Last drinks boys at Menindee,
in the year of eighteen sixty.
After eleven drunken weeks,
it's time to take your leave.
Be first to cross the country to the Gulf.

So drink your drinks and drink 'em slow,
'cause soon you'll all be gone.
As part of a team of a great exploring dream,
let's hope your leaders will know where to go.

Oh Mr Burke do I really have to go?
You see I've got this awful feeling in my bones,
I'm afraid that I won't see my home again,
and I dreamt the dingoes were tearing off my clothes.

Oh yakai yakai yakai yakai yakai,
oh worry worry worry worry me.
I'd much rather stay in the shade at Menindee,
where the old Darling River flows .

I'll give this much to Burke, he was a man of nerve,
but he couldn't pick a bushman from a cove.
To give spell binder Wright a job just on sight,
was asking for trouble from the word go.

So it's away, away we go,
away up north out in the great unknown.
Well whose idea was it to walk across the country ?
I say 'leave the bloody country to the crows'.

Oh yakai yakai yakai yakai yakai,
oh worry worry worry worry me.
I'd much rather stay in the shade at Menindee,
where the old Darling River flows.

Oh in the shade of the pub at Menindee,
where the beer is cold, cold, cold.

After four months of toil and trouble,
from the Gulf to the Cooper we return.
Only to find they'd left nine hours before,
and not a soul to help us in our bind.

Oh Mr Burke where did all the blackfella's go?
Mr Burke, how we gonna make it on our own?
I'd give everything on this day to be four hundred miles away,
with a cold beer sloshing in my mouth.

Oh yakai yakai yakai yakai yakai,
oh worry worry worry worry me.
I'd much rather stay in the shade at Menindee,
where the old Darling River flows.

Oh in the shade of the pub at Menindee,
where the beer is cold, cold, cold,
oh in the shade of the pub at Menindee,
where the beer is cold, cold, cold,
oh in the shade of the pub at Menindee,
where the old Darling River flows.