The Indicating Rock

Words: Robert Stewart (?)
Tune: Traditional (The Old Bark Hut)



Come all you jolly diggers
And hardy sons of toil
Who have come to dig on Fiery Creek
And tried to make a pile
You labour just as constant
As the pendulum of a clock
And you pay such great attention
To the indicating rock

The expert has been to see us
But he's done but little good
For he said we hadn't got the reef
And knew we never should
But his scientific theory
Has received a gentle knock
Since he gave us his opinion
On the indicating rock

For at eighty feet we've struck it
And it's nearly two feet wide
And the lucky finder lit his pipe
And viewed the reef with pride
He could see the gold as plainly
As the hands upon a clock
And he blessed the day he sunk upon
The indicating rock


Found this one on Mudcat, but then traced it back to Mark Gregory with the following notes:

Collected from Mrs G. L. Ginns, of Merrylands, New South Wales, who writes:
"My father, Robert Stewart, was born in 1838 at the Five Islands; spent the
early part of his life droving, horse-breaking, shearing and gold digging.
My earliest recollections are of him singing the songs he had composed
fifty or sixty years before."
It seems to fit the tune 'Old Bark Hut' closely enough.

The illustration to this post is a photograph of the Cowra Creek Gold Mine, where gold has been mined since the 1860s.