Another great song about gold mining, this time in Australia. It was written by Peter Metsers. I learned it, as I have so many, from Neal MacMillen who, in turn, learned it from Sara Grey. (ET)
Shotover River, your gold it is waning,
It's years since the color I've seen,
But there's no use just sitting and Lady Luck blaming,
I'll pack up and make the break clean.
Farewell to the gold that never I found,
Good-bye to the nuggets that somewhere abound,
For it's only when dreaming that I see them gleaming
Down in the dark, deep underground.
Well, it's nearly two years since I left my old mother,
For adventure and gold by the pound,
With Jimmy, the prospector, he was another,
For the hills of Otago was bound.
We searched the Cardrona's dry valley all over,
Old Jimmy Williams and me,
They were panning good dirt on the winding Shotover,
So we headed down there just to see.
We sluiced and we cradled for day after day,
Making hardly enough to get by,
When the terrible flood swept poor Jimmy away,
During six stormy days in July.