On a backblock down Salisbury Plains

Ted was born in 1895

Thrust from the loins on to rusty soil

And the cord was cut with a scythe

He said "People there are city folk today

And they couldn't tell shit from clay

A ripening crop of stobie poles -

There's no regrets when the memory roams

That earth is in me bones"

Did his bit in the First World War

Took the shilling to fight the Hun

Mud up to his crotch in Flanders fields

And the gas eating at his lungs

He said "Me best mate died hanging on the barbed wire

And when the attack was through

We took some prisoners to HQ

And shared a fag and a yarn or two

They were the same as me and you"

And I asked old Ted what history meant

As he sharpened his hedging shears

"What a bloody fool question that is my boy

I lived it for 83 years"

See him every year on Anzac Day

Swilling beers down at the Rex Hotel

He'd laugh with his mates and go deep in thought

Where he went even he couldn't tell...

He said "King and country, cock'n'bull

We fought just to survive

The anger might have faded, still this feeling grabs me deep inside

I guess you could call it pride"

As a navvy on the line in the Nullabor

The Depression left its scars

Heaving cold steel rails in the burning sun

And freezing beneath the stars

He said "If you escaped the susso queues

You had a hell of a price to pay

And when time flowed like an open wound

I'd blow me dough on a Saturday

And drink the pain away"

On Sunday arvo he'd sit and talk

Over a dozen cold West End

Of what was gained and what was lost

And would never come again

He said "Money you know it comes and goes

On booze and rent and fags

You can make a fortune on overtime

And lose it all on the nags

But years of toil with a bunch of mates

You know it leaves you satisfied

Though we never moved a mountain

We sure gave it a try"

Pick the wheat from the chaff

And the steel from the scurf

And the honest man from a liar

If wisdom came by other names

Ted was earth and fire

On the day that old Ted died

No-one would have known

Buried in a pauper's grave

He lived and died alone

And the 727's soared over head

With drone of the angry roads

There seemed a pause for just a while

And the silence was heard around for miles

And the silence was heard for miles