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Waiting For Water

by Edward Dyson

'Twas old Flynn, the identity, told us

That the creek always ran pretty high,

But that fossicking veteran sold us,

And he lied as his quality lie.

Through a tangle of ranges and ridges,

Down a track that is blazed with our hide,

Over creeks minus crossings and bridges,

High and low, mere impertinent midges

Trying falls with the mighty Divide,

We came, hauling the boxes and stampers,

Or just nipping them in with a winch;

Now and then in unfortunate scampers

Missing smash by the eighth of an inch;

Round the spurs very daintily crawling,

With one team pulling out in a row,

And another lot heavenward hauling,

Lest the whole bag-of-tricks should go sprawling

Into regions unheard of below,

We came through with the shanks and the shafting,

And the frames, and the wonderful wheel;

Then we put in a month of hard grafting

Ere we nailed down the last scrap of deal.

She beat true, and with scarce a vibration,

And we voted her queen of the mills,

And a push from the wide desolation

Drifted in to our jollification

When her drumming was heard in the hills.

Now the discs by the cam-shaft are rusting,

And the stamps in the boxes are still,

And a silence that's deep and disgusting

Seems to hang like a pall on the mill.

Just a fortnight she ran then she rested,

And we've little to do but complain;

For a bird in the feed-pipe has nested,

And we've spent every stiver invested,

And are praying for tucker and rain.

Billy's Creek theme of eloquent fables

Drips like sweat on the breast of the wheel,

And the blankets are dry on the tables,

And the sluice-box is warped like an eel;

Sudden dust-clouds run lunatic races

In the red, rocky bed down below,

And the porcupine scrambles in places

Where Flinn swears by the faith he embraces,

Fourteen inches of water should flow.

For a time we were proof against sorrow,

And we harboured a cheerful belief

In the plenteous rains of to-morrow

As we belted away at the reef.

We piled quartz in the paddocks and hopper,

And the pack-horse came in once a week:

Now our credit is not worth a copper

At the township, and highly improper

Is the language the storekeepers speak.

We no longer talk brightly, or snivel

Of our luck, but we loaf very hard,

Too disgusted to care to be civil,

And too lazy to look at a card.

Only George finds some slight consolation

Crushing prospects a couple a day

And then proving by multiplication

How much metal is in the formation,

And the 'divvies' she'll probably pay.

But our leisure is qualified slightly

By the cattle from over the Fly

Who have taken to pegging out nightly

In our limited water supply.

And the snakes have assisted in keeping

Things alive, for the man, you'll agree,

Will be spry who may find he's been sleeping

With a tiger or chance on one creeping

In the water he wanted for tea.

Though our sweltering sky never changes,

Squatter Clark, up at Crowfoot, complains

That prospectors out over the ranges

Have been chased out of camp by the rains.

Veal, the Methodist preacher at Spence's,

Who the Cousin Jacks say is 'some tuss'

As a rain-making parson commences

To enlarge on our sins and offences,

And to blame all his failures on us.

We don't go to his church down the mountain:

Seven miles is a wearisome trot,

With the glass playing up like a fountain,

And the prayers correspondingly hot.

So on Sunday each suffering sinner

Has a simple, convivial spree,

A roast porcupine, maybe, for dinner;

For we daily grow thinner and thinner

On the week's bread and treacle and tea.

We've been scared, too, of late by Golightly,

Him who kept up his chin best of all,

And predicted with confidence nightly

Heavy rains that neglected to fall,

And enlarged on the sure indications

(While we listened, and wearily groaned)

Of tremendous climatic sensations,

Fearful tempests, and great inundations,

That, it happened, were always postponed.

He's gone daft through our many reverses,

Or the sun has got on to his brain,

For he cowers all day, and he curses

To a fretful and wearing refrain;

And at midnight he dolefully screeches

In the gloom of the desolate mill;

Or he goes in his shirt, making speeches

To the man in the moon, whom he reaches

From the summit of Poverty Hill.

So we're waiting, and watching, and longing

With an impotent, bitter desire,

And new troubles and old ones come thronging,

Drought, and fever, and famine, and fire;

And we know our misfortunes reviewing

All the pangs that in Hades betide,

Where the damned sit eternally stewing,

And, through days never ending, are suing

For the water that's ever denied.