Joe Zinco Poem by Francis Duggan

Joe Zinco is a young man from Lakes Entrance and on his birthday in March he'll be twenty four
He is working his way around Australia and he will go beyond his Homeland shore
South to New Zealand and then north to Asia and Europe and to the Americas maybe
By the bug of wander he's been badly bitten and in the bigger World there is so much to see.

He has not been back to see his mum and dad in Lakes Entrance since he left home when he turned eighteen
He hasn't phoned or even written to them to tell them of the places he has been
To since he left the old Town by the ocean with them he never did see eye to eye
Compared to his younger brother John and his twin sister Lisa of the Zinco family Joe was the wild boy.

He hated school and rebelled against his teachers and he had his first smoke of cannabis at thirteen
Joe Zinco in his boyhood years precocious and to the ways of life he wasn't green
His father by canings tried to reform him and to him always was so very cruel
And at fourteen he was arrested for house breaking and he spent four years in a reform school.

Joe Zinco is a reformed young man at least reformed from what he once used to be
He is one of those who works to earn his living and he comes by his money honestly
He still drinks beer but not as much as he once used to and smoking cannabis he gave away
The wayward teenager from old Lakes Entrance is the reformed young man of today.

A love-lorn young woman pines for him in Adelaide she loved him but with her he did not stay
The sedentary lifestyle not for him at present I've still so much to see you hear him say
And he won't be going back to his old Hometown in Gippsland in Victoria by the sea
For to visit his father and his mother and other members of his family.