Stringybark And Greenhide - Slim Dusty

Now the aeroplanes go screaming across the blue skies overhead

And the big trucks cross the nation night and day

While satellites bring TV to the homesteads in the bush

And the limousines replace the horse and dray

But our pioneering fathers had no comforts such as these

They faced hardship with their women by their side

With no wire or nails to help them in the vastness of the bush

They built stockyards out of lancewood and greenhide

And the cattle walked to market on the stock routes of the west

And a man was judged by the way he used to ride

And the Afghans with their camels were the road trains of the bush

They built a nation out of stringy and greenhide

Hey

And with stringybark and mud daub they built the old bark hut

And the shantys on the roadside by the way

Oh they cleared the land and felled the trees with crosscut and the axe

And with greenhide whip the bullocky held sway

Oh they took their mobs of cattle and their spreading flocks of sheep

And no mountain range or desert held them back

Oh the battled thirst and heat in their bid to tame this land

And the silent watchful ever stalking black

And the cattle walked to market on the stock routes of the west

And a man was judged by the way he used to ride

And the Afghans with their camels were the road trains of the bush

They built a nation out of stringy and greenhide

Hey

When no barbed wire bound the wide domains of the western cattle runs

And the men were as wild as the land they used to roam

Oh the greenhide rope and bridle were the stockmen’s tools of trade

And a stringybark bush shelter was their home

And when fine young men rode walers off to fight their countries war

And made history with their suffering and their pain

Oh they wrote the name Australia in the headlines of the world

Will this country ever see their likes again?