# The Never-Never Country

By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,  By railroad, coach, and track — By lonely graves of our brave dead,  Up-Country and Out-Back: To where 'neath glorious clustered stars  The dreamy plains expand — My home lies wide a thousand miles  In the 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 whirls 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 deserts 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.
The drovers of the Great Stock Routes  The strange Gulf country know — Where, travelling from the southern droughts,  The big lean bullocks go; And camped by night where plains lie wide,  Like some old ocean's bed, The watchmen in the starlight ride  Round fifteen hundred head.
And west of named and numbered days  The shearers walk and ride — Jack Cornstalk and the Ne'er-do-well,  And the grey-beard side by side; They veil their eyes from moon and stars,  And slumber on the sand — Sad memories sleep as years go round  In Never-Never Land.
By lonely huts north-west of Bourke,  Through years of flood and drought, The best of English black-sheep work  Their own salvation out: Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown —  Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed — They live the Dead Past grimly down!  Where boundary-riders ride.
The College Wreck who sunk beneath,  Then rose above his shame, Tramps West in mateship with the man  Who cannot write his name. 'Tis there where on the barren track  No last half-crust's begrudged — Where saint and sinner, side by side,  Judge not, and are not judged.
Oh rebels to society!  The Outcasts of the West — Oh hopeless eyes that smile for me,  And broken hearts that jest! The pluck to face a thousand miles —  The grit to see it through! The communism perfected! —  And — I am proud of you!
The Arab to true desert sand,  The Finn to fields of snow; The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland,  Where the seasons come and go; And this old fact comes home to me —  And will not let me rest — However barren it may be,  Your own land is the best!
And, lest at ease I should forget  True mateship after all, My water-bag and billy yet  Are hanging on the wall; And if my fate should show the sign,  I'd tramp to sunsets grand With gaunt and stern-eyed mates of mine  In Never-Never Land.
This work is in the public domain in Australia because it was created in Australia and the term of copyright has expired. According to Australian Copyright Council - Duration of Copyright, the following works are public domain:
* published non-government works whose author died before January 1, 1955,
* anonymous or pseudonymous works and photographs published before January 1, 1955, and
* government works published more than 50 years ago (before January 1, 1974).
This work is also in the public domain in the United States because it was first published outside the United States (and not published in the U.S. within 30 days), and it was first published before 1989 without complying with U.S. copyright formalities (renewal and/or copyright notice) and it was in the public domain in Australia on the URAA date (January 1, 1996). This is the combined effect of Australia having joined the Berne Convention in 1928, and of 17 USC 104A with its critical date of January 1, 1996.
Because the Australian copyright term in 1996 was 50 years, the critical date for copyright in the United States under the URAA is January 1, 1946.
This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse