By Hut, Homestead And Shearing Shed,

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.