While serving in Trobruk my father wrote down some of the poems...

While serving in Trobruk my father wrote down some of the poems recited by the diggers. I have typed this one as it sets the scence well:

"A Letter Home
Dear Mum

Some one in the mobs reciting
Whilst I strive to do some writing
But my letter home can wait a minute more
For I feel I can’t help listening
To that humorous “Bush Christening”
And other tales of scrub and bush land lore

The fellow here just reckoned
That my turn to speak is second
I’ll let them have the only one I know
So I’ll tell the tale of Clancy
And the wild erratic fancy
And the life he lived around the overflow

When the fellow with the bottle
Gives us “Waratah and Wattle”
We can almost feel Australia in the breeze
The craze is quickly spreading
Everybody leaves their bedding
And we settle down to telling some of these

Blue forgets about his liver
And gives us “The Man from Snowy River”
Tells us all about his fast and thrilling ride
How the sturdy mountain pony
Ran the mountain steep and stony
How he cleared the fallen timber in his stride

Next one takes us overlanding
Past he sheep and cattle branding
Or taling down to fetch the wool away
Its great to be romancing
See the flannel flower dancing
Go with the teamsters droving down along the Castlereagh

The stock of poems dwindled
But the spark is quickly kindled
With the story of the “Mighty Rio Grande”
Of the “Little Irish Mother”
“Old Mass Shandrydan” another
And “How We Beat the Favourite” got a hand

Some one bobbed up with a solo
Bout the Geebung boy and polo
And past us came these fellows in a stream
Clancy, Harry Dale the drover
Lawson’s billy’s boiling over
And the “Borree Log” made every bushman dream

Now the others seem a sleeping
For Australia’s in safe keeping
While our poets rove its vast and Mighty Plain
So I think it would be better
If I make this page your letter
And join them in their dreams of home again"