Matt Poem by Francis Duggan

He hails from the flat countryside near Ararat
The middle aged gun shearer forty five years old Matt
He often has shorn two hundred hoggets a day
One can say of him he earns his every pay

The mother of his twenty year old son never became his wife
She was his partner for a few years of her life
But he came home from the shearing sheds of South Australia to find she had taken their baby with her and gone
And though disappointed and sad he kept on shearing and life for him went on

Since then a few sexual affairs he has had
And Matt is one who takes the good days with the bad
A man who is partial to the glass of cheer
In pubs in bush towns he has drunk many a beer

A tall handsome fellow with hair silver grey
In Matt there is nothing to dislike in any way
Hard drinking and hard working he is known far and wide
The fellow from the green Ararat countryside.