Meet me at Giardinetto in the Valley,
just take the trolley bus from town,
I'll be finished work by seven,
plenty of sorrows to be drowned;
Sally took the bus to Melbourne,
don't think I'll see her face again,
She was stormy like the weather,
in this big country town.
Down at the Creek, the mid-week gallops,
where they sort the real men from the boys,
When two pots cost a dollar,
and there wasn't so much noise;
Down on Queen Street on a Sunday,
there's just two sailors and a girl,
If they could find a place to buy a bottle,
there'd be much more to enjoy.

Chorus:
I used to like the city better, thirty/forty years ago;
We'd sit outside on the veranda,
drinking rum and talking slow,
When the purple jacarandas,
drop their petals on the ground,
That's the time that I remember,
that big country town.

I caught the ferry back to Main Street,
there's fellas sleeping in the park,
Beneath the blanket of the summer,
they're safe and warm there in the dark,
Back then when no-one locked their windows,
we'd sometimes sleep with nothing on,
The mozzie coils burned down at midnight,
somewhere an old blue heeler barked;
And now the 20th century's over,
it's hard not to hanker for the past,
When every suburb looked like Shorncliffe,
but we knew it wouldn't last;
The trolley buses went to scrap-yards,
they say vandals burned the grand-stand down,
But storms still strip the jacarandas,
in this big country town.