Across the Western Plains

There’s no fool like an old fool, they say, so what happens when a bunch of oul’ coots gather together to make music? The next batch of posts may enlighten you as to the question just posed and may also, perhaps, enrage or entertain. Anything’s better than a yawn, I guess. And everything that is not that bloody virus is a plus. At the moment we can’t meet as a group, as we are in lockdown, so I have set out a version of songs that are in our repertoire but which have not yet been recorded. With any luck (and, as three of us are north of 70, we’ll need it!) we will be able to resume our normal practice of meeting weekly and playing tunes, singing songs and generally enjoying the crack.

In the Irish tradition this is known as “All For Me Grog” and is sung with gusto. In Australia, having moved across the sea and moved inland, it slows down and becomes more wry and sombre. Here we find a swaggie, who has just sold his moke (a broken-down horse) for drinking money.

It was a feature of the various gold diggings in Australia for luckless scroungers to supplement their incomes by illegal fossicking on another’s claim. This was known as “plundering”. Our narrator is in an outback shanty bar where he has just spent all his money- or “plunder”. The subject of our song resolves to head back to the diggings and peg out a claim and settle down to some hard yakka (hard work).

The Dubliners’ 1967 version, is faster and jollier and features women. Alas, in 19th Century Australia, women were in short supply out in the bush, hence the difference in the second last line of the chorus where, instead of…I’ve spent all me tin with the ladies drinking gin, we get…I’ve spent all me tin in a shanty drinking gin. This may explain why the Aussie version is a lot more doleful.

You’ll also hear reference to the Darling Pea. This addictive plant is poisonous to livestock. A vet from that time describes the effects of Darling Pea on livestock, They lose the ability to judge where their feet are. They become wonky, fall over, appear to be blind, walking into things. Now what does that remind you of?