I was listening to a selection of Christy Moore songs the other day when I stumbled on something unexpected.
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Moore, for those unfamiliar with his work, is a legend in the Irish music scene, a founder of seminal folk band Planxty, and an all-round larrikin, to use the wonderfully evocative Australian word.
And it was an Australian song I was surprised to hear him sing, a version of Redgum’s The Diamantina Drover.
Except that because of Moore’s likely unfamiliarity with western Queensland geography, he called it “The Diamondtina Drover” an understandable mistake thinking the name has to do with diamonds when instead it is named for the Greek wife of Queensland’s first governor George Bowen, Lady Diamantina Roma (who like her husband gave her name to more than one Queensland place).
Moore’s version of The Drover with another Irish folk legend Enya on backing vocals brings out a beautiful song about a life in the saddle in the Channel Country.
“The faces in the photograph are faded / And I can't believe he looks so much like me / For it's been ten long years today / Since I left for Old Cork Station / Saying ‘I won't be back 'till the droving's done.”
The song was written by Redgum’s Hugh McDonald and for a long time it was believed it was based on the story of an old stockman from Old Cork Station south of Boulia that McDonald met on a train.
But I was reading an article by John Andersen in the Townsville Bulletin which said that story was not true.
Andersen spoke to McDonald who told him it was a composite formed from characters from his childhood.
“I grew up in the small northern Victorian town of Kerang and met many old characters and they all morphed into the Diamantina Drover,” McDonald told the Bulletin.
“The encounter on the train was largely fictional and I hyperbolised it for the introduction to the song.”
If true McDonald did a fine job transposing it to Queensland.
“For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina / The drover finds it hard to change his mind” is sadly all too true. Rain is as rare as drovers these days and drought conditions still haunt Western Queensland producers – Derek Barry
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
