Happy Jack

I once knew a feller, a travelling mate, not bad as fellers go
He was happiest when he was miserable if ever that could be so
He'd wake up every mornin' with the world upon his back
And so for the want of a better name we called him Happy Jack
If ever you travelled on outback tracks as most us sometimes do
With anxious eyes on the petrol gauge in the hope it would see you through
You're a 100 miles from nowhere and eighty still to go
You'll hear his voice like the crack of doom “The petrol’s gettin’ low”
And when you're out on the Black Soul flats and you know what some rain can do
You hope for the best as you head for the west, then you whisper a prayer or two
And just when you're halfway over and starting to breath again
You say with sigh and a mournful eye "I think we’re in for rain."
And when on a long and lonely run with nothing in between
The town you left is away in the past the next one a distant dream
He'll prick up his ears and listen and then in accents low
"I don't like the noise she's makin' boss, the diff's about to go."
When you've bumped over corrugations, so deep you could bury a cow
You say to yourself "It's pretty bad but the worst must be over now."
Then he'll look at you with a woeful look and furrows on his brow
The last fifty miles on the road they say is "the worst in Australia now."
Oh I wonder where he is today, this travelling mate I had
Where ever he is it's safe to say "That things are really bad
If it's not the diff it's something else or the petrol's gettin' low."
It's pounds to peanuts and that's a bet, something's about to go