Mount Bukaroo


Only one old post is standing--

Solid yet, but only one--

Where the milking, and the branding,

And the slaughtering were done.

Later years have brought dejection,

Care and sorrow; but we knew

Happy days on that selection

Underneath old Bukaroo.

 

Then the light of day commencing

Found us at the gully's head,

Splitting timber for the fencing,

Stripping bark to roof the shed.

Hands and heart with labour strengthened,

Weariness we never knew,

Even when the shadows lengthened

Round the base of Bukaroo.

 

There for days below the paddock

How the winderness would yield

To the spade, and pick, and mattock,

While we toiled to win the field.

Hard brown hands are hard to sully,

Ours to deepest blackness grew

"Burning off" down in the gully

At the back of Bukaroo.

 

When we came the baby brother

Left in haste his broken toys,

Shouted tot he busy mother;

"Here is dadda and the boys!"

Strange one woman's arms were able

All those rough bush tasks to do--

How she'd bustle round the table

In the hut 'neath Bukaroo!

 

When the cows were safely yarded,

And the calves were in the pen,

All the cares of day discarded,

Round the fire we clustered then.

Rang the roof with boyish laughter

While the flames o'er-topped the flue--

Happy nights remembered after

Far away from Bukaroo.

 

But the years are full of changes,

And a sorrow found us there;

For our home amid the ranges

Was not safe from searching Care.

On he came, a silent creeper;

And another mountain threw

O'er our lives a shadow deeper

Than the shade of Bukaroo.

Henry Lawson

 

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