Henry Lawson

“ Where the idle shanty-keeper never fails to make a "draw,"
And the dummy gets his tucker thro' provisions in the law;
Where the labour-agitator -- when the shearers rise in might
Makes his money sacrificing all his substance for the right;
Where the squatter makes his fortune, and the seasons "rise" and "fall,"
And the poor and honest bushman has to suffer for it all,
Where the drovers and the shearers and the bushmen and the rest
Never reach the Eldorado of the poets of the West. ”

“ When he yelled for "Billy Elton," when he thumped the floor for Royce?
Do the bushmen, down on pleasure, miss the everlasting stars
When they drink and flirt and so on in the glow of private bars?
What care you if fallen women "flaunt?" ”

“ It is up in Northern Queensland that the "seasons" do their best,
But it's doubtful if you ever saw a season in the west,
There are years without an autumn or a winter or a spring,
There are broiling Junes -- and summers when it rains like anything. ”