Never, Never Land

By hut, homestead and shearing shed, By railroad, coach and track- By lonely graves where rest the dead, Up-Country and Out-Back: To where beneath the clustered stars The dreamy plains expand- My home lies wide a thousand miles In Never-Never Land. It lies beyond the farming belt, Wide wastes of scrub and plain, A blazing desert in the drought, A lake-land after rain; To the skyline sweeps the waving grass, Or whirls the scorching sand- A phantom land, a mystic realm! The Never-Never Land. Where lone Mount Desolation lies Mounts Dreadful and Despair- 'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies In hopeless deserts there; It spreads nor-west by No-Man's Land Where clouds are seldom seen To where the cattle stations lie Three hundred miles between. The drovers of the Great Stock Routes The strange Gulf country Know Where, travelling from the southern droughts, The big lean bullocks go; And camped by night where plains lie wide, Like some old ocean's bed, The watchmen in the starlight ride Round fifteen hundred head. Lest in the city I forget True mateship after all, My water-bag and billy yet Are hanging on the wall; And I, to save my soul again, Would tramp to sunsets grand With sad-eyed mates across the plain In Never-Never Land.