The Outback Poem by Francis Duggan

Some 50 kilometres out of the next country town
The miles of flat paddocks looking gray to brown
The hues of Australia are gray, brown and green
This great Land looks different to others you've seen.

They call this 'The Outback' the back of beyond
To such a place bushrangers used to abscond
In the remote places from the law they did hide
And they lived as outlaws and as outlaws they died.

That was in the eighteen eighties and nineties a turbulent time
When poor sons of poor ex convicts for survival turned to crime
Their plunder they hid in the Outback and their stolen gold never was found
For miles on either side of the Victoria and New South Wales border they ranged the wild bushlands around.

Some visitors come to Australia one might say expecting to see
Emus and kangaroos in the suburbs along the main streets ranging free
And though you see the odd wombat and roo dead by the rural highway live wild life much harder to view
And in their wild home in the Outback one doesn't often see emu or roo.

The next country town is fifty kilometres away
As you drive down the highway in the heat of the day
Through Australia's brown Outback a Land old as time
A Land that is honoured in story and rhyme.