Experiment with Instructions of How to Post From Word!

Well, the experiment mostly worked! The spacing refuses to behave and stay where it was, probably because I was reducing the font size in irregular bursts, but you'll get the gist of it.

The words you mightn't know, Aussie slang -
tucker = food
selectors= farmers granted small acreage
wallaby = smaller breed of kangaroo
damper = simple bread of flour and water
chook = chicken
tea = dinner

ANOTHER CUP OF WATER IN THE STEW

© MONYA CLAYTON 10/10/06

On the back of the old wood stove

Mum kept an iron pot,

Threw in it scraps of tucker -

There never was a lot.

Poor selectors we were then

And living off the land.

Hungry every tea time –

Which made those stews taste grand.

Bits of vegies from the garden

That grew in the back yard –

Midget onions, stringy beans,

‘Taters soft, tomatoes hard.

Pumpkin ‘cause it grew near wild,

Peas like little stones,

And when Dad killed a pig for Boss

The stew pot got the bones.

The only other meat we had

Was wallaby and horse.

Salt and pepper helped them down

And mint leaves and hot sauce.

Often it was thin as soup,

And not enough for eight.

We had to eat it from a bowl

Instead of a tin plate.

It was fine when we had lots of it

And friends called in for tea.

But the times there wasn’t much to eat

Meant a special job for me.

Mum filled cups and cut the damper -

That would be my cue.

For each guest I then poured another

Cup of water in the stew.

I tell my grandkids what we ate

When I was young as they -

Carrot tops and skinny hares,

What we could find each day.

I now eat steak and roasted chooks,

Veg whose names I never knew.

But you know, it never tastes as good

As my old Mum’s watered stew.