When the final bucket of dirt is drawn,
And the windlass rope’s made fast,
And there’s no work to do till morn,
And we sit to our night’s repast;’
When we’ve sampled the meal of damper and ‘dog’,
And lighted the ancient clay,
What tales are told on the old camp log,
To banish the cares of the day.
And some of the yarns are bright and gay,
And some of them all too sad,
For a miner’s lot from day today,
Is a mixture of good and bad.
Some tell of fortune, that fickle jade,
And some of reverses drear,
But always some little mention’s made,
Of the Goldfields Pioneer.
He was the first of the crowd on Bayley’s track,
He led them to Hannan’s Find,
And if somebody struck on a parch outback
He wasn’t far behind.
Kurnalpi heard his shaker’s sound,
The Feather has felt his spade,
And so has every golden ground,
From Darlot to Dead Man’s Glade.
Not much he rocked of the dreary track
Or the waterless plains of sand,
When he chased the weight to the far outback
On the border of No Man’s Land.
And the dryblowers soon forgot their dread
Of the unknown desert drear,
When they knew that the fossickers’ van was led
By the Goldfields Pioneer.
Now whether his chamois was filled with ‘sand’
Or whether he lacked a ‘weight’
He was always ready to lend a hand
To succour a needy mate.
And hundreds treasure his memory dear
For the sacrifices made
By the open-hearted pioneer
To render them timely aid.
Sometimes when a leader has petered out,
And his chamois was lined with ‘stuff’
Till Coolgardie would cry enough!
He’s strike the town on a razzling bout
For he liked his fun and loved the girls,
And he favoured the wine as well,
He’d barter his soul for the flaxen curls
And the smile of a goldfields belle.
But many a piece of good bright gold
(And let it be told with pride)
He sent to gladden his parents old
Away on the Sydney side.
He broke the school at the Fly Flat club
Just up where they’ve built the Grand –
He saw fair play at Bill Faahan’s pub
When they fought for the barmaid’s hand.
He has ridden a hundred miles or more,
Like the knights of the legends old,
To keep a tryst at the camel store
With the woman whose hair was gold.
For whether ‘twas work or love, or drink
Reality or Romance,
He never faltered upon the brink,
But tackle the leap, and – chance.
His history’s one of ups and downs
Of fortunes quickly made.
And as quickly spent in the Hessian towns –
Then back to the pick and spade!
The miners would miss his smiling face,
The barmaids would shed a tear,
For never a man could fill the place
Of the Goldfields Pioneer.
Now the years have passed and changes wrought,
And the fossicker’s work is o’er –
But where are the men who bravely fought
For a fortune in Ninety Four?
Some have encompassed the Great Divide
Where the shaker and pick’s unknown,
Others are ‘broke’ on the other side,
And some to the Cape have flown.
In a spinifex plain in the wild Outback,
(‘Twas never a white man’s ground)
A mulga grows by an unused track,
And beneath there’s a lonely mound,
In fancy we kneel by that far-off grave
In the waterless desert drear,
Where the mulga branches in sadness wave
O’er the Goldfields Pioneer.
Moya Sharp
Latest posts by Moya Sharp (see all)
- Old Jim ‘The Hatter’s’ Christmas Party – - 22/12/2024
- The Binduli Blood House – - 22/12/2024
- A Bush Christmas – by C J Dennis - 22/12/2024
PEPPER
We were sitting round a bar one day
in a pub so old the owners say;
these solid walls of river boulders
were worn by the rub of miner’s shoulders.
This half pint bloke, he wasn’t old
when he went in search of Skippers gold-
we hear him now by the Clutha’s roar
at the bar tell tales of the days before….
“Now up the Shotover by The Branches
they ran a string of wild horses;
they’d once put out a chestnut colt,
his mane and tail as white as salt.
Now Arch McNicol who owned the run
said ‘those horse eat up too much feed
so the local men can have some fun
to round them up and bring them in.’
One black amongst the string stood out,
the colt had really done his work-
a stallion stood some seventeen hands
so wild he nearly killed a man.
They roped him, gelded him, in the yard;
the horse was wild, he came down hard:
and then a patient musterer came
to rope and roll, to mouth and tame.
They gave him Pepper for a name,
they found him willing, gentle, game,
his dark coat smooth without a fault-
a horse in always worth his salt.
The Shotover was dammed up that year
by miners working with sluicing gear
so rather than round the dam, eight mile
I walked that horse on a three foot pipe.
Pepper alone went on that iron,
a surer foot I’ve never seen-
on the homeward track with meat and stores
he walked that pipe over forty feet.
Later Pepper lost his health-
the packing tracks replaced with roads,
the horse was sick, his feed was poor-
there wasn’t much to keep him for.
But a cocky up Glenorchy way
said he would take the hack away
and feed him Glenorchy grass
and put him in condition.
Later on at Arthurs Point
standing my round and taking a shout
the crowd moved out to the bar room door
to see the sight come down the track.
A beauty horse, as black they said,
as the ace of spades, a noble head,
and a coat so flash, you’d see your face
like a mirror if you’d care to look.
The man who owned that horse I knew
had no mount of that fine type
but as I looked at the right hind foot
like the tripping gait as he crossed that pipe-
like Pepper as he turned the dust
behind him as he ambled past-
the very horse we were to shoot
for dog tucker at Mount Aurum.
Pepper lived to twenty eight,
from Glenorchy he packed his weight
so many times ’til one sad day
i heard that Pepper passed away.
Not slumped against a stable door
nor in a paddock fat on hay
but out the back on a steep rock track
Pepper slipped and fell that day.”
“And I can claim,” the miner stated,
“the tale of Pepper is right as rain;
as good as gold, not silver plated…”
…straight from the heart his story plain.
And from the bar I edged that night
into the cold and frosty morn;
the miner yarned on to the bar’s delight
while I wandered home and the story was born.
D A V I D G E O R G E
Hi David This is just a lovely verse, was Pepper a real horse?
A great verse, Moya.