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From: "David & Jenny Myers" <>
Subject: A 7 VERSE PIECE BY AUGUSTUS MYERS
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 22:29:54 +1100


>From a collection of Verse by Augustus Friedrich Myers [Meyer] b. 24 Sep
1854, Banteln, Hanover, a 10 yr old on Rosewood Station, Laidley. His adult
years at Little Plain and latter years Delungra, NSW, d.27 Apr 1931.
A friend of Henry Kendall and Banjo Paterson. [Australian Writers].

Augustus' thoughts on THE PIONEERS.......

Time was when our grandmothers wore crinolines,
Which made them appear like inverted balloons,
Wore long under-garments to cover their shins,
And drooping ear-pendants, resembling festoons:

Wore whalebone-ribbed corsets, which fitted them close,
And trained their long tresses, right up from the roots,
To curl into ringlets: wore white cotton hose,
And housed their small feet in elastic-side boots.

But although thus garbed they were mothers of men,
And mothers of women who took to the track,
And braved ev'ry danger of mountain and glen,
And faced the grim hardships of Further Outback.

They built them rude dwellings of split slabs and bark,
Fenced in small plots to grow pumpkins and corn,
Went early to bed, but arose with the lark,
And in that wild country their children were born

Those children in turn, when their parents grew old,
Took up the same tasks, and kept battling along,
Their earnings were meagre, and ne'er paid in gold,
But work, and more work, made them healthy and strong.

They toiled like their fathers and mothers had done,
Absorbed all the lessons their elders had taught,
>From day's early dawn until set of the sun
The floods and the droughts and the bush-fires they fought.

And that's how the pioneers conquered the lands,
And that's how they peopled the vast wilderness:
As migrating farmers and prospecting bands, -
The man wearing moleskins, his wife a print dress.
By Augustus F. Myers, Bard of Delungra, Year Unknown.
--------------
If only we knew the people he wrote of, how this collection could talk. He
wrote of men from Bendigo to Sydney to those of the North, his dearly
beloved, his family and friends: of politics, professions, aniversaries and
deaths.

David
A grandson of Augustus F Myers and Charlotte Shepherd.


David & Jenny Myers.
61 Fern Street,
ARCADIA VALE 2283 NSW

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