Gold Fever

On a squatter’s small selection Not far east of Northam town Waits a wife and her two children For her husband to come down For he’s gone off chasing nuggets In a far off northern field And he’s gone to seek his fortune Gone to reap a golden yield But the fare up cost a packet And the mining gear cost more And before he’d even got there He was stiff and tired and sore Now he’s gone and staked a claim out And he’s worked it night and day But it hasn’t shown much colour And he cannot make it pay Then he hears about a rush on In a field near Marble Bar So he sells his worthless claim up And he tracks another star Then he’s far away from thinking Of his wife and kids and home And he takes up heavy drinking And he spends his days alone And the heat and flies and rot gut Slowly start to rot his brain And the last bit of his money Quickly trickles down the drain Then they find him late one morning Hanging bloated from a tree And his ghost now haunts the goldfield Where the wind blows wild and free And his wife still waits and wonders As she watches down the track In a hopeless lonely vigil For her loved one to come back And each time a swaggy passes She runs out to see his face And though hope may spring eternal Her man’s lost without a trace And to top off all this sadness His old claim was taken on Just another five feet deeper The next miner’s fortune shone And so it was for many Who were drawn in search of gold Some got rich, some not a penny Some got dead and some got old For the gold it was a fever That men caught like a disease And today still has the power To cajole and flirt and tease Inspired by a true story in the book ‘Mates and Gold’ and dedicated to the prospector near Peak Hill who was unable to go on and to his wife and his kids who were left to fend for themselves. From my PDF book "Bush Ballads and Bulldust"