The first white settlement in the Gundagai area was in the 1820’s, with the town being gazetted in 1838.
In the early days, the area was serviced by bullock teams. With rough tracks, water to cross, floods and inclement weather on occasion, many a bullocky was forced to either wait or to seek help when teams became stranded or bogged. The poems are ostensibly dedicated to the bullocky’s dog waiting on the tuckerbox on such an occasion. The story was further embellished in later versions by the bullocky having died and that the dog waited on the tuckerbox for the rest of its life for its master to return. Not a very bright dog.
There was a bullocky’s camp site near Gundagai.
An early Australian folk song, Lazy Harry’s, tells of some shearers heading for Sydney with their pay but getting no further than Lazy Harry’s on the road to Gundagai, where they spend it all on grog and women. When the money runs out they again tramp, this time from Lazy Harry’s on the road to Gundagai, back in the direction they had come.
Other folk songs also make mention of Gundagai, such as Flash Jack from Gundagai.
Bullockies meeting at camp sites often sat around the fire passing on (and writing) poems and songs. Whether the dog on the tuckerbox originated as a poem or as a song is no longer known. It is generally conceded, however, that the story of the dog on the tuckerbox originated as a bullocky complaining about his dog that shat in his tuckerbox, that it was or became a song and that it was passed by word of mouth.
Bowyang Yorke and Jack Moses are regarded as having taken the story and cleaned it up before publishing it as poems. (Bowyang Yorke’s works were on the back of matchbook covers; Jack Moses had been a whisky salesman in the bush in the 1880’s). The original story of the dog that shat in the tuckerbox could not have been published in their correct format, hence the clean up and the resulting discordant words in the the Yorke and Moses poems. That bit just doesn’t logically fit with the earlier words. The poems, and the lyrics to the more correct folk, are as follows:
The Bowyang Yorke poem:
As I was coming down Conroy's Gap,
I heard a maiden cry;
'There goes Bill the Bullocky,
He's bound for Gundagai.
A better poor old beggar
Never earnt an honest crust,
A better poor old beggar
Never drug a whip through dust.'
His team got bogged at the nine mile creek,
Bill lashed and swore and cried;
'If Nobby don't get me out of this,
I'll tattoo his bloody hide.'
But Nobby strained and broke the yoke,
And poked out the leader's eye;
Then the dog sat on the Tucker Box
Nine miles from Gundagai.
Nine Miles from Gundagai - Jack Moses
I've done my share of shearing sheep,
Of droving and all that;
And bogged a bullock team as well,
On a Murrumbidgee flat.
I've seen the bullock stretch and strain
And blink his bleary eye,
And the dog sit on the tuckerbox
Nine miles from Gundagai.
I've been jilted, jarred and crossed in love,
And sand-bagged in the dark,
Till if a mountain fell on me,
I'd treat it as a lark.
It's when you've got your bullocks bogged,
That's the time you flog and cry,
And the dog sits on the tuckerbox
Nine miles from Gundagai.
We've all got our little troubles,
In life's hard, thorny way.
Some strike them in a motor car
And others in a dray.
But when your dog and bullocks strike,
It ain't no apple pie,
And the dog sat on the tuckerbox
Nine miles from Gundagai.
Lyrics
I'm used to punchin' bullock teams across the hills and plains.
I've teamed outback for forty years through bleedin' hail and rain.
I've lived a lot of troubles down, without a bloomin' lie,
But I can't forget what happened just five miles from Gundagai.
'Twas getting dark, the team got bogged, the axle snapped in two.
I lost me matches and me pipe, so what was I to do?
The rain it was a-coming on, and hungry too was I,
And me dog shat in me tucker-box five miles from Gundagai.
Some blokes I know have stacks of luck, no matter where they fall,
But there was I, Lord love a duck, no bloody luck at all.
I couldn't heat a pot of tea or keep me trousers dry,
And me dog shat in me tucker-box five miles from Gundagai.
Now, I can forgive the bleedin' team, I can forgive the rain.
I can forgive the damp and cold and go through it again.
I can forgive the rotten luck, but hang me till I die,
I can't forgive that bloody dog, five miles from Gundagai.
