Old Australian Food Recipes

 

Old Australian Ways

  by 

A. B. "Banjo" Patterson

 The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
We drive her through the haze
Towards the land we left behind
The good old land of "never mind",
And old Australian ways. 

The narrow ways of English folk
Are not for such as we;
They bear the long-accustomed yoke
Of staid conservancy:
But all our roads are new and strange,
And through our blood there runs
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
And westward of the suns. 

The city folk go to and fro
Behind a prison's bars,
They never feel the breezes blow
And never see the stars;
They never hear in blossomed trees
The music low and sweet
Of wild birds making melodies,
Nor catch the little laughing breeze
That whispers in the wheat. 

Our fathers came of roving stock
That could not fixed abide:
And we have followed field and flock
Since e'er we learnt to ride;
By miner's camp and shearing shed,
In land of heat and drought,
We followed where our fortunes led,
With fortune always on ahead
And always further out. 

The wind is in the barley-grass,
The wattles are in bloom;
The breezes greet us as they pass
With honey-sweet perfume;
The parakeets go screaming by
With flash of golden wing,
And from the swamp the wild-ducks cry
Their long-drawn note of revelry,
Rejoicing at the Spring. 

So throw the weary pen aside
And let the papers rest,
For we must saddle up and ride
Towards the blue hill's breast;
And we must travel far and fast
Across their rugged maze,
To find the Spring of Youth at last,
And call back from the buried past
The old Australian ways. 

When Clancy took the drover's track
In years of long ago,
He drifted to the outer back
Beyond the Overflow;
By rolling plain and rocky shelf,
With stockwhip in his hand,
He reached at last (oh lucky elf!)
The Town of Come-and-help-yourself
In Rough-and-ready Land. 

And if it be that you would know
The tracks he used to ride,
Then you must saddle up and go
Beyond the Queensland side --
Beyond the reach of rule or law,
To ride the long day through,
In Nature's homestead -- filled with awe
You then might see what Clancy saw
And know what Clancy knew.

 

Out Back

 by

Henry Lawson 

The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought;
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned, and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few, and the publican's looks were black-
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back. 

For time means tucker, and tramp you must, where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the dust and heat- when summer is on the track-
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet, they carry their swags Out Back. 

He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack,
But only God and the swagman know how a poor man fares Out Back. 

He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more,
And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, til the western station shore;
But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack-
The traveller never got hands in wool, though he tramped for a year Out Back. 

In stifling noons when his back was wrung by its load, and the air seemed dead,
And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead.
For in times of flood, when plains were seas and the scrubs were cold and black,
He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back. 

And dirty and careless and old he wore, as his lamp of hope grew dim;
He tramped for years, til the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him.
As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track,
With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back. 

He chanced one day when the north wind blew in his face like a burnace-breath.
He left the track for a tank he knew- twas a shorter cut to death;
For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack.
And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back. 

A drover came, but the fringe of law was eastward many a mile:
He never reported the thing he saw, for it was not worth his while.
The tanks are full, and the grass is high in the mulga off the track,
Where the bleaching bones of a white man lie by his mouldering swag Out Back. 

For time means tucker, and tramp they must, where the plains and scrubs are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the flies and heat the men of the outside track,
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet, must carry their swags Out Back.

 

Bellbirds

by

Henry Kendall

By the channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling;
It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges
Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges.
Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers
Struggles the light that is love to the flowers;
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.

The silver-voiced bell-birds, the darlings of day-time,
They sing in September their songs of the May-time;
When shadows wax strong, and thunder-bolts hurtle,
They hide with their fear in the leaves of the myrtle;
When rain and the sunbeams shine mingled together,
They start up like fairies that follow fair weather;
And straightway the hues of their feathers unfolden,
Are the green and the purple, the blue and the golden.

October, the maiden of bright yellow tresses,
Loiters for love in the cool wildernesses;
Loiters, knee-deep, in the grasses to listen.
Where dripping rocks gleam and the leafy pools glisten:
Then is the time when the water-moons splendid
Break with their gold, and are scattered or blended
Over the creeks, till the woodlands have warning
Of songs of the bell-bird and wings of the morning.

Welcome as waters unkissed by the summers
Are the voices of bell-birds to thirsty far-corners,
When fiery December sets foot in the forest,
And the need of the wayfarer presses the sorest,
Pent in the ridges for ever and ever,
The bell-birds direct him to spring and to river,
With ring and with ripple, like runnels whose torrents
Are toned by the pebbles and leaves in the currents.

Often I sit, looking back to a childhood
Mixt with the sights and the sounds of the wildwood,
Longing for power and the sweetness to fashion.
Lyrics with beats like the heart-beats of passion;
Songs interwoven of lights and of laughters
Borrowed from bell-birds in far forest rafters;
So I might keep in the city and alleys
The beauty and strength of the deep mountain valleys,
Charming to slumber the pain of my losses
With glimpses of creeks and a vision of mosses.

 

The Days When We Went Swimming

By

Henry Lawson

 The breezes waved the silver grass,
  Waist-high along the siding,
And to the creek we ne'er could pass
  Three boys on bare-back riding;
Beneath the sheoaks in the bend
  The waterhole was brimming
Do you remember yet, old friend,
  The times we "went in swimming"?

 The days we "played the wag" from school
  Joys shared - and paid for singly
The air was hot, the water cool
  And naked boys are kingly!
With mud for soap the sun to dry
  A well planned lie to stay us,
And dust well rubbed on neck and face
  Lest cleanliness betray us.

 And you'll remember farmer Kutz
  Though scarcely for his bounty
He leased a forty-acre block,
  And thought he owned the county;
A farmer of the old world school,
  That grew men hard and grim in,
He drew his water from the pool
  That we preferred to swim in.

 And do you mind when down the creek
  His angry way he wended,
A green-hide cartwhip in his hand
  For our young backs intended?
Three naked boys upon the sand
  Half buried and half sunning
Three startled boys without their clothes
  Across the paddocks running.

 We've had some scares, but we looked blank
  When, resting there and chumming,
One glanced by chance upon the bank
  And saw the farmer coming!
And home inmpressions linger yet
  Of cups of sorrow brimming;
I hardly think that we'll forget
  The last day we went swimming.

 

The Women of the West

By

 George Essex Evans

They left the vine-wreathed cottage and the mansion on the hill,

The houses in the busy streets where life is never still,

The pleasures of the city, and the friends they cherished best:

For love they faced the wilderness—the Women of the West. 

The roar, and rush, and fever of the city died away,

And the old-time joys and faces—they were gone for many a day;

In their place the lurching coach-wheel, or the creaking bullock-chains,

O’er the everlasting sameness of the never-ending plains.

In the slab-built, zinc-roofed homestead of some lately taken run,

In the tent beside the bankment of a railway just begun,

In the huts on new selections, in the camps of man’s unrest,

On the frontiers of the Nation, live the Women of the West. 

The red sun robs their beauty and, in weariness and pain,

The slow years steal the nameless grace that never comes again;

And there are hours men cannot soothe, and words men cannot say

The nearest woman’s face may be a hundred miles away. 

The wide bush holds the secrets of their longing and desires,

When the white stars in reverence light their holy altar fires,

And silence, like the touch of God, sinks deep into the breast

Perchance He hears and understands the Women of the West. 

For them no trumpet sounds the call, no poet plies his arts

They only hear the beating of their gallant, loving hearts.

But they have sung with silent lives the song all songs above

The holiness of sacrifice, the dignity of love. 

Well have we held our fathers’ creed. No call has passed us by.

We faced and fought the wilderness, we sent our sons to die.

And we have hearts to do and dare, and yet, o’er all the rest,

The hearts that made the Nation were the Women of the West. 

No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest

by

Mary Gilmore 

Sons of the mountains of Scotland,
Welshmen of coomb and defile,
Breed of the moors of England,
Children of Erin's green isle,
We stand four square to the tempest,
Whatever the battering hail-
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail. 

Our women shall walk in honour,
Our children shall know no chain,
This land, that is ours forever,
The invader shall strike at in vain.
Anzac!...Tobruk!...and Kokoda!...
Could ever the old blood fail?
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail. 

So hail-fellow-met we muster,
And hail-fellow-met fall in,
Wherever the guns may thunder,
Or the rocketing air-mail spin!
Born of the soil and the whirlwind,
Though death itself be the gale-
No foe shall gather our harvest
Or sit on our stockyard rail. 

We are the sons of Australia,
of the men who fashioned the land;
We are the sons of the women
Who walked with them hand in hand;
And we swear by the dead who bore us,
By the heroes who blazed the trail,
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

 

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 on 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 woodlands,
Where the gaudy bush-birds 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 mountains blue,
Where the eager fossickers went. 

We wrought with a will unceasing,
We moulded, and fashioned, and planned,
And 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 trains fly, where the wild cat's 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 on our hair. 

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