While The Billy BoilsSearchThe miles are long in Mulgaland,Beyond the beaten pad,Today is Christmas, but no handGrips mine in greeting glad.Yet, though this stinted meal I makeBurlesques the festal board,It strums upon the strings that wakeA long forgotten chord.It bears me back on rushing wingsThat time can never cramp —To olden days, to golden days —The days of Christmas Camp.
It bears me back to Bayley’s boomBefore a stamp was dropped,When men swung out for elbow roomAnd home the timid stopped.It carries me to Christmas sprees,When hope was in the cup;We drank, and thought we left the leesTo those that followed up.The days no promise petered out,Our ardor hot to damp,The thriving days, the hiving days —The days of Christmas Camp.
It hugged the hill that straggled downCoolgardie’s eastern side,Its walls and roofs of hop-brush brown,Its door of bullock hide.On Christmas Eve we picked the site,On Christmas Day ’twas built,And ringing rose on Christmas nightThe dolly’s golden lilt.A week before on Tindal’s Flat,We’d pegged Aladdin’s Lamp,In roaring days, in scoring days —The days of Christmas Camp.
But where are they who with me campedWithin the six by eights,Who laughed and liquored, toiled and tramped,When men were more than mates?Who’d beat a drill and swing a pick,Or search a dish with wind.Who’d fight a foe or nurse the sick,And sin as others sinned;Whose fists were first within a fight,A riot or a ramp,In rousing days, carousing days —The days of Christmas Camp.
Cold Klondyke claimed as victim; oneWho bartered heat for frost,Where swift the Yukon Rapids runThe Great Divide he crossed.Another stopped a Dutchman’s shotWhere red Tugela rolledA third threw in his scanty lotWith something rich and old.She pegged him in and bore him off,A handsome ragged scamp,In needy days, in seedy days —The days of Christmas Camp.
Another lives across the BightIn see-you-later style,He beat us, but he’d black and whiteAnd pocketed a pile.To-day he’s where the swankers are,A meal I have to mag,To-day he runs a motor-car,I sweat beneath a swag.Yet still I laugh and live again,As tucker-wards I tramp,The olden days, the golden days —The days of Christmas Camp.