ALAN FORSHAW

Recorded Sydney 1973
Alan worked in the Northern Territory in the late 1960s

COLLECTED MATERIAL


Jim Jim Crossing (tune Garrawilla)

There's a place called Jim Jim Crossing
Where the barra' pump at night
Look sideways at the ringer
And you've got yourself a fight
Big hulking brutes as strong as bulls
Always looking for a ding
They are types who eat their salt beef raw
These sons of Jim Jim Crossing
Now the pub stands there majestic
Like the Sydney Harbour Bridge
And there's snakes of all descriptions
Playing hoop-la with the kids
And in the bar, the barman, Tom
With a finger and a thumb
Extracts the poison from the snakes
And adds it to the rum

Now in this place called Jim Jim Crossing
The buffaloes are so thick
The cook stands just outside his door
And kills them with a stick
And with his finger dipped in blood
He starts to write the menu
Tonight for tea, goanna goulash
Roast buff steak and emu.

Buffalo Shooter's Song (Tune: Galway Bay)

If you ever go up north among the buffaloes
And only at the closing of the day
You can sit and swat those flamin' old mosquitoes
As you watch the sun go down on Fanny Bay.

Oh to hear again the crying of the curlew
And the gins in their n'gagas salting hides
And to sit around the campfire of an evening
And to listen to those shooters telling lies

Now the girls come down from Oenpelli Mission
All wrapped up in Jesus when they come
But they soon forget about those ten commandments
When you hit them with a dash of O.P. rum

Now the strangers came and tried to take our lubras
But we sit back while they have their bit of fun
For they might as well go chase an old red dingo
Or try to rape a flaming emu on the run

Now if there's going to be a piccaninny
You can bet your life it wont be all real black
For them shooters like their little bit of nonsense
All along the Alligator River track

Second verse contributed by mail at a later stage will Alan adding that 'n'gaga' is a native loincloth.




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