Saltbush Bill by Andrew Barton Paterson — Read

Now this is the law of the Overland that all in the West obey, / A man must cover with travelling sheep a six-mile stage a day; / But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood, / They travel their stage where the grass is bad, / but they camp where the grass is good; / They camp, and they ravage the squatter's grass till never a blade remains, / Then they drift away as the white clouds drift / on the edge of the saltbush plains, / From camp to camp and from run to run they battle it hand to hand, / For a blade of grass and the right to pass on the track of the Overland.

For this is the law of the Great Stock Routes, / 'tis written in white and black -- / The man that goes with a travelling mob must keep to a half-mile track; / And the drovers keep to a half-mile track / on the runs where the grass is dead, / But they spread their sheep on a well-grassed run / till they go with a two-mile spread. / So the squatters hurry the drovers on from dawn till the fall of night, / And the squatters' dogs and the drovers' dogs get mixed in a deadly fight; / Yet the squatters' men, though they hunt the mob, / are willing the peace to keep, / For the drovers learn how to use their hands / when they go with the travelling sheep; / But this is the tale of a Jackaroo that came from a foreign strand, / And the fight that he fought with Saltbush Bill, the King of the Overland.