Am    Em    Am
Verse 1:
              Am
I’ve seen trouble in my life
       G
I’ve three kids and a wife
   F                        G            Am          Em  Am
A house to fix and edges to maintain
             Am
I’ve put kids on the potty
        G
The carpet there is spotty
          F                                   G                       Am   Em   Am
And I know which kid caused each and every stain

Verse 2:

I’ve lived through two world wars
And the one against the Boers
And of pain, my knees have given me my share
Sometimes when things got tough
You’d think it was enough
To hasten the degrading of my hair
…
But, there is something you should know
That many years ago
I did something that made me sick inside
When I think of it, I wince
And I’ve regretted ever since
The day I wore my inside thongs outside

Chorus:
           Am         G
Inside thongs – outside,
        F                     G                    Am       Em  Am
The day I wore my inside thongs outside.
           Am         G
Inside thongs – outside,
        F                     G                    Am       Em  Am
The day I wore my inside thongs outside.

Verse 3:

T’was a fine & sunny morn
And outside on the lawn
My kids were playing in the bright sunshine
I said to Jude, “Bye bye,
To the backyard I must fly
To hang these plastic bags on the line.”
……..
In my haste I’d forgot
To check which thongs I’d got
To put on to foil the bindi-eyes
I’d stepped into a pair
That lay innocently there
Inside-thongs in outside-thong disguise

Chorus:

Inside thongs – outside,
Inside-thongs in outside-thong disguise
Inside thongs – outside,
The day I wore my inside thongs outside.

Verse 4:

I cannot help it if
My skin is sensitive
And coarsely woven fabrics I can’t bear
And I can feel the snag
From that sharpish nylon tag
They sew into my Target underwear
…
It gets me quite upset
If the get my bathmat wet
Cos’ that is not what God made bathmats for
But the strife wet bathmats give
Is nothing compared with
The pain of mixing thong types at the door

Chorus:

Inside thongs – outside,
Don’t get your thong types mixed up at the door
Inside thongs – outside,
The day I wore my inside thongs outside.

Last Verse:

But now I’m getting old
And my feet are always cold
There’s only one thing that I can’t abide
Is that when I’m in a hurry
I’ll cause myself some worry
I’ll go and wear my inside thongs outside
……
Now I visit my sons
And my daughter just for fun
And you know the thing that fills my heart with pride
Is to see on the floor
Next to each back door
A special pair of thongs just for outside

Chorus:

Inside thongs – outside,
A special pair of thongs just for outside
Inside thongs – outside,
The day I wore my inside thongs outside.
…
Inside thongs – outside,
The day I wore my inside thongs outside.
Inside thongs – outside,
The day I wore my inside thongs outside.

There was movement in Bill’s brain cell ‘cos the word had passed around
‘Bout the poets competition on the coast
So he saddled up his bicycle, his thesaurus and his pen
And shocking rhymes more hideous than most

Judges were invited – contestants were excited
To the balladeers there was no better day
The crowd were mostly on the pension and were too polite to mention
They were only there to win the club meat tray

One by one the bards recited their epics ’bout the bush
And they listed all the hardships on the land
In all there were six bushfires, eight landslides and ten floods
4 snake bites and dying farming hand

The audience grew restless at this tirade from the stage
They’d had about as much as they could take
But when Rhymin’ Bill from Broken Hill stood and slowly climbed the stairs
They knew their very reason was at stake

He opened with a joke even Moses thought was old
He hammered them with gruesome metaphors
His onomatopoeia hit them with a crash
As they made an earnest bee-line for the doors

He talked of kookaburras and of drunken drovers’ folly
Bushrangers, bankers, drought and flooding rain
The beauty of the blue gum and the bleat of jumbucks jolly
His monotone above the cries of pain

Through strained and strident voice Bill would begin another stanza
No sign showed he of ever growing weary
But blustered on and on (and on and on) through this extravaganza
Of doggerel, deplorable and dreary

His voice it was a droning and his similes needed honing
Like a piece of Jarrah timber in a lathe
His alliterative expansion and appalling grasp of scansion
Came second only his to complete contempt for rhyme and metre

Tho’ sunlight failed and chill winds blew and bodies lay about
Continued still the dreadful recitation
Through howls of startled children, souls tormented, madman’s shout
And slurps of mouth to mouth resuscitation

The ladies down from Roma had slipped into a coma
A minister from Forbes prayed with his wife
An ancient chap from Trundle had nearly lost his bundle
But flat batteries in his ear piece saved his life

The compere was convulsing – Bill’s jugulars were pulsing
Recent migrants made their way back to the wharf
Bill’s mike stand grip it tightened and the officials all were frightened
That they’d have to get the troops to get him orf

Bill’s voice grew even higher than a primary school girls’ choir
All but the sick and dying had long since fled
Then, as if on a mission from the Cultural Commission,
An Australia Council agent shot him dead

There’s a moral in this story that if you seek the glory
Of boring others senseless with your verse
That if you die reciting the devil he’ll be skiting
By sending someone else who’s even worse.