Nuanced Perspective On Enterprising Australians

This upbeat bush ballad by Banjo Paterson offers an insightful window into the opportunities and challenges involved in the frozen meat export trade that emerged in colonial Australia.

Adopting an enthusiastic pastoralist voice, Paterson colors the frontier experience through vivid outback references like the Barcoo River and cattle grazing on nardoo. Distance is emphasized to convey scale.

Details celebrating efficient new railways and loading bountiful steers for overseas shipment reflect pride in successfully exploiting the remote landscape for profit, overcoming the vastness.

Yet hints at harsh long journeys hint at the difficulties in accessing such isolated plenty. Romanticized visions of prosperity were underpinned by tiresome toil.

While glorifying the pastoral economy, the ballad insightfully reminds that remoteness was both Australia’s asset and obstacle. Paterson’s lyricism reveals the nation’s complicated reliance on its forbidding but fruitful interior.

Ultimately, “A Thousand Miles Away” provides a nuanced perspective on the enterprises underpinning Australian identity – conquering the terrain yet dependent on it. Paterson captures this ambivalent relationship.

A THOUSAND MILES AWAY

(Air: “Ten Thousand Miles Away.”)

Hurrah for the Roma railway! Hurrah for Cobb and Co.,
And oh! for a good fat horse or two to carry me Westward
Ho–
To carry me Westward Ho! my boys, that’s where the cattle
stray
On the far Barcoo, where they eat nardoo, a thousand miles
away.

                Chorus

Then give your horses rein across the open plain,
We’ll ship our meat both sound and sweet, nor care what
some folks say;
And frozen we’ll send home the cattle that now roam
On the far Barcoo and the Flinders too, a thousand miles
away.

Knee-deep in grass we’ve got to pass–for the truth I’m
bound to tell–
Where in three weeks the cattle get as fat as they can swell–

As fat as they can swell, my boys; a thousand pounds they
weigh,
On the far Barcoo, where they eat nardoo, a thousand miles
away.

Chorus: Then give your horses rein, &c.

No Yankee hide e’er grew outside such beef as we can freeze;
No Yankee pastures make such steers as we send o’er the
seas–
As we send o’er the seas, my boys, a thousand pounds they
weigh–
From the far Barcoo, where they eat nardoo, a thousand
miles away.

Chorus: Then give your horses rein, &c.