Drink Up In Narromine

This comic poem utilizes hyperbole and Australian vernacular to poke fun at a small town’s exaggerated reaction to a heatwave. Paterson revels in absurdity to caution against mass hysteria.

He depicts the phenomenon of a “cloud of thirst” descending on the country town of Narromine, depicted as so narrow-minded they view even a normal cloud with suspicion. But this cloud inexplicably makes the whole town wildly abandon reason and succumb to unquenchable thirst.

Paterson escalates the absurdity through humorous exaggeration. The townspeople become imprisoned by the “dismal mist”, unable to leave the hotel “no matter how we tried.” Shearers resort to drinking kerosene in desperation!

The speaker shakes his head at the townspeople’s embarrassing loss of perspective once the oppressive cloud finally passes. Yet the joke becomes two-sided when the poet drinking with the visitor quickly becomes drunk himself.

By reveling in absurd scenarios in ‘The City of Dreadful Thirst‘, Paterson humorously cautions against irrationality and groupthink. Echoing the biblical adage “why do you notice the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in your own eye?” Paterson warns we often laugh at others’ folly while displaying it ourselves.

The City of Dreadful Thirst

The stranger came from Narromine and made his little joke;
“They say we folks in Narromine are narrow-minded folk;
But all the smartest men down here are puzzled to define
A kind of new phenomenon that came to Narromine.

“Last summer up in Narromine ’twas gettin’ rather warm—
Two hundred in the water-bag, and lookin’ like a storm—
We all were in the private bar, the coolest place in town,
When out across the stretch of plain a cloud came rollin’ down.

“We don’t respect the clouds up there, they fill us with disgust,
They mostly bring a Bogan shower—three raindrops and some dust;
But each man, simultaneous—like, to each man said, ‘I think
That cloud suggests it’s up to us to have another drink!’

“There’s clouds of rain and clouds of dust—we’d heard of them before,
And sometimes in the daily press we read of ‘clouds of war’.
But—if this ain’t the Gospel truth I hope that I may burst—
That cloud that came to Narromine was just a cloud of thirst.

“It wasn’t like a common cloud, ’twas more a sort of haze;
It settled down about the street, and stopped for days and days;
And not a drop of dew could fall, and not a sunbeam shine
To pierce that dismal sort of mist that hung on Narromine.

“Oh, Lord! we had a dreadful time beneath that cloud of thirst!
We all chucked-up our daily work and went upon the burst.
The very blacks about the town, that used to cadge for grub,
They made an organized attack and tried to loot the pub.

“We couldn’t leave the private bar no matter how we tried;
Shearers and squatters, union-men and blacklegs side by side
Were drinkin’ there and dursn’t move, for each was sure, he said,
Before he’d get a half-a-mile the thirst would strike him dead!

“We drank until the drink gave out; we searched from room to room,
And round the pub, like drunken ghosts, went howling through the gloom.
The shearers found some kerosene and settled down again,
But all the squatter chaps and I, we staggered to the train.

“And once outside the cloud of thirst we felt as right as pie,
But while we stopped about the town we had to drink or die.
I hear today it’s safe enough; I’m going back to work
Because they say the cloud of thirst has shifted on to Bourke.

“But when you see those clouds about—like this one over here—
All white and frothy at the top, just like a pint of beer,
It’s time to go and have a drink, for if that cloud should burst
You’d find the drink would all be gone, for that’s a cloud of thirst!”

---

We stood the man from Narromine a pint of half-and-half;
He drank it off without a gasp in one tremendous quaff;
“I joined some friends last night,” he said, “in what they called a spree;
But after Narromine ’twas just a holiday to me.”

And now beyond the Western Range, where sunset skies are red,
And clouds of dust, and clouds of thirst, go drifting overhead,
The railway-train is taking back, along the Western Line,
That narrow-minded person on his road to Narromine.