I Like To Love

I like to love the Asian girls, the lass from Manilla makes eyes
The Lubra grins in her nakedness, and the half-caste laughs and lies,
The Javanese are not bad sorts, the Jap and Chinese maid,
The Zulu, Kaffir and Hottentot, they’re all of an A 1 grade, but
The bushman’s gin is a very fine thing, a very fine thing to have
Gleaming hair and pearly teeth, ways that would shock and Irish priest
Ways that are always naïve
Rollicking, rolling, rollick rolling real Australian maid

Now the nigger is a lazy bugger, he sits in the shade all day.
He won’t hunt tucker, his wife you’ll want her, and give your tucker away.
He sits in the shade that his Lubra made, far better than the white-fellow man
You might think you’re clever, but by hell you’ll never, get the better of her Benjamin.

Notes by Warren Fahey:

Bill Harney was a legend of the Outback. He was a familiar face to many Northern Territory Aborigines who accepted him as a brother. Harney wrote several books on the Outback. He sent these two ditties to Katherine Brisbane when she (and Doug Stewart) were working on their version of ‘Old Bush Songs’. Harney could never be described as ‘racist’ and particularly in regard to indigenous Australians. He saw these ditties as amusements and that they were shared by the Northern Indigenous people.