Distinctively Visual

The ‘Drover’s Wife’ by Henry Lawson

• In ‘The Drover’s Wife’, Lawson acknowledges the hardships
of Australian women living in the bush
• ‘The Drover’s Wife’ is a short story with a simple plot that
emphasises on the character and her experiences
• Narration is in third person, and is mostly written in present
tense
• The story is set in the Australian Bush and is described as
unrelenting, monotonous, isolated, harsh, bleak and uninvit-
ing
• The story uses vernacular colloquialisms, for example,
“Tommy’s skinnin’ me alive if his club.” and “d’yer”, and
sometimes more vulgar terms like “Shet up you little —-!”
and “I’d like to screw their blank necks!” to create authentic-
ity.
• Flashbacks- In her husband’s absence “she fought a bush-
fire”, “a flood”, “the pleura-pneumonia” and “a mad bullock”.
She has also needed to protect herself and the family from
the odd “villainous-looking sundowner”, “gallows-faced
swagman” and black bellied snake. She also finds the time
to shoo the “crows and eagles” from her chickens.
• Metaphor of the dam: The dam breaking: “her heart (is)
nearly broken too, for she (thinks) how her husband would
feel when he (comes) home and (sees) the result of years of
labour swept away. She cries then”- Shows her failures and
that she can’t do everything.
• Pathetic fallacy: The weather and the surrounding landscape
reflect the mood and the appearance of the persona. The de-
scription of the bush reflects the harshness and stress it has
towards the character
• Biblical Allusion: References to the bible may be seen in the
use of the snake/serpent as a symbol of evil. It is seen as the
source of destruction.
• Onomatopoeia: “Bung! The crows leave..” “crash” “Thud,
thud”
• In ‘The Drover’s Wife’, Lawson confronts his readers with the
harsh realities of life in the Australian outback, whilst forc-
ing them to reconsider the role of women
• The coarse language that the children use reflects the harsh-
ness of the environment they are growing up in
• Symbolism: the ‘Young Ladies Journal’ operates as a symbol
of the drover’s wife’s “girlish hopes and aspirations”. How-
ever, along with her youth, these dreams have also died and
been replaced with the reality of living in the bush. Now she
can only vicariously through the magazine- finding “excite-
ment and recreation… in the fashion plates.”
• The flashbacks establish the resilience and stoicism of the
drover’s wife; conveying that the present situation with the
snake is simply another of life’s difficulties that she must en-
dure and ultimately overcome.
• The “worn-out breast” symbolises how much she has given
and how tired she is, whilst the act of kissing her son shows
that despite all the hardship, she still has a “womanly” side-
life in the bush has not hardened her completely.

“In a Dry Season” by Henry Lawson

• The narrator of this story is on a train to Bourke and de-
scribes the people and places he sees along the way. The
reader comes to develop a mental picture of the landscape
both inside and outside the carriage as the narrator de-
scribes the sights outside and tells us about the people and
the stories they tell inside the train
• Lawson conveys a feeling of monotony as the reader comes
to understand that these towns are al very similar. A sense
of desolation and despair about life in the bush is developed.
“Draw a wire fence… Then you’ll have the bush all along the
New South Wales western line from Bathurst on”
• Lawson describes the bush setting in a highly visual way. It
is a harsh, inhospitable environment where nothing comes
easy; people are always ‘trying’ to do things.
• Narration: First person, homodiegetic narration. A travelogue
depicting a short outback train trip to Bourke. The narrator
serves as our tour guide, outlining what we see along the
way
• Imagery
- Animal imagery
- Monotony and sameness of the scenery
- Description of the people
• Vernacular language: “Yer want to go out back, young man,
if yer want to see the country. Yer wanter get away from the
line.” “I don’t wanter; I’ve been there.”
• Irony: The persona describes the setting and the people in a
way that allows us to view them- this in term makes us won-
der what else is there and make conclusions about the envi-
ronment as being uninspiring
• Lawson concentrates on the harsh reality of outback exis-
tence. Both the environment and the people who inhabit it
are rugged and hardened by the elements.
• The harshness if the bush reduces its characters to stereo-
types

“The Loaded Dog” by Henry Lawson

• Three men are mining at a nearby claim and camping in the
bush. After deciding that they’d like to go fishing, they invent
a way to fish using their mining skills, and decide to blow up
the fish in the waterhole. They set about creating a car-
tridge, but before they can test their fishing prowess, the re-
triever steals the lit cartridge, chasing the men with it, be-
fore finally blowing up the mongrel dog in town
• Form: Third person, omniscient narration. Linear structure.
Uses a mix of short sentences and long descriptive para-
graphs
• Dave Regan: motivated by ‘fun’ and when left to his own de-
vices seems o be able to create a whole lot of mayhem
• Andy Page: Dave’s partner in crime
• Jim Bently: Different to the other men, he wasn’t interested
in their ‘damned silliness’
• Tommy: The retriever dog, described as being a black, over-
grown pup “who was always slobbering”
• Juxtaposition: Of an “overgrown pup” with a “vicious mon-
grel” helps us to relate to the shift in tone
• Alliteration: in the “foolish, four-footed mate” reminds us of
his close bond
• Simile: of “tail like a stock whip”, “Jim swung to a sapling
and went up it like a native bear”
• Contrasting adjectives: separate the characterisation of
these dogs: big, black and young with vicious, thieving ca-
nine
• Emotive language: makes us feel dislike for the “yellow”
dog; “sneaking” and “fighting”
• Imagery: “elaborate” instructions to explain the process of
mining and cartridge construction through verbs including
“bound”, “pasted” and “sewed”
• Sentence structure: shifting between long descriptive para-
graphs and short sentences like “Dave got an idea” grabs
the attention of the reader. You immediately feel as though
you have to focus, to lean in closer. links to the oral tradi-
tions of the bush stories are emphasised
• Repetition: “Run, Andy! Run!” increases panic and heightens
tension for the reader
• Australian Idiom: Language that would have been used at
the time, “Don’t roller us!”, adds realism
• Direct Speech: The reader feels as though they are witness
to the story. “Why not blow up the fish in the big waterhole
with a cartridge?” he said. “I’ll try it.”
“The Bush Undertaker” by Henry Lawson
• The dialogue uses vernacular language of the bush to make
the story more realistic. The dialogue uses shortened words
like “em”, “‘an” and “a-campin’” to make the character and
the speech more realistic. To further create authenticity and
a realistic representation of bush language, Lawson uses
words that are common to the bush, but uncommon to those
living in the city.
• “The Bush Undertaker” continues to engage us in the aes-
thetics of landscape and the isolation of the bush and its
ramifications on individuals.
• The vernacular is challenging in this text. The language it-
self reminds us that years away from human company and
polite conversation creates a deviation from the expecta-
tions of language.
• The imagery of the bush has a sense of realism and we can
see the aesthetics of Lawson’s depiction of the landscape as
metaphors for the aridity of the man’s psychological acuity.
The images are at times melancholy, presenting to modern
readers the hostility of the environment in a time when dis-
tance and technology limited human interaction
• The bushman depicted here is presented as a: ‘hatter’, ‘old
man’, ‘carver’, ‘shepherd’, ‘soliloquiser’, and ‘Undertaker’.
Each of the nomenclature presents images that are paradox-
ical and ambiguous. His self-talk dominates the narrative as
does the bush which is personified in terms of its ability to
shift the sanity of those left alone for long periods in its un-
comfortable ‘listening silence’.

“Drifters” by Bruce Dawe

• The poem is about a family that is constantly moving from
place to place.
• The poem is from the perspective of the mother. She does
not want to leave, but it has happened so many times that
she doesn’t even question why and where they were going
• Anaphora: to make the poem fast paced- repetition of the
first word of the lines to show that these events happen over
and over in her life
• Contrast: to show conflicting emotions associated with the
idea of moving
• Automatic reaction from kids revealed through reporting dia-
logue

Connections with Henry Lawson’s short stories:

• The monotony of the towns in ‘In A Dry Season’ connects

with the monotony of moving from place to place in ‘Drifters’

• ‘The Drover’s Wife’ portrays a woman who has no say in

where she gets to live or how she lives her life, and she is re-
sponsible for the farm when the husband is away. In ‘Drifters’
the wife is responsible for the children and has no say in any-
thing
• In ‘Drifters’, ‘In A Dry Season’, ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and ‘The

Bush Undertaker’, the protagonist is not named

• In ‘Drifters’ and ‘The Loaded Dog’, there is a sense of chaos

associated with the dog in each text

‘On the Wallaby Track’ by Frederick McCubbin

• Oil painting depicting a bush family ‘on the wallaby track’-
Australian idiom meaning to travel in search of work
• The painting offers a bleak representation of a family who
are depicted as homeless, camping in the bush- shown
through the image of the tent in the background. It is an im-
age conveying the hardships and struggles of bush life- simi-
lar to Lawson’s concerns in ‘The Drover’s Wife’
• Isolated bush setting- colours are natural and rustic convey-
ing a sense of realism- similar to Lawson’s narrative realism.
McCubbin rejected the methods of the emerging European
abstract artists, deciding to maintain the significance of the
‘subject’ in art as it better conveyed a meaningful national
identity. This links with Lawson’s belief in the realist sketch
story achieving a similar aim.
• Mother and child are the salient objects in the foreground of
the image- slumped against the tree, her forlorn facial ex-
pression in conjunction with the use of offer gaze operates
as an invitation into this world of poverty and hardship
• The mother appears exhausted, unable to bestow attention
upon her infant, who is depicted as trying to crawl from her
lap- she is also gazing in the opposite direction to the baby,
which provides a similarity to the ‘Drover’s Wife’.
• The direction of her gaze creates an invisible vector to the
bushman- her husband- in the background of the painting. He
is depicted at a distance, proportionally smaller to the
woman, his face obscured as he is preoccupied with boiling
the billy.
• Through the use of proximity, the artist conveys the emo-
tional detachment between husband and wife- a conse-
quence of hardship
• Also, the responder can only connect empathetically with
the woman, whose facial expression clearly conveys her
weariness- similar to the empathy we are encouraged to feel
with the drover’s wife.
• The ground separating husband and wife is represented as a
pathway, creating a visible vector connecting the foreground
to the background of the painting. This, in combination with
the clearing created by the positioning of the trees in the
centre of the background, conveys the impression of never-
ending bushland. This heightens the feeling that the family
are trapped in the vastness and monotony of the Australian
landscape, amplifying their struggles.
‘The Football Game’ by Russell Drysdale
Techniques:
• Colour- desert-like, earthy, warm colours (suggest content-

edness despite the environment), black closing in (impend-

ing darkness)
• Weather- looks like its changing. Pathetic fallacy- weather

represents something in the text (symbolic)- going to change

soon
• Shapes
—> few straight lines
—> juxtaposition- of the straight lines man has imposed on na-
ture against the curved and uneven lines of nature
—> shape of the boy/man echoes nature, the shape of the tree
—> woman’s posture parallels shape of chimney
—> synergy: a synergy between people and nature, not quite
at one with nature but accepting each other
—> bush is supporting the woman physically
• Depicts mother and child in vast, empty landscape. Although

they’re isolated, they’re at one with their surroundings.

Man’s arms echo dead tree shape. Solidity and strength of
the woman match the harsh and alien environment.
• Resources limited. Use what you have and make the most of

it
• Suggests that the woman is the strength hat ’s holding the

family together through the proportional size of the woman

Connection to Lawson’s stories:

• ‘The Drover’s Wife’

—> Woman has the responsibility of keeping the family to-

gether and taking care of them
—> Boring lives of women
—> Main focus of living
—> Doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to the children
—> Absent father
• ‘In A Dry Season’

—> Isolation connects to the monotony depicted in these

texts
• ‘The Loaded Dog’

—> Humour/fun/larrikins in a harsh environment

—> Contentment of relationships
• ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and ‘In A Dry Season’

—> Weather harsh, punishing, but also rewarding