THE SINGING MAILMAN

Looking back through a number of old magazines I came a cross an interesting article in the March 1957 copy of Australian Geographical Walkabout Magazine. It was by A. E. Yarra telling of his Outback Odyssey and the people he met in the Mulga. One of these interesting characters was "The Singing Mailman". Here's what the article said in part: From Bourke to the Warrego River, one of the famous rivers of the west, I travelled beside the Singing Mailman in the two-horse buggy that carried the mail to the outback stations and hamlets a hundred and sixty miles through the mulga, mostly along the course of the Warrego, to Barringun, eighty miles, and then through the border gate in the rabbit fence that divides Queensland from New South Wales. They told me it ran from the coast to the border of the Northern Territory. And they were proud of it. I remember one of the scores of verses sung by the mailman and written as a kind of patriotic effort by all and sundry of the mulga men all over the rivers: "You see that off-sider leader? She never was no good. Her mouth is as hard as a miser's heart, And her legs are made of wood. So get along, Eliza, get along! Get along, Eliza Jane! You ought to be a-pullin' of a hearse, old hoss, But not on the Old Man Plain." We changed horses every ten miles or so along the way at lonely depots, among which were the Grass Hut ... and the Engonia Hotel, where Gardiner and his fellow-bushrangers, fleeing from the police, were reported to have dropped in for a spot and been recognised. We stayed the night just inside the border gate, in one of several hotels in the wide part of the road which was known as Barringun, a hamlet of several houses and hotels on the stock route from Queensland "down to Bourke". QUESTIONS Who was the Singing Mailman? Do any of our readers know more about this interesting character? Does anyone know the song referred to above? The phrase referring to a mouth "as hard as a miser's heart" also appears in a Will Ogilvie poem (see elswhere in this issue). Was this a common description in outback Australia and what are its origins? Old Man Plain is a term that is used to describe the Riverina area, usually the district near Deniliquin. It is used by A. B. Paterson in his poems "Saltbush Bill" (appeared in The Bulletin, 15 Dec 1894 ) and "How Gilbert Died" and the song "Across the Westrern Plains" (also known as "All For Me Grog) which first appeared in print in Paterson's Bush Songs in 1905. It is also mentioned in Joseph Furphy’s "Such Is Life".