Australian Bush Poetry
 | Tally Ho The Hunt of The Blue Mountain Devil
by Magda Palmer Cordingley
It’s Tally-ho from England, the hunt is on the way
To the sun kissed Land of The Southern Cross (as Australia’s called today);
They forget the convicts sent there two hundred years before,
They think they were long buried near the sands of the golden shore.
They’re coming to hunt the devil found in the mountains blue,
Somewhere near Katoomba, with preposterous ballyhoo;
Old men in ballooning breeches, little red hats and whips,
They’re bound to startle our horses and make them swallow their bits!
So the relatives of the convicts sent out by the likes of them
Decided to play a practical joke on this toffee-nosed clutch of men;
For a guide they hired Maggie’s lad whose dad was widely known
As “The man from Snowy River who rode the stallion home”.
 The Pommy huntsmen felt the pain of the stock saddles larger hump,
For they sat astride an unshod horse with a swag tossed over its rump;
Their whips and reins clenched in their fists, their horns stuck to their sides,
Their blue eyes rolled in terror as they listened to their guide;
”Our Mountain Devil is hideous, his breath breeds fire and dread,`
The sky in the old hills yonder is blue with cries of the dead
Who tried to loosen the devil’s grip around their swarthy throats;
For your breakfast it’s not marmalade, but blood and bone with oats!
It’s Witchetty Grubs for dinner you’ll dig up with the bones
Bleached by the sun outside his lair, spat within his zone;
So forget the Tassie Tiger, the Cane Toad and the Fox,
We’ll hunt the Mountain Devil, bigger than twenty Ox;
You’ll have to watch for Bunyips who haunt the trail at dusk,
We thought them Aboriginal myths for kiddies fed with rusks’
Until the blubbery monsters left their billabongs and sheep
To creep among the foreigners to steal them while they sleep;
For mating them with their females who stink like putrid jellies,
Whose bums are where their buns should be and eyes hang from their bellies;
So blacken your faces, dust up your clothes, cover your hats with muck,
Then the bunyip’ll miss you, his Missus won’t kiss you, with help from Lady Luck”.
The trackers and their dingoes worked the party through the night,
Never halting for a cuppa or a solitary bite;
Midday saw the searing sun suck the hunters’ breath
As they picked their way up perilous slopes or plunged to certain death;
They lost their trackers, dogs and guide in a valley deep and black;
Their horses snuck off while they slept exhausted on the track;
They were bruised and quite uncomfortable through chaffing in their breeches
And all bare parts were flushed and sore from scratched mosquito itches.
They stumbled into Wombat holes and tumbled over rocks,
Rattled down a waterfall and tore their boots and socks;
They tied themselves together with a long and spidery vine,
Then started up the mountain in a raggedy, straggly line. On high they spied their Ozzie guide,
Their dingoes and their steeds,
So the hunting party shuffled on,
A struggling centipede; While they bumbled and they fumbled,
Oiled with dripping sweat,
The trackers cheered them with these words
“You’re gonna meet him yet”!
“Before you do, you’ll want to know the Devil’s Latin name,
Though he never lived in ancient Rome, they famed him just the same;
The first part is Lambertia, Formosa follows that,
He’s green when young and brown when old, our Aussie aristocrat”; He roots on sandstone ridges in the midst of honey flowers,
Where coloured birds sup daily, and lovers pass sweet hours;
He’s our famous native flora, an animal he ain’t”!
The jaded hunters mumbled “Cheers” and fell in blissful faint. |
every tempting article they see, until taught that it is not proper to do so".
Australian Convict wisdom.