Sydney-Side

Henry Lawson, 1898

      Where's the steward? — Bar-room steward? Berth? Oh, any berth will do —
      I have left a three-pound billet just to come along with you.
      Brighter shines the Star of Rovers on a world that's growing wide,
      But I think I'd give a kingdom for a glimpse of Sydney-Side.

      Run of rocky shelves at sunrise, with their base on ocean's bed;
      Homes of Coogee, homes of Bondi, and the lighthouse on South Head.
      For in loneliness and hardship — and with just a touch of pride —
      Has my heart been taught to whisper, 'You belong to Sydney-Side.'

      Oh, there never dawned a morning, in the long and lonely days,
      But I thought I saw the ferries streaming out across the bays —
      And as fresh and fair in fancy did the picture rise again
      As the sunrise flushed the city from Woollahra to Balmain:

      And the sunny water frothing round the liners black and red,
      And the coastal schooners working by the loom of Bradley's Head;
      And the whistles and the sirens that re-echo far and wide —
      All the life and light and beauty that belong to Sydney-Side.

      And the dreary cloud-line never veiled the end of one day more,
      But the city set in jewels rose before me from 'The Shore.'
      Round the sea-world shine the beacons of a thousand ports o' call,
      But the harbour-lights of Sydney are the grandest of them all!

      Toiling out beyond Coolgardie — heart and back and spirit broke,
      Where the Rover's Star gleams redly in the desert by the 'soak' —
      But says one mate to the other, 'Brace your lip and do not fret,
      We will laugh on trains and 'buses — Sydney's in the same place yet.'

      Working in the South in winter, to the waist in dripping fern,
      Where the local spirit hungers for each 'saxpence' that we earn —
      We can stand it for a season, for our world is growing wide,
      And they all are friends and strangers who belong to Sydney-Side.

      'T'other-siders! T'other-siders!' Yet we wake the dusty dead;
      It is we that send the backward province fifty years ahead;
      We it is that 'trim' Australia — making narrow country wide —
      Yet we're always T'other-siders till we sail for Sydney-side.