[Editor: This song was published in The Old Bush Songs (1905), edited by Banjo Paterson. It was previously published in The Queenslander, 13 October 1894.]
A Thousand Miles Away
(Air: “Ten Thousand Miles Away”)
Hurrah for the Roma railway! Hurrah for Cobb and Co.,
And oh! for a good fat horse or two to carry me Westward Ho —
To carry me Westward Ho! my boys, that’s where the cattle stray
On the far Barcoo, where they eat nardoo, a thousand miles away.
Chorus
Then give your horses rein across the open plain,
We’ll ship our meat both sound and sweet, nor care what some folks say;
And frozen we’ll send home the cattle that now roam
On the far Barcoo and the Flinders too, a thousand miles away.
Knee-deep in grass we’ve got to pass — for the truth I’m bound to tell —
Where in three weeks the cattle get as fat as they can swell —
As fat as they can swell, my boys; a thousand pounds they weigh,
On the far Barcoo, where they eat nardoo, a thousand miles away.
Chorus: Then give your horses rein, &c.
No Yankee hide e’er grew outside such beef as we can freeze;
No Yankee pastures make such steers as we send o’er the seas —
As we send o’er the seas, my boys, a thousand pounds they weigh —
From the far Barcoo, where they eat nardoo, a thousand miles away.
Chorus: Then give your horses rein, &c.
Source:
A. B. Paterson (editor), The Old Bush Songs, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1905, pp. 121-122
Previously published in:
The Queenslander (Brisbane, Qld.), 13 October 1894, p. 692
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