The Bushman's Farewell to Queensland (anon)

Queensland thou art a land of pest!
From flies and fleas one never rests
Even now mosquitoes round me revel
In fact, they are the very devil

Sandflies and hornets just as bad,
They nearly drive a fellow mad
The scorpion and the centipede
With stinging ants of every breed

Fever and ague with the shakes
Triantelope and poisonous snakes
Goannas, lizards and cockatoos
Bushrangers, lags and jackaroos

Bandicoots and swarms of rats
Bull dog ants and swarms of cats
Stunted timber, thirsty plains
Parched up deserts, scanty rains

There's rivers here you sail ships on
There's nigger women without skirts on
There's humpies, huts and wooden houses
There's nigger men who don't wear trousers

There's Barcoo rot and sandy blight
There's dingoes howling half the night
There's curlews' wails and croaking frogs
There's savage blacks and native dogs

There's centralists, flowers and stinging trees
There's poisoned grass and Darling peas
Which drive the horses and cattle mad
And make the sheep just as bad

And then it never rains in reason
There's droughts one year and floods next season
Which wash the squatter's sheep away
And then there is the devil to pay

To stay in Queensland, Oh land of mutton
I would not give a single button
But bid thee now a long farewell
Thou scorching land of sunburnt hell!