The future was dark and the past was dead As they gazed on the sea once more — But a nation was born when the immigrants said ‘ Good-bye!’ as they stepped ashore!
In their loneliness they were parted thus Because of the work to do, A wild wide land to be won for us By hearts and hands so few.
The darkest land’ neath a blue sky’ s dome, And the widest waste on earth; The strangest scenes and the least like home In the lands of our fathers’ birth;
The loneliest land in the wide world then, And away on the furthest seas, A land most barren of life for men — And they won it by twos and threes!
With God, or a dog, to watch, they slept By the camp-fires’ ghastly glow, Where the scrubs were dark as the blacks that crept With‘ nulla’ and spear held low;
Death was hidden amongst the trees, And bare on the glaring sand They fought and perished by twos and threes — And that’ s how they won the land!
It was two that failed by the dry creek bed, While one reeled on alone — The dust of Australia’ s greatest dead With the dust of the desert blown!
Gaunt cheek-bones cracking the parchment skin That scorched in the blazing sun, Black lips that broke in a ghastly grin — And that’ s how the land was won!
Starvation and toil on the tracks they went, And death by the lonely way; The childbirth under the tilt or tent, The childbirth under the dray!
The childbirth out in the desolate hut With a half-wild gin for nurse — That’ s how the first were born to bear The brunt of the first man’ s curse!
They toiled and they fought through the shame of it — Through wilderness, flood, and drought; They worked, in the struggles of early days, Their sons’ salvation out.
The white girl-wife in the hut alone, The men on the boundless run, The miseries suffered, unvoiced, unknown — And that’ s how the land was won.
No armchair rest for the old folk then — But, ruined by blight and drought, They blazed the tracks to the camps again In the big scrubs further out.
The worn haft, wet with a father’ s sweat, Gripped hard by the eldest son, The boy’ s back formed to the hump of toil — And that’ s how the land was won!
And beyond Up Country, beyond Out Back, And the rainless belt, they ride, The currency lad and the ne’ er-do-weel And the black sheep, side by side;
In wheeling horizons of endless haze That disk through the Great North-west, They ride for ever by twos and by threes — And that’ s how they win the rest.
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