Mary From Newmarket Poem by Francis Duggan

The stream swelled by recent Spring rains by the hedgerow flowed brown
When Mary left Duhallow and old Newmarket Town
She hugged and kissed her mother and she hugged her dad goodbye
And the tears that welled within her heart she stifled with a sigh.

Her mum and dad were tearful on their daughter leaving home
Their youngest child with wavy brown hair into a young woman had grown
Newmarket did not have much to offer to a woman of nineteen
And wanderlust was in her heart and the far off hills were green.

Song birds in the groves were singing in the early morning rain
As the taxi took her to Banteer for to meet the Rosslare train
And May was in her early days in the Spring of 89
At the start of her long journey to Australia and sunshine.

She has travelled in Australia from Darwin to Hobart Town
Across the Nullarbor to Western Australia through a country wide and brown
Through the Flinders on to Adelaide and up by the Coorong
The lust for wander in the young is always very strong.

She has travelled by the western shore from Esperance to Broome
And seen the Flinders in the Spring when wild flowers are in bloom
And travelled through the Kimberleys across to Uluru
Thousands of miles of sunburnt country she has driven through.

The Daintree forest and the tropics of northern Queensland
From living in the warmer climes she looks relaxed and tanned
She well might look a stranger now in old Newmarket Town
The fair skinned teenager they knew is looking rather brown.

The highways and the byways of Victoria from Warrnambool to Bales
And the snowy mountain ranges of southern New South Wales
She's lived in Melbourne and Sydney and she's worked her way around
And the last that I have heard of her for Brisbane she was bound.

The wanderlust was in her heart and the World she wished to see
And she left her home in Duhallow long miles beyond the sea
And though the old Town of Newmarket she never could forget
That she now lives so far from there she doesn't seem to regret.

The stream swelled by recent heavy showers by the hedgerows flowed brown
As she hugged her mum and dad goodbye and left Newmarket Town
And the birds were piping softly in the drizzling morning rain
As her driver drove to Banteer for to meet the Rosslare train.