Slim Dusty - Up The Old Nulla Road lyrics

rate me

The old days were good when we lived in the bush

and worked pretty hard everyday

We never felt lonely and always felt free

away from the world and its ways

We lived off the land and the bush was our friend

everyone shared their life and its load

There was no television and the wireless was new

when we lived up the old Nulla road

I rode to school three or four miles

there was twenty odd kids counting me

Our teacher was known as old Johnny Knight

his mole looked like Hitlers to me

They taught English history but little of our own

the empire was then very strong

But we were a bunch of wild brumbies at school

it was there I first sung my first song

They held their bush dances at somebodys place

Id say about every two weeks

Presentations were done and bush ballads were sung

at the dances they held up the creek

There was old Billy Kyle and his bush fiddle style

and he was a band on his own

And the dancers stayed on till the crack of the dawn

then a jackass would laugh them all home

I remember one dance it was only by chance

us kids found some beer in a stump

And mother was not real impressed when they said

your sons outside getting drunk

The best time was tea when the baskets came out

and all those fresh cakes to behold

The old men sipped their tea and then sucked on their pipes

when we lived up the old Nulla road

There were Dunbars and Kyles Ryans and Miles

neighbours as solid as stone

Though Ive been away now for many long years

the valley is always my home

Ive always remembered that big mountain moon

hung over the trees like a glow

I went home in the moonlight content with the world

when we lived up the old Nulla road

In the bush when we lived up the old Nulla road

[From the album "G'Day G'Day" Nov 1988

Barcoo Bill]