beside the slow flowing
bush-land creek
lay the body of a stock-man
whose body twas sleek

his remains were not found
in eighteen ninety two
though the search for him
did for days ensue

the mount he was riding
had been given a scare
by something that moved
in the prickly pear

a heavy fall he took
on the hardened soil
where his head bled
in a torrential scarlet coil

on the sixteenth of May
in nineteen eighty three
a bush walker stumbled upon
the stock-man's skeletal body

he found a tobacco tin
in the creek's silted dirt
along with the remnants
of his trousers and shirt

for years his family had waited
to hear good news
that he'd been discovered
within the bush-land's muse

but of his passing they were told
at a far later date
a brown snake moving
in the prickly pear sealed his fate