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Ted
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1
On a back block down Salisbury Plains
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Ted was born in 1895
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Thrust from the loins on to rusty soil
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And the cord was cut with a scythe
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He said "People there are city folk today
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And they couldn't tell shit from clay
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A ripening crop of stobie poles
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There's no regrets when the memory roams
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That earth is in me bones"
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Did his bit in the first World War
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Took the shilling to fight the Hun
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Mud up to his crotch in Flanders fields
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And the gas eating out his lungs
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He said "Me best mate died hanging on the barbed wire
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And when the attack was through
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We took some prisoners to HQ
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And shared a fag and a yarn or two
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They were the same as me and you"
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And I asked old Ted what history meant
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As he sharpened his hedging shears
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"What a bloody fool question that is my boy
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I lived it for 83 years"
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See him every year on Anzac Day
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Swilling beers down at the Rex Hotel
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He'd laugh with his mates and go deep in thought
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Where he went even he couldn't tell
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He said "King and Country, cock''bull
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We fought just to survive
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The anger might have faded still this feeling grabs me deep inside
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I guess you could call it pride"
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As a navvy on the line in the Nullabor
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The Depression left its scars
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Heaving cold steel rails in the burning sun
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And freezing beneath the stars
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He said "If you escaped the susso queues
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You had a hell of price to pay
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And when time flowed like an open wound
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I'd blow me dough on a Saturday
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And drink the pain away"
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On Sunday arvo he'd sit and talk
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Over a dozen cold West End
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Of what was gained and what was lost
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And would never come again
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He said "Money you know it comes and goes
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On booze and rent and fags
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You can make a fortune on overtime
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And lose it all on the nags
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But years of toil with a bunch of mates
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You know it leaves you satisfied
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Though we never moved a mountain
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We sure gave it a try"
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Pick the wheat from the chaff
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And the steel from the scurf
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And the honest man from the liar
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If wisdom came by other names
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Ted was earth and fire
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On the day that old Ted died
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No-one would have known
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Buried in a pauper's grave
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He lived and died alone
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And the 727s roared overhead
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Withe the drone of the angry roads
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There seemed a pause for just a while
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And the silence was heard around for miles
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And the silence was heard for miles.
I was only 19
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