Happy Jack - Slim Dusty

I once knew a feller, a travelling mate, not bad as fellers go

He was happiest when he was miserable if ever that could be so

He’d wake up every mornin' with the world upon his back

And so for the want of a better name we called him Happy Jack

If ever you travelled on outback tracks as most us sometimes do

With anxious eyes on the petrol gauge in the hope it would see you through

You’re a 100 miles from nowhere and eighty still to go

You’ll hear his voice like the crack of doom «The petrol’s gettin' low»

And when you’re out on the Black Soul flats and you know what some rain can do

You hope for the best as you head for the west, then you whisper a prayer or two

And just when you’re halfway over and starting to breath again

You say with sigh and a mournful eye «I think we’re in for rain.»

And when on a long and lonely run with nothing in between

The town you left is away in the past the next one a distant dream

He’ll prick up his ears and listen and then in accents low

«I don’t like the noise she’s makin' boss, the diff’s about to go.»

When you’ve bumped over corrugations, so deep you could bury a cow

You say to yourself «It's pretty bad but the worst must be over now.»

Then he’ll look at you with a woeful look and furrows on his brow

The last fifty miles on the road they say is «the worst in Australia now.»

Oh I wonder where he is today, this travelling mate I had

Where ever he is it’s safe to say «That things are really bad

If it’s not the diff it’s something else or the petrol’s gettin' low.»

It’s pounds to peanuts and that’s a bet, something’s about to go