Happy New Year

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know

.......

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cashbook and the journal -
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".

~~from Clancy of the Overflow(1889) by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson.

Gentle Readers--

I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that you have had a pleasant Christmas Holidays. I have returned from the bucolic delights of the Mater and Pater's place in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland to Brisbane, one of the cities A.D. Hope described in his poem Australia as "... like five teeming sores,/Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state/ Where second hand Europeans pullulate/Timidly on the edge of alien shores."

However before I return to the rat-race next week, I shall be publishing over the next few days a look back at certain memorable events of 2006.

Yours sincerely,
Mild Colonial Boy, Esq.