A New Girl Up At White’s

THERE’S a fresh track down the paddock

    Through the lightwoods to the creek,

And I notice Billy Craddock

    And Maloney do not speak,

And The Snag is slyly bitter

    When he’s criticising Bill,

And there’s quite a foreign glitter

    On the fellows at the mill.

Sid M‘Mahon’s turned out a dandy

    With a masher coat and tie,

And the engine-driver, Sandy,

    Curls his whiskers on the sly:

All the boys wear paper collars

    And their tombstone shirts of nights,

So it’s ten to one in dollars

    There’s a new girl up at White’s.

She’s a charmer from the river,

    But she steeps the lads in gloom,

With her blue eyes all a-quiver

    And her hair like wattle-bloom;

Though she’s pretty and beguiling,

    And so lit up, like, with fun

That the flowers turn to her smiling,

    Just as if she was the sun.

But I wish she’d leave the valley,

    For the camp is dull to me,

Now the mill hands never rally

    For the regulation spree,

And there’s not another joker

    Gives a tinker’s curse for nap.,

Or will take a hand at poker

    Or at euchre with a chap!

Tom won’t stir us with his fiddle

    By the boilers as he did

While Bob stepped it in the middle,

    And we passed the billy-lid.

Ah! we had some gay old nights there,

    But the boys now don’t agree,

And they hang about at White’s there,

    When they’ve togged up after tea.

With the gloves we have no battle;

    Now they sneak away and moon

Round with White, discussing cattle

    All the Sunday afternoon.

There’s a want of old uprightness,

    Too, has come upon the push,

And a sort of cold politeness

    That’s not called for in the bush.

They’re all off, too, in that quarter;

    Kate goes sev’ral times a week

Seeing Andy Kelly’s daughter,

    Jimmy’s sister, up the creek;

And this difference seems a pity,

    Since their chances are so slim—

While they are running after Kitty,

    She is running after Jim.