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The Lung Fish

 The Honorable Ardleigh Wyse 
Was every fisherman's despair; 
He caught his fish on floating flies, 
In fact he caught them in the air, 
And wet-fly men -- good sports, perhaps -- 
He called "those chuck-and-chance-it chaps".
And then the Fates that sometimes play A joke on such as me and you Deported him up Queensland way To act as a station jackaroo.
The boundary rider said, said he, "You fish dry fly? Well, so do we.
"These barramundi are the blokes To give you all the sport you need: For when the big lagoons and soaks Are dried right down to mud and weed They don't sit there and raise a roar, They pack their traps and come ashore.
"And all these rods and reels you lump Along the creek from day to day Would only give a man the hump Who does his fishing Queensland way.
For when the barramundi's thick We knock 'em over with a stick.
"The black boys on the Darwin side Will fill a creek with bitter leaves And when the fish are stupefied The gins will gather 'em in sheaves.
Now tell me, could a feller wish A finer way of catchin' fish?" The stokehold of the steamship Foam Contains our hero, very sick, A-working of his passage home And brandishing a blue gum stick.
"Behold," says he, "the latest fly; It's called the Great Australian Dry.
"

Poem by Andrew Barton Paterson
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