On a back block down Salisbury Plains
|
Ted was born in 1895
|
Thrust from the loins on to rusty soil
|
And the cord was cut with a scythe
|
He said "People there are city folk today
|
And they couldn't tell shit from clay
|
A ripening crop of stobie poles
|
There's no regrets when the memory roams
|
That earth is in me bones"
|
|
Did his bit in the first World War
|
Took the shilling to fight the Hun
|
Mud up to his crotch in Flanders fields
|
And the gas eating out his lungs
|
He said "Me best mate died hanging on the barbed wire
|
And when the attack was through
|
We took some prisoners to HQ
|
And shared a fag and a yarn or two
|
They were the same as me and you"
|
|
And I asked old Ted what history meant
|
As he sharpened his hedging shears
|
"What a bloody fool question that is my boy
|
I lived it for 83 years"
|
|
See him every year on Anzac Day
|
Swilling beers down at the Rex Hotel
|
He'd laugh with his mates and go deep in thought
|
Where he went even he couldn't tell
|
He said "King and Country, cock'n'bull
|
We fought just to survive
|
The anger might have faded still this feeling grabs me deep inside
|
I guess you could call it pride"
|
|
As a navvy on the line in the Nullabor
|
The Depression left its scars
|
Heaving cold steel rails in the burning sun
|
And freezing beneath the stars
|
He said "If you escaped the susso queues
|
You had a hell of price to pay
|
And when time flowed like an open wound
|
I'd blow me dough on a Saturday
|
And drink the pain away"
|
|
On Sunday arvo he'd sit and talk
|
Over a dozen cold West End
|
Of what was gained and what was lost
|
And would never come again
|
He said "Money you know it comes and goes
|
On booze and rent and fags
|
You can make a fortune on overtime
|
And lose it all on the nags
|
|
But years of toil with a bunch of mates
|
You know it leaves you satisfied
|
Though we never moved a mountain
|
We sure gave it a try"
|
Pick the wheat from the chaff
|
And the steel from the scurf
|
And the honest man from the liar
|
If wisdom came by other names
|
Ted was earth and fire
|
|
On the day that old Ted died
|
No-one would have known
|
Buried in a pauper's grave
|
He lived and died alone
|
And the 727s roared overhead
|
Withe the drone of the angry roads
|
There seemed a pause for just a while
|
And the silence was heard around for miles
|
And the silence was heard for miles
|
|
-----------------
|
Ted
|
| Redgum |
