Henry Lawson’s local horse ferry poem

As well as being one of Australia’s greatest writers, Henry Lawson (1867–1922) was a tragic drunk. During the last decades of his life, after his hard-scrabble early years of odd jobs around farming settlements, he was writing for The Bulletin, publishing books and anthologies of his poems and short stories, and living at various addresses around Sydney.

By 1910, Lawson was a locally famous wordsmith who was also internationally noted and quoted for his brilliant observations of Australia’s post-goldrush culture and knockabout characters. As research for his prose and poetry, he often socialised at pubs in quiet suburbs, as well as rowdier venues around the CBD.

On pleasant afternoons, he liked to ride the horse ferry from Dawes Point to Blues Point, to take ‘a refresher’—probably at the North Shore Hotel, a popular pub at French Street on Blues Point Road. (Opened in 1864, it was rebuilt in Streamline Moderne style in 1938 and renamed the McMahon’s Point Hotel. It now trades as the Blues Point Hotel).

Several photographs show Lawson using the motor punt which transported horse-drawn vehicles—and early motor cars—between Dawes and Blues points. (This ferry service closed just before the Sydney Harbour Bridge opened in April 1932; 10 years after Lawson’s death.)

Lawson’s life of boozing gradually destroyed his health and kept him persistently broke. Presumably in a sober moment of self-reflection, he wrote the following poem, which was published in his 1910 anthology, The Skyline Riders and Other Verses; online at Project Gutenberg.

The Horse and Cart Ferry

It was old Jerry Brown,
Who’d an office in town,
And he used to get jocular, very;
And he’d go to the Shore
When they’d serve him no more,
And, of course, by the passenger ferry,
A sight on the passenger ferry.
Now this is a song of the ferry,
And a lay of the juice of the berry;
’Tis the ballad of Brown,
Who’d a business in town,
And commenced to go down
Very slow, Don’t you know?
By coming home just a bit merry.

By the Drunks’ Boat that’s right
On a Saturday night
He would often be past being merry;
With his back teeth afloat,
On the twelve o’clock boat,
And a spectacle there on the ferry
(A picture to all on the ferry).

In the mornings, ashamed
’Twas the last drink he blamed,
Though the first was the matter with Jerry,
With his nerve out of joint,
He’d sneak down to Blue’s Point,
And he’d cross by the horse-and-cart ferry,
Like a thief by the horse-and-cart ferry.

But long before night
He’d most likely be tight,
And a subject and theme for George Perry;
And he’d cross to the Shore,
Somewhat worse than before,
And a nuisance to all on the ferry;
Singing-drunk on the passenger ferry.

And so it went on
Till his reason seemed gone,
And the Law, so it seemed, got a derry
On Brown.
He went down,
And they sent him to town
One day, by the trap, on the ferry
The Government trap on the ferry.

He was sober and sane
When he came back again,
And the past he’d determined to bury
Or, I mean, live it down
And he crossed from the town
Like a man, on the passenger ferry.
(There were sceptical souls on that ferry.)

They say ’twas the jaw
Of his mother-in-law
Drove him back to the juice of the berry;
But he soon got afloat
On the passenger boat
Or adrift on the horse-and-cart ferry
(Wrongly called the ve-hic-ular ferry).

The drink had him fast,
And he drank till at last
He dried up a withered old cherry;
And they thought him no loss
When they sent him across
In a box, on the cart-and-horse ferry
In a low, covered trap on the ferry.

Which I rise to explain
If the moral ain’t plain,
And if you’re a cove that gets merry
Always stick, when afloat,
To the passenger boat;
Or else to the cart-and-horse ferry,
Or you’ll make matters worse, like old Jerry.

But this is the song of the ferry,
And the lay of the juice of the berry;
And you will not deny
If you read by-and-bye
That the casual eye
Of the Tight
At first sight
Misses much in the song of the ferry.