A Long Dry Spell

It's been a long dry Summer and it's been a dry Fall And the water reservior almost empty and the old bloke recall That in seventy years of living he has not known it so dry And he has seen many a Season since he was a boy. The paddocks have never looked so brown and bare And the thistledown flying through the warm Autumn air The farmer already feeding his cattle hay Not much nourishment for them in the dried out grass he say. April in Wonthaggi the landscape needs rain And the frogs they are croaking in the empty drain And the butterflies flitting in the freshening breeze Around the brown hedgerows and the sunlit trees. Across the dry pathway the feisty bullants crawl Their bite is quite painful for insects so small To the spiny anteater a delicacy They dig for ants in the soft earth by bush and tree. A long warm Summer and the Autumn sunny and dry And the long range weather forecast is little rain till July And the ground is bone hard and the farm dam is low And the creek barely flowing is trickling slow.