List of Claude Morris' Poems
  A Grave Situation    
  A Rum Complaint    
  Commercial TV D.T.s    
  The Draw-Back    
  The Eucalyptus Cutter    
  The Legend of Angel Creek
  The Run-up    
  The Shooting Of Sam McHugh    
  The Topaz Trail    
  Tolga        
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Tolga

  © 1938 Claude Morris

TOLGA aint famed for its beauty, or noted as Tourist Resort,
Because we aint used propaganda, to any extent like we ought.
Guide books give honourable mention - "Change here at Tolga” they say,
But officers working in Railway, do utmost to lengthen their stay.
Townsfolk appreciate effort, but tourists cast ignorant slur,
And pointing long noses at silos, ask loudly whose tombstone it were.

But people are rousing from slumber, refreshed by a thirty-year nap,
And starting campaign with a vengeance, to put us on Tableland map.
We’ll be telling the world all about it, from Tableland. right to the sea;
"Tourists Try Tolga" is motto, all spelled with a capital "T".
We’ll tell ‘em the truth without trimmings, and sounding a different note,
And boarding-house soup is no colder than facts we are going to quote.

There’s churches enoof for the wicked, as empty seats there, go to show,
Except during annual fly plague, when there’s danger of sharp overflow.
There’s other plagues all in good season —the worst are the rats and the mice,
Who abandon the farms for the houses, when crops aint enoof to suffice.
Ownerless dogs own the roadways, and dog lovers smile at the sight -
Making bets on their races with cycles, or result of triangular fight.

There’s only two seasons in Tolga, so farmers are never ‘in doubt -
There’s only a wet and. a dry one, and. it’s either a flood or a drought.
Our maize is the best in Australia, and it leaves all the oothers behind,
When it’s carried away by the weevils who simply won’t eat oother kind,
Bush is encroaching on township, and Council is watching with frown -
Oond.ecided. what ought to be shifted - the bloomin' old bush, or the town.

Inmates are proof of good climate; you’ll find that we’re tougher than most.
Ordinary men couldn’t stand it, so they’ve given up farm, or the ghost.
Census have never been taken, but a guess now and. then have been cast
­Downwards of couple of hundreds, and going down fast, were the last.
So perhaps by the time we are ready to profit from tourist campaign,
Back Gee might be only survivor, and our troobles be almost in vain.


Apologies to Stan Holloway (English Comedian)

                              Claude

 
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The Legend of Angel Creek by Claude Morris