In Time of Drought in that Never Never Land

That lovely lady from March house books opened some memories for me today by posting a comment,  blowing me away and sent me scurrying for my flying kit in my garage, and there it was my first poetry book I bought it in Melbourne, as a student, and carried it in the plane with me for more years than I'd like to say, it's called "Bush Ballads" a very plain looking book, sunburned pink in colour (possible it was red when I got it,) by various authors, published by W.P Nimmo. Hay & Mitchell Ltd.

It is full of my little notes explaining what I though of each verse and there were loads of them.
In particular on page 73 is the "Never Never Country" by Australian poet, "Henry Lawson".
All those years ago I had marked three verses so With your kind permission I will repeat them here, only the 3 verses that is, there are 10 of them, so here go's.

By the homestead, hut, and shearing shed,
by railway, coach and track.
by lonely graves of our brave dead,
up country and out back;
To where beneath glorious clustered stars
the dreamy plains expand
my home lies wide a thousand miles
In that 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 sky line sweeps the waving grass,
or swirls the scorching sand.
A phantom land, a mystic land.
the never never land.

Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
Mounts Dreadful and despair
tis lost beneath the rainless skies,
in hopeless desert 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.

Henry Lawson June 1867-Sept 1922. Remembered by me.

This still works for me, a mystic land that I've been privileged to see.

Agman