The man from the warm northern tropics the lands of floods and drought <br />Is enjoying the cooler climate in the far cooler south <br />Only in his mid thirties sun wrinkles on his sun bronzed face <br />His slow drawl of North Queensland down here seems out of place. <br /> <br />He has worked around Australia from Darwin to Ararat <br />From Adelaide and north to Perth and further north than that <br />The wander bug is in him his lust for wander strong <br />The Highways and the Byways calling him to nowhere he belong <br /> <br />In South West Gippsland now as a shearer one of the Seasonal jobs he do <br />He will work his way around the Gippsland Shire for a month or maybe two <br />Perhaps next he'll go to South Australia and who knows where he'll go from there <br />He well may live his life until the day he die without settling anywhere. <br /> <br />He has worked on City building sites and as a Jackaroo <br />And always up the Highway there's a new Town to go to <br />Beyond the Queensland border in the brown Countryside <br />He visualizes the swallows flying o'er the paddocks flat and wide <br /> <br />The man from the northern tropics is shearing in Gippsland for a brief while <br />The wander bug is in him he has travelled many a mile <br />In this great Southern Country from Outback Town to Town <br />The highways and the byways he has travelled up and down.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-man-from-the-northern-tropics/
