Cattle Dust And Leather

                                 Written By Joe Daley & Music By Ashley Cook.

 

                 Flat strap across the ridges to try and swing the mob,

                 It’s cattle dust and leather, flying hooves out on the job;

                 Colt breaking, shoeing horses, making hobbles or what ever;

                 Ingredients of stock camps – cattle dust and leather.

 

                 The smell of beef and damper, tinkling of horse bells,

                 Dry humour, fun and laughter, the yarns old-timer tells;

                 Repairing packs and saddles, out in that never never;

                 Where pioneers made history in cattle dust and leather.

 

                 Droughts that scar a nation, and floods that carve it up;

                 The waves of grass and clover, and the playful dingo pup;

                 The sad look of the new chum now almost at his tether;

                 Cursed the horse that threw him in cattle dust from leather.

 

                 Drafting fats for stock routes that march across the land;

                 A place of fascination as our big wide bush expands.

                 Prime seasons and good horses, mates that stick together;

                 Comfort in a good old sway ‘twixt cattle dust and leather.

 

                 The saddling  up a dawning, or that lively roughish nag;

                 A meal of beef and damper rammed in the saddle bag.

                 Crackers for a stock whip – to hell what kind of weather;

                 The hair will fly from piker bulls through cattle dust and leather.