This is what she’ll say,
“Budgery you
And your old bullock dray.”


This song may require a few notes for the benefit of
non-Australian readers. A paddy-melon is a small and speedy
marsupial, a sort of poor relation of the great kangaroo family.

“Calling at the depôt to get an offsider.”—Female immigrants
were housed at the depôt on arrival, and many found
husbands within a few hours of their landing. The minstrel,
therefore, proposes to call at the depôt to get himself a wife
from among the immigrants. An offsider is a bullock-drivers
assistant—one who walks on the off-side of the team and
flogs the bullocks on that side when occasion arises. The
word afterwards came to mean an assistant of any kind.

“Jack Robertson.”—Sir John Robertson, as he afterwards
became, was a well-known politician, who believed in Australians
doing their best to populate their own country.

“Budgery you”—good fellow you.



PADDY’S LETTER, 1857


I’ve had all sorts of luck, sometimes bad, sometimes better,