On a back block 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 **** 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 out 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 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 the 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 727s roared overhead

Withe the 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