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Researched and Compiled by Mr Alby Armstrong 21. Poetry from the book Includes the The Pioneers by Frank Hudson and Where the Bush School Used To Be by John James Mangan |
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Researched and Compiled by Mr Alby Armstrong 21. Poetry from the book Includes the The Pioneers by Frank Hudson and Where the Bush School Used To Be by John James Mangan |
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The Pioneers
By Frank Hudson
We are the old world people,
Ours were the hearts to dare,
But our youth is spent
And our backs are bent,
And the snow is in our hair.
Back in the early fifties,
Dim through the mist of years,
By the bush-grown strand,
Of a wild strange land,
We entered, the Pioneers.
Our axes rang in the woodland,
Where the gaudy bush bird flew,
And we turned the loam,
Of our new found home,
Where the Eucalyptus grew.
Housed in the rough log shanty,
Camped in the leaking tent,
From sea to view,
Of the mountain blue,
Where the eager fossickers went.
We wrought with a will unceasing,
We moulded and fashioned and planned.
We fought with the black,
And we blazed the track,
That ye might inherit the land.
Here are your shops and churches,
Your cities of stucco and smoke,
And the swift planes fly,
Where the wild cats cry,
O'er the sad bush silence broke.
Take now the fruit of our labour,
Nourish and guard it with care,
For our youth is spent,
And our backs are bent,
And the snow is in our hair.
Where the Bush School Used To Be
By John James Mangan
There's a dozen different places round the district where you'll see
A pepperina growing and a camphor-laurel tree,
And a pine tree, not a native, and a fence which leans in need,
Round a garden bed that struggles 'neath a wilderness of weed;
There's a flagpole still upstanding, but no flag to flutter free,
Not a soul to stand saluting, where the bush school used to e.
Gone the schools, but not forgotten, written in history,
And those bush folk who were pupils have a clinging memory,
Yes, the bush folk they remember, here their future hopes were born,
Here they heard the lifting bird-song on a spring or summer morn.
And those cold and frosty mornings when their feet were numb and bare,
And their ponies just like dragons puffing steam clouds in the air.
Oh! the news which passed amongst them 'standing easy' on the line,
How someone's dad was cutting chaff and someone's cutting pine,
And the piebald mare at Jones's, she had piebald twins last night,
The Martin kids have measles and the Smith kids have the blight;
And when the flag was hoisted, to attention at command,
Then the teacher spoke with feeling of a noble Motherland.
Oh! the tang of sandwich dinners underneath the 'dinner tree',
Where I swapped a 'jam' with Mary and she gave a 'meat' to me,
Drab those schools I now remember, though in youth we thought them
fine,
Each one painted as the other, each one of the same design,
And those teachers, bless the teachers, write their wondrous deeds
in stone,
Far from home and friends and family, yet they called these schools
their own.
Now the school bus, warm or chilly, and it's never running late,
Does a pick-up in the morning' and delivery at the gate -
Yes the whirring and the buzzing on macadam-coated roads,
Of the flashing cars and motor bikes and trucks with heavy loads,
Drown the jingle of the buckles and the creak of saddle straps,
Spoil the scent of sweating ponies and the sheen of saddle flaps.
When you're driving down the highway and you see a vacant spot,
See a flagpole and a pine tree and neglected garden plot,
Hear the glory of the trilling of the early morning song,
See a pony saddled ready where the grass is growing long
Pause, and listen for a moment by the pepperina tree,
Hear the phantom songs of children, where the bush school used to be.