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What’s In A Name?

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In 1902, the residents of Bocobble petitioned the authorities, and succeeded in getting the original and aboriginal name of that place changed to “Pinecliff.”

No longer startled brumbies will,

The piney brambles break,

Or Dingoes howl at dead of night,

To keep a man awake.

The squatter’s day has gone for aye,

With wether, ewe, and lamb,

Dalgetty’s station had it once—

The block, reserve, and dam,

All hugged by unselected land,

And is it not a shame?

To kick the black man when he’s down—

To change the native name.

For well do I remember how,

With bush land everywhere,

We tightened girths and mounted in

A morning fresh and fair,

And brought the brumbies Gapward, aye,

And laughed, long after dark,

About the bucks in Finch’s horse,

That day at Noah’s ark,

We “took” M’c Nevin’s fences, and:

For some years did our best

To hold our own as riders ’gainst,

The riders of the west,

We saw the lather rising to

The wildest horses flanks,

And scared the kangaroos that bogged,

In slowly drying tanks,

But farms, and miles of clearing, and

It doesn’t seem the same—

Fresh blood, and someone then proposed

To change the native name.

In time, a school, and railway, and

At last, at last it came—

The place is known as Pinecliff, they

Have changed the native name.

The black man’s grave is yonder, by

The lofty yellow box,

A murdered aboriginal,

Before the days of Cox,

And here and there, by many trees,

Across the droughty west,

’Neath little mounds, by native marks

Do black men lay at rest

And as the dingoes in the scrub,

For sheep-yard cease to sniff

“Bocobble” gap, reserve, and dam,

The white man names “Pinecliff'”.

Australia federated! what,

A nation by and bye,

When ’possums cease to chatter, where

The startled curlews cry.

The black men die, the old hands go

A new man comes along,

Who knew not black: or pioneer,

And “puts to right” the “wrong.

“Pinecliff” is harsh in euphony,

And who have we to blame,

Ah, some one lately did it, dared

To change the native name.

Home And Camp

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