No dogs in Gundagai

NINE MILES FROM GUNDAGAI

~ Jack Moses

I've done my share of shearing sheep,

Of droving and all that,

And bogged a bullock team as well,

On a Murrumbidgee flat.

I've seen the bullock stretch and strain,

And blink his bleary eye,

And the dog sit on the tucke rbox

Nine miles from Gundagai.

I've been jilted, jarred and crossed in love,

And sand-bagged in the dark,

Till if a mountain fell on me,

I'd treat it as a lark.

It's when you've got your bullocks bogged

That's the time you flog and cry,

And the dog sits on the tucker box,

Nine miles from Gundagai.

We've all got our little troubles,

In life's hard, thorny way.

Some strike them in a motor car

And others in a dray.

But when your dog and bullocks strike

It ain't no apple pie,

And the dog sat on the tucker box

Nine miles from Gundagai.

But that's all past and dead and gone,

And I've sold the team for meat,

And perhaps some day where I was bogged,

There'll be an asphalt street,

The dog, ah! well he got a bait,

And thought he'd like to die,

So I buried him in the tucker box,

Nine miles from Gundagai.

Poor old Gundagai appears to be a country town in decline. Old and worn.  I may be wrong.  It may be vibrant during the day, but in the setting sun on a stray Saturday in January, it was like a ghost town.    Everyone may have been at the local greasy RSL club for tea.  

  

Poem: The North Queensland Register, 14 January 1924

Photo: Main street of Gundagai, New South Wales, not near the Dog on the Tucker Box Memorial.