We’re on a farm not far from town –

There’s just a dozen acres;

Our neighbours range from atheists

And infidels to Quakers;

We’ve got the good old pious sort

‘Long-side the hardened sinner –

But that wont spoil our appetite

When Mother calls to dinner.

When, years ago, we started first

And did the pioneering –

The fencing and the breaking-up,

The stumping and the clearing –

If stuck at some old ironbark

Which looked a likely winner,

We always got our courage up

When Mother called to dinner.

We’ve had some floods, when weeks of rain

Have given us a notion

We’d wake some day and find the place

Adrift towards the ocean;

And then such droughts and failing crops

As daunt the green beginner!

But still we fought and struggled on,

And Mother called to dinner.

So though the droughts may scourge the land,

Or floods roar like a river,

We hope that better times will come –

The bad can’t last for ever!

And though the wory and the care

Are making Dad grow thinner,

There’s always hope of winning yet

While Mother calls to dinner.

Source:

The Old Bulletin Book of Verse: The best verses from The Bulletin 1881 – 1901. (1975) Melbourne, VIC: Lansdowne Press.