chucks it over me.

Tho the water didn’t kill me, I wos frightened, I wos hurt,
For it wet me bloomin trousers, and it MIGHT have wet me shirt.
So I clears to Monte Bender’s on the rapid wings of fear,
Where I finds me noble leader, full of sympathy—and beer.

P.S.—We’ve struggled nobly, and we’ve won the fight at last,
And the strike at Gabanintha is a fantom of the past,
For Paddy Green, the DESPOT, has been humbled to the dust,
But he rather seems to like it, for the boys is on the bust.

Tom BEASLEY