Banjo Paterson

The Billy-goat Overland

The Billy-goat Overland - meaning Summary

Goats on the March

This comic ballad recounts an exaggerated droving adventure in which a narrator leads a thousand goats on an unruly overland journey. Fences and dogs fail, other goats desert their farms to join, and the drovers are arrested as thieves. The poem playfully celebrates Australian bush life, the unpredictability of stock, and the camaraderie and chaos of long-distance droving through tall, comic storytelling.

Read Complete Analyses

Come all ye lads of the droving days, ye gentlemen unafraid, I'll tell you all of the greatest trip that ever a drover made, For we rolled our swags, and we packed our bags, and taking our lives in hand, We started away with a thousand goats, on the billy-goat overland. There wasn't a fence that'd hold the mob, or keep 'em from their desires; They skipped along the top of the posts and cake-walked on the wires. And where the lanes had been stripped of grass and the paddocks were nice and green, The goats they travelled outside the lanes and we rode in between. The squatters started to drive them back, but that was no good at all, Their horses ran for the lick of their lives from the scent that was like a wall: And never a dog had pluck or gall in front of the mob to stand And face the charge of a thousand goats on the billy-goat overland. We found we were hundreds over strength when we counted out the mob; And they put us in jail for a crowd of theives that travelled to steal and rob: For every goat between here and Bourke, when he scented our spicy band, Had left his home and his work to join in the billy-goat overland.

default user
PoetryVerse just now

Feel free to be first to leave comment.

8/2200 - 0