A strapping young stock-man lay dying; His saddle supporting his head; His two mates beside him were crying, as he rose on his elbow and said:

‘Wrap me up with my stock-whip and blanket, and bury me deep below, where the dingoes and crows won’t molest me, in the shade where the coolabahs grow, oh, had I the flight of the bronze-wing, far over the plains I would fly, straight to the home of my childhood, and there I would lay down and die.’

‘The cut down a couple of saplings, place one at my head and my toe; carve on them cross, stock-whip, and saddle to show there’s a stock-man below.

‘Hark! There’s the wail of the dingo, watchful and weird — I must go, for it tolls the death-knell of the stock-man from the gloom of the scrub down below.

“There’s tea in the battered old billy place the pannikins out in a row, and we’ll drink to the next merry meeting, in the place where all good fellows go.

‘And oft in the shades of the twilight, when the soft winds are whispering low, and the darkening shadows are falling, sometimes think of the stock-man below.’