The Ragged Thirteen

Part legend, part fact, their adventures embellished and exaggerated around a thousand campfires, the story of the Ragged Thirteen has been beloved of bush storytellers for a hundred and thirty years.

The Ragged Thirteen were brilliant horsemen, fugitives, consummate bushmen, lovers of bush poetry, and champions of the underdog. They embodied the new Australian nationalism of the latter part of the nineteenth century, with all its colour, larrikinism, love of the bush, and suspicion of authority. There are a few different perspectives on how the name “Ragged Thirteen” came about. One story is that famous drover Nat Buchanan had seen the South Australian contingent camped at Johnston’s Waterhole, further south, and called them a ragged bunch. Another contemporary credit a boundary rider named Steve Lacey with tagging them as “The Thirteen.” Either way, the Ragged Thirteen they became, and they would soon be the most talked-about characters in the North.

A Rhyme of the Ragged Thirteen
(By Dryblower Murphy.)

The cases of fizz are on the ice, the table turkey’s trussed
(Hang the bother and hang the price when its vintage versus dust).
There’s crooners to croon and a band to play, speeches and toasts in turn,
And all will be in the garden gay where a damper we used to burn.

For its ‘Back to Old Hannan’s’ once again, Back to the Golden Mile,
Where the metal still lurks in its diorite den and tailing pyramids pile.
But this is the song of a splendid band who came in the long ago,
When Bayley and Ford rocked Groperland with the news of the Golden Blow.

This is the rhyme of the Ragged Thirteen, a baker’s dozen of braves;
Who each lies cold in his lone costeen, the best of Outback graves.
The Ragged Thirteen who cut the tracks from Cue to Bayley’s Find
The ‘Curse of Thirst’ upon their backs, a dozen duffers behind.

Aussie and Englishman, Irish and Scotch, Welsh and Squarehead too,
With never a compass, map or watch, to bring their brogans through.
Never a pocket that held a bob, the last spree cleared them clean,
A dozen dialects in the mob and the leader was Larrikin Green.

There was Larrikin Green and Paddy the Flat and mighty Mick O’Burn,
Whose fists could beat a rat-tat~tat on a dozen cops in turn;
Wild -Horse- Woods and Charlie the Goose, Slippery-Dick and Coyle,
Who for forty annuals had a use for a bed above the soil.

Pigweed-Harry and Dry-Soak Sam, Combo Kelly and Sport;
And Scotty, who shot the station ram when the mutton bag ran short.
The thirteenth was a nondescript, long and lousy and lean,
But the gamest man to a singlet stripped, was leader, Larrikin Green

It was Green who saved the Warden’s life when the Afghans ran amuck;
When the fight was a razor-bladed knife versus Larrikin’s pluck.
Green it was who went below when the dynamite was bad
And sent to the brace dead Dan McCrow and Alec Lander’s lad.

There may have been a few mishaps when alluvial times were hard,
A few sheep went a-missing, p’raps from Sullivan’s slaughter yard.
But when the camp was stiff and cold and the hospital hadn’t a bean
The first to chuck in an ounce of gold was always Larrikin Green.

So they’re holding a celebration now and fluency’s torch will flame,
But none who’ll sit at the great pow-wow may recollect his name.
But somehow out in the silent scrub, long leagues from you and me,
Afar from the big palatial pub their bones may restless be.

So here’s to the dog-and-damper days, the days of the dungarees,
When still there was many a track to blaze through slender salmon trees,
When the gay dress suit and motor car were not upon the scene
And the men who steered by a sturdy star were such as Larrikin Green!

The Ragged Thirteen – Newstead District Historical Soc