And there the old farm dog waits

From beneath the mighty clock tower

We make our run, the day is done.

We pass through the town on dusk

Out toward the setting sun

And up on to the highway

Along the lifted levy road, shifted

Over the river on the bridge

Where that muddy Loddon flowed.

Further on and further and

Then around, the road departs high ground

And we turn t’ward home and in the distance

The town lights are no longer found.

We pass the place where broken fences

And cows were let, and not fixed yet

Where salt bush runs some eighty chain

And thankful mother can’t forget.

We drift past the farms with names

My father has known, and to me shown

As he recounts the stories of their lives

And tells the stories of his own.

Stories old, stories often told

Of crops that teamed with grain

And summers bought and sold

From ten bad season’s pain.

We pass the chirping channel bank

Where damp ground offers up a sound

Of an orchestra of insects and frogs in chorous

Upon the green grassed ground.

The bitumen road reaches its end

And then gravel, like a judge’s gavel

Hit the hard tyres of the car

As closer to home we travel

To where finally it ends

Dusty and browned, the pounded ground

Our house and sheds like a beacon

Our house, our house and the home is found

Signal like, across the paddocks

Where dusk abates, toward the red gates

We argue of who shall open and close them

And there the old farm dog waits.