60 Classic Australian Poems for Children

BOOK: 60 Classic Australian Poems for Children
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All rights reserved. No part of this book m ay be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian
Copyright Act 1968
), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may beliable in law accordingly.

60 Classic Australian Poems for Children

9781742754185

A Random House book
Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060
www.randomhouse.com.au

First published by Random House Australia in 2009

Copyright in this selection and arrangement © Christopher Cheng 2009
Copyright in the foreword and afterword © Christopher Cheng 2009
Illustrations copyright © Gregory Rogers 2009

The moral rights of the author and illustrator have been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian
Copyright Act 1968
), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at
www.randomhouse.com.au/offices
.

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

Title: 60 classic Australian poems for children / edited by
Christopher Cheng; illustrator, Gregory Rogers

ISBN: 978 1 74166 414 0

Target Audience: For children

Subjects: Australian poetry

Other Authors/Contributors: Cheng, Christopher
Rogers, Gregory, 1957–

Dewey Number: A821.008

Cover and internal illustrations by Gregory Rogers

To my primary school teachers, especially Kevin and Helen. CC
For Matt. GR

Contents
Introduction

I love stories, both writing them and reading them. I was privileged enough to attend a primary school where we were encouraged to play with words and where poetry was very much a part of our classroom. Sometimes we would begin lessons with words from some of the great Australian poets. Many of these belonged to our teachers' personal collections of poems—the ones that they really loved. We too were encouraged to collect the poems that we really loved.

Our teachers would write the poems onto the chalkboard and we would copy the words into our poetry books (combining handwriting lessons with English lessons). Sometimes the teachers would print the poems that they had themselves carefully copied for us. We would glue the pages into our poetry books and decorate them with our own illustrations (which was often a homework task too). I kept the poems but ditched my attempts at illustrations … Gregory Rogers's illustrations are much better! Often we would learn the poems (that was another homework task) and at the end of the week our class would recite the week's new verse, another that we had memorised to perfection. Many school assemblies featured a class reciting poetry. Sometimes we even entered competitions reciting this wonderful Australian poetry.

The ballads and poems in this book are just like very short stories written in rhyming verse. When the poets were creating these poems they were often writing to explain the life that they saw around them or that they remembered … a very different Australia from the one we now live in.
The poets were creating word-pictures of the environment and the landscape and the people they saw.

At the turn of the last century some of our most popular poets were employed by the major newspapers to travel around the country and report on ‘life on the land'. Other poets simply travelled from town to town under their own steam and wrote of the life, as they saw it, in ballads and verse. Many of the poems in this collection are from those times.

  • Some of the poems are funny—just try to read ‘Mulga Bill's Bicycle' without giggling at the crazy antics of an over-confident person trying to learn to ride a pushbike and who ends up in the creek.
  • Some of them are serious—read ‘The Women of the West' or ‘Pioneers' to see how much of a struggle that life was.
  • Other poets such as PJ Hartigan (John O'Brien) are able to treat a serious subject like drought with humour and fun, as he does in ‘Said Hanrahan'.
  • And some of the poems are wonderful ways of playing with words.

So Tri-

Tri-anti-wonti-

Triantiwontigongolope.

In this book there are poems about the land, about the animals of the bush, about life in the city and the country (and sometimes about the
vast differences between them), about ‘mateship' and friendship, about personalities, and I have also included some simply silly, funny poems.

Over the years some of these poems, such as ‘The Man from Snowy River' and ‘Hist!', have been so popular that picture book illustrators have won awards for creating artwork to accompany the verse, in books of their own.

Some of the poems in this book have extra verses, or slightly different words from those we are used to. This is because many of the poems that I have chosen are in their original (or near-to-original) form, the way they were first published in the newspapers or journals. Many of these poems were written for specific publications. In many cases the poems were subsequently collated (sometimes after the poet's death) and slightly altered by editors or publishers.

Why do I like these poems and ballads? I enjoy the rhyme and the rhythm. I also like them because I can read these words and then jump into my mind and imagine what the characters were doing and I can imagine what the poet was writing about. And I enjoy the way that each poem or ballad tells a complete story of a time in Australia's recent history when the life that people lived was so very much different from the more comfortable and chaotic life that we live now—and it is a life that we must remember.

Poetry is fun. It is a wonderful way of expressing thoughts and feelings and impressions in mostly short grabs, so …

Read the poems and laugh.

Read the poems and be moved.

Read the poems to recite.

Read the poems to enjoy.

Read the poems, and then why not write your own!

C
HRISTOPHER
C
HENG
www.chrischeng.com

1
Andy's Gone with Cattle
Henry Lawson

Our Andy's gone to battle now

'Gainst Drought, the red marauder;

Our Andy's gone with cattle now

Across the Queensland border.

He's left us in dejection now;

Our hearts with him are roving.

It's dull on this selection now—

Since Andy went a-droving.

Who now shall wear the cheerful face

In times when things are slackest?

And who shall whistle round the place

When Fortune frowns her blackest?

Oh, who shall ‘cheek' the squatter now

When he comes round us snarling?

His tongue is growing hotter now

Since Andy cross'd the Darling.

The gates are out of order now

Each wind the riders rattle;

For far far across the border now

Our Andy's gone with cattle.

Poor Aunty's looking thin and white;

And Uncle's cross with worry;

And poor old ‘Blucher' howls all night

Since Andy left Macquarie.

Oh, may the showers in torrents fall,

And all the tanks run over;

And may the grass grow green and tall

In pathways of the drover!

And may good angels send the rain

On desert stretches sandy;

And when the summer comes again

God grant 'twill bring us Andy!

Australian Town and Country Journal
, 1888

In 1966, when Australia first issued decimal currency, an image of Henry Lawson, along with scenes from his childhood in Gulgong, decorated the back of the Australian $10 paper note.

BOOK: 60 Classic Australian Poems for Children
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