| Only one old post is standing, solid yet, but only one,
|
| Where the milking and the branding and the slaughtering were done.
|
| Later years have brought dejection, care, and sorrow; |
| but we knew
|
| Happy days on that selection underneath old Bukaroo.
|
| Then the light of day commencing, found us at the gully’s head,
|
| Splitting timber for the fencing, stripping bark to roof the shed.
|
| Hands and hearts the labour strengthened; |
| weariness we never knew,
|
| Even when the shadows lengthened 'round the base of Bukaroo.
|
| There for days below the paddock how the wilderness would yield,
|
| To the spade, the pick and mattock, while we toiled to win the field.
|
| Half our hands are hard to sully, ours the deeper blended screw,
|
| Burning off down in the gully at the back of Bukaroo.
|
| When the cows were safely yarded, and the calves were in the pen,
|
| All the cares of day discarded, 'round the fire we mustered then.
|
| Rang the roof with boyish laughter while the flames e’er-topped the flue;
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| Happy nights remembered after, far away from Bukaroo.
|
| But the years were full of changes, and a sorrow found us there;
|
| For our home amid the ranges was not safe from searching Care.
|
| On he came, a silent creeper; |
| and another mountain threw
|
| O’er our lives a shadow deeper than the shade of Bukaroo.
|
| All the farm is disappearing; |
| for the home has vanished now,
|
| Mountain scrub has choked the clearing, hid the furrows of the plough.
|
| Nearer still the scrub is creeping where the little garden grew;
|
| And the old folks now are sleeping, at the face of Bukaroo.
|
| But the years were full of changes, and a sorrow found us there;
|
| For our home amid the ranges was not safe from searching Care.
|
| On he came, a silent creeper; |
| and another mountain threw
|
| O’er our lives a shadow deeper than the shade of Bukaroo. |