The strangest things and the maddest things, that a man can do or say,
To the chaps and fellers and coves Out Back are matters of every day;
Maybe on account of the lives they lead, or the life that their hearts discard-
But never a fool can be too mad or a -hard case- be too hard.
I met him in Bourke in the Union days-with which we have nought to do
(Their creed was narrow, their methods crude, but they stuck to -the cause- like glue).
He came into town from the Lost Soul Run for his grim half-yearly -bend,-
And because of a curious hobby he had, he was known as -The Stranger-s Friend.-

It is true to the region of adjectives when I say that the spree was -grim,-
For to go on the spree was a sacred rite, or a heathen rite, to him,
To shout for the travellers passing through to the land where the lost soul bakes-
Till they all seemed devils of different breeds, and his pockets were filled with snakes.

In the joyful mood, in the solemn mood-in his cynical stages too-
In the maudlin stage, in the fighting stage, in the stage when all was blue-
From the joyful hour when his spree commenced, right through to the awful end,
He never lost grip of his -fixed idee- that he was the Stranger-s Friend.

-The feller as knows, he can battle around for his bloomin- self,- he-d say-
-I don-t give a curse for the -blanks� I know the hard-up bloke this way;
-Send the stranger round, and I-ll see him through,- and, e-en as the bushman spoke,
The chaps and fellers would tip the wink to a casual, -hard-up bloke.-

And it wasn-t only a bushman-s -bluff- to the fame of the Friend they scored,
For he-d shout the stranger a suit of clothes, and he-d pay for the stranger-s board-
The worst of it was that he-d skite all night on the edge of the stranger-s bunk,
And never got helplessly drunk himself till he-d got the stranger drunk.

And the chaps and the fellers would speculate-by way of a ghastly joke-
As to who-d be caught by the -jim-jams- first-the Friend or the hard-up bloke?
And the -Joker- would say that there wasn-t a doubt as to who-d be damned in the end,
When the Devil got hold of a hard-up bloke in the shape of the Stranger-s Friend.

It mattered not to the Stranger-s Friend what the rest might say or think,
He always held that the hard-up state was due to the curse of drink,
To the evils of cards, and of company: -But a young cove-s built that way,
-And I was a bloomin- fool meself when I started out,- he-d say.

At the end of the spree, in clean white -moles,- clean-shaven, and cool as ice,
He-d give the stranger a -bob- or two, and some straight Out Back advice;
Then he-d tramp away for the Lost Soul Run, where the hot dust rose like smoke,
Having done his duty to all mankind, for he-d -stuck to a hard-up bloke.-

They-ll say -tis a -song of a sot,- perhaps, but the Song of a Sot is true.
I have -battled- myself, and you know, you chaps, what a man in the bush goes through:
Let us hope when the last of his sprees is past, and his cheques and his strength are done,
That, amongst the sober and thrifty mates, the Stranger-s Friend has one.