The Coach of Death

The COACH of DEATH

There’s a phantom-coach runs nightly along the Western Creeks;

Her four black steeds step lightly, her driver never speaks;

The horses keep there places across flood-worn plains,

Yet no man sees their traces, their bits or bridle reins;

For welcome or for warning she shows no lamp or light,

A shadow till the morning she steals across the night.

She never wants for passengers, the back creek settlers say,

A price so moderate as hers the poorest purse can pay;

The lost one, missed by measure of days or maybe weeks,

Pays lightly for the pleasure of coaching down the creeks;

And station hands and squatters, alike in ease reclined,

May praise the whirling trotters whose hoofs outstrip the wind

(who leave no tracks behind.)

You hear no lead-bars creaking, no footfall on the ground;

In silence past all speaking the flying wheels go round;

The horses have no breeders, their driver has no name,

But he swings the reefing leaders like a man that knows the game;

And through the stony ranges where swift hoofs strike no fire

They want no wayside changes, these steeds that never tire.

They’re fit to `stay for ever and are never short of work;

They run the Darling River from Menindie Lake to Bourke.

Where a thousand watercourses, bankfull or bound with drought,

Have seen the silent horses go gliding in and out,

Where the stars in red battalions are marshalled in the sky

To watch the black maned stallions with muffled hoofs go by.

They fear him on the Barwon, they curse him on the Bree,

And wish his goal a far one where’er that goal maybe;

But ever back and forward, in silence source to mouth,

He runs the rivers Nor’ward and runs the rivers South;

When winds the wavelets feather between the flood and fall,

He holds the blacks together and hears the dead men call.

In drifted, flood-wracked sailing on every swirling stream

He hears his patrons calling, and checks his noiseless team;

In belts of timber shady, when all the holes are dry.

His guests are waiting ready when the phantom wheels go by,

For every man in good time must book for Further Out,

It may be in Flood-time-it may be in drought!

Her load of clay-cold faces she never carries back;

The dim wheels leave no traces, the shoeless hoofs no track;

But all along the river in bends that she has passed,

The giant gum trees shiver in a strange and icy blast;

The clumps of scented sandal are tainted with her breath,

And teams are hard to handle behind the Coach of Death.

She lifts no mud in winter and stirs no summer dust,

Her pole bars never splinter, her lock bolts never rust;

Her parts are stout for wearing and strong her simple gear,

She’ll run without repairing from year to deathful year,

When every coach is rotten on the Western watershed,

And Cobb and Co. forgotten and all their drivers dead!

                                      Will Ogilvie

The Man Who Steadies the Lead

THE MAN WHO STEADIES THE LEAD

Will H Ogilvie

He was born in the light of red oaths and nursed by the drought and the flood,

And swaddled in sweat lined saddle-cloths and christened in spur drawn blood;

He never was burdened with learning, and many would think him a fool,

But he’s mastered a method of `turning` that never was taught in a school.

His manners are rugged and vulgar, but he’s nuggets of gold in our need,

And a lightning flash in the mulga is the Man who Steadies the Lead!

When the stockwhips are ringing behind him and brumbies are racing abreast,

It’s fifty-to-one you will find him a furlong or two from the rest

With the coils of his whip hanging idle, his eyes on the mob at his side,

And the daintiest touch on the bridle- for this is the man that can ride!

And the stallions that break for the mallee will find he has courage and speed,

For he rides the best horse in the valley- this stockman who steadies the lead.

When they’re fetching in `stores` to the station through tangles of broken belar,

And the road is a rough calculation that’s based on the blaze of a star;

When they’re quickening through sand-ridge and hollow and rowels are spattered with red,

And sometimes you’ve only to follow the sound of the hoof-beat ahead;

Then we know that he’s holding them nor’ward- we trust in the man and his steed,

As we hear the old brown crashing forward and his rider’s `Wo-up` to the lead.

And again in a journey that’s longer, in a different phase of the game,

Dropping down the long trail to Wodonga with a thousand or so of the same;

When the blue grass is over the rollers, and each one contentedly rides,

And even the worst of the crawlers are stuffing green grass in their hides;

He is ready to spread them or ring them or steady them back on the feed,

And he knows when to stop them or string them, this stockman who rides in the lead.

But when from the bend of the river the cattle break camp in the night-

O, then is the season, if ever, we value his service aright!

For we know that if some should be tardy, and some should be left in the race,

Yet the spurs will be red on `Coolgardie` as someone swings out of his place.

The mulga-boughs-hark to them breaking in front of the maddened stampede!

A horse and rider are taking their time-honoured place in the lead.

As an honest and impartial recorder I’d fain have you all recollect

There are other brave men on the Border entitled to every respect;

There’s the man who thinks bucking a tame thing and rides them with lighted cigars;

And the man who will drive any blame thing that ever was hooked to the bars……….

Their pluck and their prowess are granted, but, all said and done, we’re agreed

That the king of ‘em all when he’s wanted is the Man who Steadies the Lead!

The Bushman's Book

Poem: The Bushman's Book

 by Will Ogilvie

All roughly bound together, The red-brown pages lie
In red sirocco leather, With scored lines to the sky:
The Western suns have burned them, The desert winds dog's-eared,
And winter rains have turned them, With wanton hands and weird!

They flutter, torn and lonely, Far out, like lost brown birds;
The Western stockmen only, Can spell their wondrous words;
And gifted souls and sages, May gather round and look,
They cannot read the pages, That fill the Bushman's Book!

But open, night and day-time, It spreads with witching art
A picture-book of playtime, To hold the Bushman's heart,
And learned in the lore of it, And lessoned in its signs,
He reads the scroll, and more of it, That lies between the lines.

He sees the well-filled purses, From Abbot-tracks like wires,
And hears the deep-drawn curses, That dog the four-inch tyres!
He knows the busy super, By worn hoofs flat as plates,
And tracks the mounted trooper, By shod hoofs at the gates!

He knows the tracks unsteady, Of riders "on the bust,"
Of nags "knocked up already" By toes that drag the dust;
The "split" hoofs and the "quartered," He'll show you on the spot,
And brumbies that have watered, And brumbies that have not!

So, North and West o' westward, Nor'-West and North again,
The Bush Book is the best word, Among the Western men;
They find her lines and hail them, And read with trusting eyes:
They know if old mates fail them. The Bush Book never lies!

First published in The Bulletin, 14 December 1905

How the Fire Queen Crossed the Swamp

Will Ogilvie was a Scotsman who spent some time in Australia during the late 1800's early 1900's working at many of the things he wrote poetry about.  One of the best if not the best bush poet to write about this great country.

                                      How the Fire Queen Crossed the Swamp

The flood was down in the Wilga swamps, three feet over the mud,

And the teamsters camped on the Wilga range and swore at the rising flood;

For one by one they had tried the trip, double and treble teams,

And one after one each desert ship had dropped to her axle beams;

So they thonged their leaders and pulled them round to the camp-on the sandhill’s crown,

And swore by the bond of a blood red oath to wait till the floods went down.

There were side-rail tubs and table-tops, coaches and bullock drays,

Brown with the Barcoo Wonders, and Speed with the dapple greys

Who pulled the front of his wagon out and left the rest in the mud

At Cuttaburra crossing in the grip of the ‘Ninety flood.

There was Burt with his sixteen bullocks, and never a bullock to shirk,

Who twice came over the Border line with twelve ton-ten to Bourke;

There was Long Dick damning an agent’s eyes for his ton of extra weight,

And Whistling Jim, for Cobb and Co., cursing that mails were late;

And one blasphemed at a broken chain and howled for a black-smith’s blood,

And most of them cursed their crimson luck, and all of them cursed the flood.

The last of the baffled had struggled back and the sun was low in the sky,

And the first of the stars was creeping out when Dareaway Dan came by.

There’s never a teamster draws to Bourke but has taken the help of Dan;

There’s never a team on the Great North Road can lift as the big roans can;

Broad hipped beauties that nothing can stop, leaders that swing to a cough;

Eight blue-roans on the near-side yoked and eight red-roans on the off.

And Long Dick called from his pine-rail bunk; “Where are you bound so quick?”

And Dareaway Dan spoke low to the roans and aloud, “To the Swagman’s Dick!”

“There’s five good miles”, said the giant, “lie to the front of you, holding mud;

If you never were stopped before, old man, you are stopped by the Wilga flood.

The dark will be down in an hour or so, there isn’t a ghost of a moon,

So leave your nags in the station grass instead of the long lagoon!”

But Dan stood up to his leaders head and fondled the big brown nose;

“There’s many a mile in the roan team yet before they are fed to the crows;

Now listen, Dick-with-the-woman’s-heart, a word to you and the rest;

I’ve sixteen horses collared and chained, the pick of the whole wide West,

And I’ll cut their throats and leave them here to rot if they haven’t the power

To carry me through the gates of Hell-with seventy bags of flour!

The light of the stars is light enough; they have nothing to do but plough!

There’s never a swamp has held them yet, and a swamp won’t stop them now.

They’re waiting for flour at the Swagman’s Bend; I’ll steer for the lifting light;

There’s nothing to fear with a team like mine, and-I camp in the Bend tonight!”

So they stood aside and watched them pass in the glow of the sinking sun,

With straining muscles and tightened chains-sixteen pulling as one;

With jingling harness and droning wheels and bare hoofs’ rhythmic tramp,

With creaking timbers and lurching load the Fire Queen faced the swamp!

She dipped her red shafts low in the slush as a spoonbill dips her beak,

The black mud clung to the wheels and fell in the wash of the Wilga creek;

And the big roans fought for footing, and the spreaders threshed like flails,

And the great wheels lifted the muddy spume to the bend of the red float-rails;

And they cheered him out to the westward with the last of the failing light,

And the splashing hoofs and the driver’s voice died away softly in the night;

But some of them prate of a shadowy form that guided the leader’s reins,

And some of them speak of a shod black horse that pulled in the off-side chains-

How every time he lifted his feet the wagon would groan and swing,

And every time he dropped his head you could hear the tug-chains ring!

And Dan to the Swagman’s Bend came through mud-spattered from foot to head,

And they couldn’t tell which of the roans were blue and which of the roans were red.

Now this is the tale as I’ve heard it told, and many believe it true

When the teamsters say in their off hand way- “Twas the Devil that pulled him through!”

Will Ogilvie