Town With No Cheer

(album: Anywhere I Lay My Head - 2008)

Well, it's hotter than blazes, and all the long faces
There'll be no oasis for a dry local grazier
There'll be no refreshment for a thirsty jackaroo
From Melbourne to Adelaide on the Overlander
With newfangled buffet cars and faster locomotives
The train stopped in Serviceton less and less often

No, there's nothing sadder than a town with no cheer
Vic Rail decided the canteen was no longer necessary there
No spirits, no bilgewater, and eighty dry locals
And the high noon sun beats a hundred and four
There's a hummingbird trapped in a closed down shoe store
This tiny Victorian rhubarb kept the watering hole open for sixty-five years

Now it's boiling in a miserable March twenty-first
Wrapped the hills in a blanket of Paterson's curse
The train smokes down the xylophone, there'll be no stopping here
All you can be is thirsty in a town with no cheer

No Bourbon, no Branchwater
Though the townspeople here fought her Vic Rail decree tooth and nail
Now it's boiling in a miserable March twenty-first
Wrapped the hills in a blanket of Paterson's curse
The train smokes down the xylophone, there'll be no stopping here
All you can be is thirsty in a town with no cheer