The Drover's Ballad - Elton John

From the sunburnt plains of far off North Australia

Came a fella born to ride the wide brown land

Oh he grew up running wild

But soon by all was styled

As the country’s greatest-ever droving man

Oh his legend rode the winds from Broome to Darwin

They loved and loathed him right from end to end

For when the drover gave his heart

To a girl whose skin was dark

From that day on he was no white man’s friend

chorus

So goes The Drover’s story, you’ll hear it near and far

And in the end it’s all he’ll ever own

It says the outcast is a free man

If he sleeps under the stars

Makes the blanket of the southern skies his home

Then they called him up to fight for Mother England

In a far off war that spilled his brother’s blood

Inside the jaws of Hell

Where both his brothers fell

He just watched his faith in man die in the mud

There was no hero’s welcome for The Drover

Just a country that had turned its back on him

When he came home from the war

His sick wife, they would not cure

They let her die, for the colour of her skin

The Drover is a man of constant shadows

Haunted by his pain, his past and name

For every mile he rides

What he cannot hide,

Is the longing in his heart to love again