Where the Brumbies Come to Water

Where the Brumbies Come to Water

[ Roud – ; AFS 188 ; Will H. Ogilvie]

Martyn Wyndham-Read sang Where the Brumbies Come to Water on his 1981 Fellside album Emu Plains (this track was also included in 1996 on Undiscovered Australia), and on his 1992 Fellside album Beyond the Red Horizon. He noted:

A brumby is a wild horse. The original words were by the poet, Will Ogilvie, but the poem got altered round a bit as it went from mouth to mouth in the bush. Ron Edwards collected the song from an old stockman, Jack Parveez of Charters Towers, Queensland.

Martyn Wyndham-Read also sang this in 1989 on his and Danny Spooner’s Sandstock album All Around Down Under, Gael Shannon noted:

From Ron Edwards’ collection, The Overlander Songbook. This version is adapted from Will Ogilvie’s ballad, considerably altered and shortened. Ron writes that this “real old stockman’s song” was around in 1908.

Where the Brumbies Come to Water is a moving epitaph for a fellow horseman, and reminds us that tough workers can be tender also.

SONG LYRICS

Where the Brumbies Come to Water

There’s a lonely grave half hidden where the blue-grass droops above,

A slab that roughly marks it: we planted it with love

There’s a mourning rank of riders closing in on every hand

O’er the vacant place he left us: he was best of all the band

Now he’s lying cold and silent with his hidden hopes unwon

Where the brumbies come to water at the setting of the sun 

There’s a well-worn saddle hanging in the harness-room above

A good old stock-horse waiting for the steps that never come

And his dog will lick some other hand when the wild mob swings

We’ll get a slower rider to replace him on the wing

Ah but who will kiss his wife who kneels beside the long lagoon

𝄆 Where the brumbies come to water at the rising of the moon 𝄇

We will miss him in the cattle camps a trusted man and true

The daddy of all stockmen was young Rory Donahue

We will miss the tunes he used to play on his banjo long and low

We will miss the songs he used to sing of the days of long ago

Where the shadow-line lies broken neath the moonbeams’ silver bars

 Where the brumbies come to water at the twinkling of the stars