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C J Dennis - Knights Of The Never Never
Work rating: Medium

When I rode with young Sid Kidman out across the Yarrowie Plain --
In that year the Long Drought ended, and the northlands smiled again --
   As we took the old Tarcowie track and on to Booleroo,
   His keen eye scanned the country, and we yarned of men we knew:
Mal Murray and Jim Spicer, of Jasser and Judell,
Bill Mitchell and old stagers whom I still remember well;
   And he told of chance-missed fortunes when the game was in his grasp,
   Of life along The Barrier with German Charlie Rasp.

Now, back in Kidman country where the grizzled bushmen are,
In many a stark out-station, o`er many a shanty bar,
   The drovers` drawling voices talk about "Old Sid" today:
   "Bushmen like him ain`t raised no more," the grizzled veterans say,
For o`er the furthest saltbush lands his questing mind went out
To glimpse high opportunity where others saw black drought.
   Shrewd-eyed, yet greatly daring, laughing he ventured forth
   To stake his luck, his judgment `gainst swift treacheries "up north."

"I mind the time I rode with him," a wizened stockman says.
"He knowed that country like a map, an` all the tricks an` ways.
   "Aye, and he knowed the cattle game."  The voices drone and drawl,
   Till, "The time I rode for Kidman," is the burden of them all.
"Deserved his luck?  Too right he did, seein` how he began;
But times like them don`t come again for us or any man.
   Them meddlin` airyplans an` sich brings old days to an end."
   And so they mourn, no magnate, but a bushman and a friend.

So the best-known bushman passes in the fullness of his years;
And, with his passing, so an olden order disappears --
   Sid Kidman, Jimmy Tyson -- rugged princes of Outback,
   Who sought their fortunes far afield along the arid track;
Strong men who, taking heart of grace, unflinchingly rode forth
To play a rough, grim game, and win, against the stubborn North;
   To become a land`s tradition, future figures of romance,
   Busmen who fought and loved their bush; the men who took a chance.
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