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An English scientific society is fitting out a pioneering / party to search for traces of the lost explorer Leichhardt
Another search for Leichhardt's tomb, / Though fifty years have fled / Since Leichhardt vanished in the gloom, / Our one Illustrious Dead!
But daring men from Britain's shore, / The fearless bulldog breed, / Renew the fearful task once more, / Determined to succeed.
Rash men, that know not what they seek, / Will find their courage tried. / For things have changed on Cooper's Creek / Since Ludwig Leichhardt died.
Along where Leichhardt journeyed slow / And toiled and starved in vain; / These rash excursionists must go / Per Queensland railway train.
Out on those deserts lone and drear / The fierce Australian black / Will say -- "You show it pint o' beer, / It show you Leichhardt track!"
And loud from every squatter's door / Each pioneering swell / Will hear the wild pianos roar / The strains of "Daisy Bell".
The watchers in those forests vast / Will see, at fall of night, / Commercial travellers bounding past / And darting out of sight.
About their path a fearful fate / Will hover always near. / A dreadful scourge that lies in wait -- / The Longreach Horehound Beer!
And then, to crown this tale of guilt, / They'll find some scurvy knave, / Regardless of their quest, has built / A pub on Leichhardt's grave!
Ah, yes! Those British pioneers / Had best at home abide, / For things have changed in fifty years / Since Ludwig Leichhardt died.
The Bulletin, 14 October 1899