Hoodlums' Holiday

Bitter complaint comes from many country towns and bush places concerning the conduct of gangs of city youths and girls who, in defiance of transport regulations, travel abroad in commercial vans — usually with a barrel of beer — on Sundays and holidays and create disturbances, hold drunken orgies, destroy trees, rob orchards, and insult householders.

Cor! I did larf! I never ’ad sich fun,
Not since the time we pinched the old bloke’s clo’es
That Sund’y when the free-for-all begun
Down on the beach, with beer from Snake-eye Joe’s.
Up in the bush, this was. Some country yobs:
Seven of them there was; eighteen of us.
An’ jist becos them measley trees we robs,
They ’as the flamin’ nerve to start a fuss.

We got a club, see? Sorta ’scursion club —
A dollar-in, all round for beer an’ fares.
(Saves Sund’y rows at any country pub).
Then Shiner’s van it lands us out somewheres
Into the bush, along some quiet track
Where cops is scarce an’ blokes can yell an’ cuss
An’ booze an’ be theirselves, wot? Transport Ack?
Transport or Likker Acks don’t trouble us!

Too shrewd for that. Well, as I’m tellin’ you,
Last Sund’y we gets up among the froot.
We’d climbed a fence an’ stripped a tree or two
When six yobs an’ a ole wire-whiskered coot
Starts chippin’ us, as if they ’ad a right
To lay down lors for fellers in our push.
An’ so we mix it. Can’t be called a fight;
We rush ’em; an’ they vanish in the bush.

An’ then the fun begun. We tears their trees
Fair limb from limb. We chucks their froot around —
Thro’ winders, at the fowls — till they agrees
We got full rights to this ’ere picnic ground.
Free-born Orstralians, ain’t we? Strike a light!
You’d think these country coots owned all the bush!
(We duck before the cops get there that night.
Cor! I did larf! Fair sozzled, all the push.)