I'd like to do a lively piece now. We've had a few serious ballads to start off with and once again
this is a fairly new one. I picked this story up in the Kimberley's a few years back and for the first
time in a song and for the first time on record I've used the great Australian adjective, but I feel
without using it you couldn't tell the story properly, not the way the average Australian would like
to hear it and that's the way I like to sing it. So it's the story of a rugged type of character - we
hope you like him anyway - and he's known as the drover's cook.
Now the drover's cook weighed fifteen stone and he had one blood shot eye
He had no laces in his boots and no buttons on his fly
His pants hung loosely 'round his hips, hitched by a piece of wire
And they concertinaed 'round his boots in a way that you'd admire
Well he stuck the billy on the boil and then emptied out his pipe
And with his greezy shirt sleeve, he gave his nose a wipe
And with pipe in mouth he mixed a sod and a drip hung from his chin
And as he mixed the damper up the drip kept dripping in
I walked quietly over to him and I said toss that mixture out
And in future when you're working keep your pipe out of your mouth
Oh-oh he stood erect and eyed me with such a dirty look
And he said in choice Australian, get another bloody cook
A cook, I said, you call yourself, you greezy slop made lout
Well you should be jailed for taking work that you cannot carry out
He then uncorked some language and I felt a thrill of fear
As he swung his hairy balls about and said trott your frame out here
In outback brawls there are no rules nor limits to the weight
So I had to swivel meet him with my meek and nine-stone-eight
And we both bounced into action and fell into a clinch
I put a headlock on him but I couldn't make him blink
Aroused we fought in deathly grip, swung upper cuts and crosses
We staggered and floundered in distress like broken winded horses
Then gaspingly he muttered, though I fought all through the north
Your the gamest thing I've ever struck, give me a hand old sport
Well I can't explain my feelings, with joy I nearly cried
As we staggered to a shade close by where he sank down and died
Now you talk about that salt bush scrap, why it was only play
Compared to that gruelling battle we fought that fatal day
And now above his resting place where the grass has grown to seed
On stone is carved his epitaph for travellers to read
Hear lies the son of Donald Gun, none gamer ever stood
And he died in dinkum battle with Jimmy Underwood
