Fifteen Hundred Head

(album: Country Way Of Life - 1995)

Through the Mitchell Grass, half green he sees them feeding
In the lead a dusty horseman scans the plain
Fifteen hundred shorthorn steers are bound for Queensland
And he's back there on the Barkley route again
Fifteen hundred bush bred steers in late September
Fifteen hundred miles they leave their home behind
For the dry days and the rushes in the land swoop
And the freezing south east wind comes to his mind

He can feel the freezing saddle flaps at daybreak
He can taste the kind of breakfast drovers know
And the scars from saddle dees are on his knuckles
From some battle to stay mounted long ago

Fifteen hundred reds and roans and broken baldies
Fifteen hundred demon nostrils wide with fright
Cracking timber, flying hooves and straining halters
Fifteen hundred peals of thunder in the night

Fifteen hundred pairs of spreading horns and ear marks
Fifteen hundred mutes 'neath fifteen million stars
He is back there playing nursemaid on a night horse
But he's a prisoner in a prison with no bars

Never more at dinner camp with Kort and Brownett
But they don't serve Kort pot tea in Sydney clubs
Nevermore he'll walk the big mobs down the Rankin
Or lead 'em through the Enniskillen scrubs
Wake him gently when you sense his dream has ended
When those fifteen hundred march into the haze
Of the long, long years since he went down the Rankin
Just a stripling in the good old droving days