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Henry Lawson - Lake Eliza
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THE SAND was heavy on our feet,
    A Christmas sky was o’er us,
And half a mile through dust and heat
    Lake ’Liza lay before us.
‘You’ll have a long and heavy tramp’—
    So said the last adviser—
‘You can’t do better than to camp
    To-night at Lake Eliza.’

We quite forgot our aching shanks,
    A cheerful spirit caught us;
We thought of green and shady banks,
    We thought of pleasant waters.
’Neath sky as niggard of its rain
    As of his gold the miser,
By mulga scrub and lignum plain
    We’d tramp’d to Lake Eliza.

A patch to grey discoloured sand,
    A fringe of tufty grasses,
A lonely pub in mulga scrub
    Is all the stranger passes.
He’d pass the Lake a dozen times
    And yet be none the wiser;
I hope that I shall never be
    As dry as Lake Eliza.

No patch of green or water seen
    To cheer the weary plodder;
The grass is tough as fencing-wire,
    And just as good for fodder.
And when I see it mentioned in
    Some local ADVERTISER,
’Twill make me laugh, or make me grin—
    The name of ‘Lake Eliza.’
Source
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