Banjo Paterson 1902
Cathy O’Sullivan 1996
Artesian water is subsurface aquifer under pressure such that when tapped by a surface well, the natural pressure alone pushes the water to the surface. The Australian outback has a big artesian aquifer. Banjo Paterson is the same poet who wrote Waltzing Matilda.
Penny Davies & Roger Ilott: Song of the Artesian Water (words Banjo Paterson, music Cathy O’Sullivan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv4RweFAlJY
Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought; But we’re sick of prayers and Providence, we’re going to do without; With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below, We are waiting at the lever for the word to let her go. We’ll get it from the devil deeper down. Chorus: Sinking down, deeper down, oh, we’ll sink it deeper down (x2) But the shaft has started caving and the sinking’s very slow, And the yellow rods are bending in the water down below, And the tubes are always jamming, and they can’t be made to shift Till we nearly burst the engine with a forty horse-power lift. While the stubborn drill is ramming deeper down. If we fail to get the water, then it’s ruin to the squatter, For the drought is on the station and the weather’s growing hotter, But there’s no artesian water, though we’ve passed three thousand feet, And the contract price is growing, and the boss is nearly beat. But we’re bound to get the water deeper down. But it must be down beneath us, and it’s down we’ve got to go, Though she’s bumping on the solid rock four thousand feet below. And it’s time they heard us knocking on the roof of Satan’s dwellin’; But we’ll get artesian water if we cave the roof of hell in, Oh! we’ll get artesian water deeper down. But it’s hark! the whistle’s blowing with a wild, exultant blast, And the boys are madly cheering, for they’ve struck the flow at last; And it’s rushing up the tubing from four thousand feet below, Till it spouts above the casing in a million-gallon flow. It is flowing, ever flowing, further down.