On the Far Barcoo [song, 24 June 1932]

[Editor: This song is from Bill Bowyang’s column, “On the Track”, in the The Townsville Daily Bulletin, 1932.]

Old Bush Verse.

Several readers have asked for the words of an old bush song entitled “On the Far Barcoo,” and now that I have received the words I reprint them below:

On the Far Barcoo.

Hurrah for the Western railway, and hurrah for Cobb and Co.,
Sing a song for a jolly fat horse to carry me Westward ho;
To carry me Westward ho my boys, that’s where the cattle pay.
In the far Barcoo where they eat nardoo, one thousand miles away.

Chorus:

Then give your horses rein across the open plain,
We’ll ship our meat both fresh and neat, nor care what some folks say,
For it’s frozen in and we’ll send home the bullocks now that roam,
From the far Barcoo where they eat nardoo, one thousand miles away.

Knee-deep through grass we’ll have to pass, you will upon my soul,
Where in two months the bullocks get as fat as they can roll,
As fat as they can roll my boys, one thousand pounds they’ll weigh,
In the far Barcoo where they eat nardoo, one thousand miles away.

No Yankee hide e’er grew outside such beef as we can raise,
No Yankee pastures rears such stock as we send o’er the seas,
As we’ll send o’er the seas my boy, while thousands of them stray
In the far Barcoo where they eat nardoo, one thousand miles away.

Source:
The Townsville Daily Bulletin (Townsville, Qld.), Friday 24 June 1932, page 4

Editor’s notes:
Barcoo = the area of the Barcoo River, in Queensland (the Shire of Barcoo, established 1887, in Queensland, is named after the Barcoo River)

nardoo = Australian clover fern (Marsilea drummondii)