The Country Doctor

After travelling adventurously at night for fifty-three miles, through swollen rivers and flooded country, to operate
on a grieviously sick man, a Queensland country doctor, when the lights failed, finished the operation by torchlight 
and saved his patient.

The quiet conutry doctors
   Who travel up and down
To many a shack and farm outback,
   From many a country town --
Those quiet country doctors,
   Who go their quiet ways;
They make small claim on shining fame,
   They win but scanty praise.
 
Their names are written rarely
   Upon the scroll of deeds,
Whose nights and days in peril's ways
   Are spent to serve man's needs --
The quiet country doctors,
   Men of the healing hand,
At beck and call of pain thro' all
   The rugged hinterland.
 
There's Mrs Johnson's baby
   Out at the Ten Mile Store;
There's poor old Jones whose broken bones
   Mean twenty long miles more,
Thro' flood, or fire, or sandstorm;
   And, when that job is done,
Faint with fatigue, thro' league on league,
   He speeds to Brogan's run.
 
The quiet conutry doctors,
   Their recompense is small;
For some might pay on some far day,
   And some pay not at all.
But, when they shrine in story
   This land's devoted men,
May modest coutry doctors
   Be well remembered then.