On an old homestead veranda, an old man sits at rest, in his kind grey eyes a wistful memory gleams.
And he always sits there nightly, and lives again the past, when the moon across the bushland beams.
And he hears the tractors working, in the fields of golden grain, the work he used to do with eight holes steam.
And his brown old hands, they fumble, as though he feels the rains, when the moon across the bushland beams.
On the roadway in the distance, car lights come and go.
Well, once the sun's out, the sun's out again.

And Swagman tramped his lonely way.
The teamster and the drover, no longer shout good day, as they did long ago, along the castle ray.
For these old mates he thinks of, are relics from the past.
They have made their belt a program.
So off they go to rest, so it seems.
And he sees them all so clearly, as he sits out there at rest, when the moon across the bushland beams.
Then a sadness settles, ah, him, as he dreamt, for he seems promised to be.







He dreams of her at rest, sleeping neath the pine trees on the rise, the years they spent together to him were heaven blessed, he remembers as the teardrops *** his eyes.
For in the early days they battled when the drought was on the land, when the seasons brought them doubts and many fears, but they battled on together ever onward hand in hand with the courage of the early pioneers.
Soon he'll be called to wander to the overland above, to join the one who once shared all his dreams, and I like to think he'll hear it as he sits out there at rest when the moon across the bushland beams.
transcript Emily Beynon