Slim Dusty - When The Rain Tumbles Down In July

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Slim Dusty – Chronicler of the Bush

Hands on songwriters

When The Rain Tumbles Down In July
By Slim Dusty (1945)

Let me wander north to the homestead,
Way out, further on there to roam,
By a gully in flood let me linger
When the summery sunshine has flown,
Where the logs tangle up on the creek-bed
And the clouds veil the old northern sky
And the cattle move back from the lowlands,
When the rain tumbles down in July.

The settlers with sad hearts are watching
The rise of the stream from the dawn,
Their best crops are always in floodreach,
If it rises much more they'll be gone.
The cattle string out along the fences
As the breeze from the south races by,
And the limbs of the old gums are falling
When the rain tumbles down in July.

The sleeping gums on the hillside
Awaken to herds straying by
From the flats where the fences have vanished
As the storm clouds gather on high.
The wheels of the wagon stop turning
And the stock horse is turned out to stray,
And the old station dogs are a-dozing
On husks in the barn through the day.

And the drover draws rein by the river
It's years since he's seen it so high,
And that's just a story ofHomewood
When the rain tumbles down in July.

© 1946 EMI Music Publishing Australia Pty Limited.
(ABN 83 000 040951) PO Box 35, Pyrmont, NSW 2009, Australia.
International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission

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