On the Track - At The Creek (A Bush Poem)

Alexander Vindex Vennard (1884-1947), collected yarns, ballads and anecdotes about bush life, which were published for about twenty-five years in a regular column 'On the Track' for the "North Queensland Register" and "Townsville Daily Bulletin". He adopted the pseudonym 'Bill Bowyang' after the straps buckled over trousers below the knees. 

At The Creek

By "Bill Bowyang."
Written in 1922.

Beside the pleasant stream I stray,

To watch the rippling waters play,

To see them kiss the ferns with spray,

And hurry on their argent way.

A cobweb, 'tween some rushes spun,

The stream had splashed, as if in fun

And bright as diamonds in the sun,

The crystal drops hang, every one.

I hear the twitter of a wren,

It sings to me of childhood, when,

I rambled here, a child of ten —

Ah, would that now were only then!

Sources:

1. On the Track. (1922, February 2). Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld. : 1907 - 1954), p. 2.
2. Cattai Creek, 1870, Charles Norton, State Library Victoria