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.