Goats on the Hill

  Goats are bastards. Mad as cut snakes, they can make the most experienced mustering team look like a mob of amatuers. One minute they'll be trotting along happily, then the next second it's like someone's lobbed a hand grenade at them and fifty race off in fifty different directions, leaving the five motorbike and two dogs to try and halt the flood.

 On Gabyon sits Courin Hill, a large granite outcrop that a mob of around two hundred call home. Each morning driving past we see them trotting down for a drink and a feed, and each evening driving back we see them again, trotting up once more for the night.

 They are cunning sods. As soons as they hear the bikes or plane they refuse to come down of the hill. The following is based on a few attempts to muster them, with mixed results.

Apologies to Slim.

Rounding up goats is much harder than sheep.

But the feral little buggers need to pay for their keep,

Cos the bank’s back on the phone and a callin’ me.

A few new hands are astride the two wheels.

Racing through the sand as the plane above peels.

But the goats on top o’ the hill are avoiding me.

The planes diving hard trying to push them to the South.

Pilots muttering things I’ve never heard from his mouth.

And the crews on the motor bikes are grumpy at me.

Putting down all my fears I ride up that bloody hill.

The dog on the back has a-frozen dead still.

And the goats on top o’ the hill are a’ laughing at me.

The dog got sent to cast,

and they began at last,

start a-shifting, in a prance

The pilot begins to gloat,

counting all his goats

with a glance.

Motorbike engines start a gunnin’ in time.

That’s one thing that I’d forgotten to remind.

And the goats turn back up the hill still laughin’ at me.

Theres some colorful sledge thrown down the mountain side.

The bikes will remember next time that they ride.

Don’t send goats on top o’ the hill back over on me.

The dog’s bolted home,

and now I’m all alone, in a trance.

Again I see the goats,

but we haven’t got a ghost of a chance.

Not a word is spoken heading back to the yard.

Surely chasing goats can’t be all that hard.

And the pilots not really a-talking much to me.

And going past each day they’re still on that hilly side.

But never do we speak of the time that we tried.

To catch the wild goats on the hill that were a laughing at me.

I’m sure the bloody goats on the hill are still a laughing at me.

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