Lovely Lasses of Innisfail

Trad.





While you yet are young and sound of health,
For Northern Queensland set your sail,
For the loveliest girls in this Commonwealth
Are all to be found in Innisfail.
Yes, like Queensland sugar, so sweet and brown,
Are the lovely lasses of Innisfail;
I am heart-sick of this southern town:
Oh, when goes the Queensland Mail?
 
There are pretty girls in the West, I know,
And darling ones in this southern State,
But the Queenslnd girls, with their laugh so low,
In their sunset eyes I have met my fate.
Yes, like Queensland flowers, so lithe and gay,
Are the lovely lasses of Innisfail;
Farewell, my boys, I'm on my way
Now to catch the Queensland Mail.
 
They walk like queens and like stars they dance,
And their lips are soft and their smiles are deep,
I have loved the girls of Spain and France,
But for all their charms I have lost no sleep.
For lovelier lasses are to be met
By the Johnstone River in Innisfail;
If you find me not, you may take a bet
That I've left on the Queensland Mail


My father's family were from the North Queensland town of Innisfail, where my uncle's cane-farm was sub-divided in the 1960s to become the suburb of Tierney Estate. This song comes from the Queensland Centenary Songbook.