Bush Ballad, Seventies Style

At dVerse today they're writing cowboy poems — a great tradition, I've just learned. In Australia we have bush poetry, a contemporary oral form, very popular. Before that, in our earlier days, there were bush ballads glorifying rural life and the countryside. 

In 1977 I was travelling the outback with my then husband Bill Nissen and our two young sons. We broke down, were low on provisions, there was nothing but empty land in view, and it was HOT. We did get help from another passing traveller, but meanwhile I was inspired to this jaundiced little ditty, in the heavy, sing-song rhythmic pattern of the old bush ballads — a riposte to their rosy view of rural Australia. It became an oral performance piece and was also published in Street Poetry (Melbourne).


Oh, you're trekking out of Darwin
in a big Ford truck,
or you've took and boiled your billy
on the old Cloncurry track.

The cattle die behind you
and the red dust sucks you up —
they'll shear you quick as look at you
in the Great Out Back.