HENRY LAWSON'S PORTRAYAL OF

AUSTRALIANISM

by

Mayumi Miyamoto
宮本まゆみ

A Dissertation
Presented to
The Graduate School of Language, Communication, and Culture
Kwansei Gakuin University

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy

March 2012
 Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

Henry Lawson's Portrayal of

Australianism

by
Mayumi Miyamoto

Members of Evaluation Committee

Major Advisor:

Associate Advisor:

Associate Advisor:

Associate Advisor:

1
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the late Professor

Emeritus Gen Ohinata for accepting me as his student and providing me
with valuable advice even though my theme, Australian literature, was not
very popular in Japan. I also thank Professor Kazuhiko Tamura for taking
over the role of "major advisor", and Professors Naoto Sugiyama and
Kazuhiko Sekitani, for their appropriate advice. I am very grateful to
Associate Professor Jun Nagatomo for his kind help.
I give my many thanks to Assistant Professor Shirley Leane of Tottori
University for her help in checking my English and giving useful advice. I
would like to convey special thanks to Doctor Peter Kirkpatrick of the
University of Sydney for sharing his time with me in his office and the
important advice he gave at that time.
Many thanks to my family, including my mother, uncle, and
sister-in -law for their kind cooperation. Thanks also to my friends who
often encouraged me to continue my study, especially when I felt weak and
tired.
Finally, I would like to say "THANK YOU!" to my own family, my
husband and two sons, for their patience and support during the almost ten
years of my study about Henry Lawson.

11
 ABSTRACT

Henry Lawson's Portrayal of

Australianism

by
Mayumi Miyamoto

Henry Lawson (1867-1922) is a well-known Australian writer. In his

time, his poems and short stories describing the Australian bush and the
people who lived there, were very popular. When he started his writing
career in 1887, Australia was celebrating the centenary of its first European
immigration, and the growing numbers of Australia-born citizens had
already developed their own characteristics and mannerisms. Lawson
illustrated "Australianism" or what it is that characterises people in
Australia, through not a few bush characters who appear in his writings.
For Lawson, the Australian bush, an embodiment of the Australian
climate and environment, was the primary source of "Australianism". It
was where he was born and lived in his younger days, and later, where he
matured as a writer as well as a person.
In his writings, Lawson defines the bush as the cause of three main
woes: solitude, madness, and death. The characters in his poems and
stories, on the whole, suffer from these woes as a result of the harsh
environment, and they are usually unsuccessful in their lives. In Lawson's
writings, the bush is an absolute entity that people never overcome, nor

111
escape from, no matter where they live.
Lawson highlights "mateship", a unique form of friendship among men
living in the bush, as a way of getting relief from their hardship. He also
shows how to enjoy life, even in hard circumstances, in his humorous stories,
and suggests a human relationship for people living in the bush, separate
from "mateship", in his family stories. No Lawson character becomes a
winner in the bush. These are all important factors which characterise the
people living in Australia to be "Australian".
The beginnings of the nation with convict transportation and Irish
immigrants, as well as the Australian bush were also major factors which
gave Australians their own characteristics. However, Lawson did not
positively write about either the convicts or the Irish immigrants. His lack
of characters representing these two important groups conveys far more
about typical Australians of his time, than if he had actually written about
them.
Lawson insists in his poem, "The Men Who Made Australia", that the
bush people are those who really made their country and should be praised
for their exertions. People, in turn, would have become more aware of
their characteristics as Australians by reading Lawson's poems and short
stories.
Henry Lawson appeared during a time of transition when Australia
changed from a British settlement to a federated nation, and he contributed
to the awareness of the people as new citizens independent of their native
country. Today, Australia has greatly changed from Lawson's times and
has become a multi ·cultural country, however, Lawson and his literature
will live on and be remembered whenever the Australians have a need to
know where they come from and what they should aim for in the future.

IV
 Contents

Members of Evaluation Committee ...................................................... i

Acknowledgement ........................................................................... ii
Abstract ........................................................................................ iii
Introduction ..................................................................................... 1
Chapter I ...... oo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . oo • . . . ••• . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . • • .. 10
Change of the Characters in Lawson's Writings
Chapter II .................................................................................... 25
The Australian Bush and Lawson's Bush Characters
Chapter III ................................................................................. 43
Deaths in "The Hero of Redclay"
Chapter IV. . . . .. . .. ... . .. . .. .. . ... ... ... ... . .. ... ... . .. ... . .. ... . . . ... ... . .. ... . .. ... . .. ... 56
Mateship Described in Lawson's Writings
Chapter V ........................... oo . . . . . . . . . . . oo • oo .OO to • • oo oo •• to oo • • oo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Humour in Lawson's Bush Stories
Chapter VI ................................................................................. 91
Joe Wilson, a Family Bushman
Chapter VII ................................................................................. 110
Convicts and the Irish for Lawson's Literature
Conclusion .................................................................................. 127
Notes ..................................... t. t •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 131
Bibliography ................................................................................ 147

v
 Introduction

Henry Archibald Lawson (1867-1922) started his writing career

almost a hundred years after the first landing of the British fleet in
Australia. That was also the time when Australia started to have her own
characteristics and foster the culture, apart from Britain. 1 This thesis will
explore the ethos of Australia or the "Australianism", expressed in Lawson's
writing. In particular, some characters in his poems and stories, which
seem to represent Australian characteristics with their words, deeds, and
thoughts, will be examined.
This thesis is not about Australian identity, but rather is about
character. Identity is established, or created by the person concerned,
whereas character is often more accurately assessed by an onlooker.
Generally speaking, character is acquired unconsciously· and people are not
always aware of the habits they have developed. Character traits are
sometimes grasped more clearly when observed from a distance.
Henry Lawson was an important literary figure in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century Australia. He was born in 1867 to an
Australian mother, Louisa, and a Norwegian father, Peter, in the small town
of Grenfell in the state of New South Wales. He wrote his first poem in
1887, when Australia was still a colony of the British Empire, which began
in 1788 when the first British fleet arrived in Sydney. Lawson wrote many
works, in both verse and prose, including masterpieces and failures, during
his thirty-five-year writing career.
Lawson is generally thought to have been prosperous only for about
the first fifteen years of his writing career. In particular, his successful
years virtually coincided with the final vital years before Australian

1
Federation. 2 In the new, twentieth century, he continued to write poems
and stories, but unfortunately, he could not produce as many masterpieces
as in the early period. In his later years, he separated from his wife and
children, was hit with several lawsuits, and was in and out of gaol and
mental institutions. In the end, he became a penniless drunkard, and even
with support from his friends, barely survived until his death from cerebral
hemorrhage in 1922.
During the time Lawson was in his prime as a writer, Australia was in
the final period of colonisation. The demographic structure of the country
at that time was completely different from today. The total population of
Australia, excluding Aborigines, by the end of 1900 was approximately
3,765,000, and by 1901, almost 77.1% of the population was
Australian -born. 3 Some of the ancestors of the Australian· born people had
been immigrants, others were convicts, mostly from Britain and Ireland.
There were also immigrants from other European and Asian countries, but
the numbers were very small at that time. 4
New South Wales, where Lawson was born and lived, had a population
of over 1,350,000 in 1901. 5 The percentage of the state's population who
were Australian-born was similar to that of the whole country.6 In 1891, in
New South Wales, 52.2% of the immigrant population were English born,
13% were Scottish, 26.3% Irish, 1.8% Wales. Other Europeans included
Germans (3.3%), and Scandinavians (1.6%). 7 The situation was almost the
same in the other states. 8 These statistics show that the ethnic structure
of the society to which Lawson belonged was strongly Anglo-Celtic. This
racial structure did not change so much until a few years after World War II,
and the percentage of Anglo-Celtic people in the total population of
approximately 7.6 million was as high as 99.5 % in 1947. 9
Lawson lived in this society, and from his careful observation and

2
colourful imagination, he created a variety of interesting characters.
Lawson liked to write about people in socially weak positions. Most of all,
his enthusiasm was focused on describing people who lived and worked in
the severe conditions of the Australian bush. Lawson's poems and stories
were widely read at that time because his sympathetic attitude to
hard-working people touched the hearts of the general population both in
the bush and in cities.
For several decades after Federation in 1901, partly because of its
small population, Australia's national security was sometimes threatened,
especially by the Japanese during the Second World War. As a result, the
government decided to accept non· British immigrants more positively than
before. 10 Mter the Vietnam War, they also accepted boat people.
Consequently, Australia has become a leading multi·cultural nation today.
Present day Australians seem to regard Lawson, sometimes reluctantly, as
a reminder of bygone days when their country was under the sovereignty of
the British Empire, before it became federated and particular social values,
including the White Australia policy, were introduced. Actually, Lawson
became the subject of a talk in the country when the controversial One
Nation party led by Pauline Hanson, called for a return to "White Australia"
in the 1996 federal election. 11
Today, for many people in Australia's modern multicultural society,
Henry Lawson is a largely forgotten writer from the past. However, it is
notable that Lawson and his works can be seen, not frequently though, in
some recently issued books. For example, City Bushman, which was
issued in 2004, is a book about Henry Lawson and his reputation.
Christopher Lee, the writer of the book, reviews the influence of Lawson's
reputation on society from three perspectives: a) during his life, b) after his
death, and c) on local society. Lee also devotes not a few pages to the

3
political use of Lawson's reputation by Australian society. Another recent
book, Serious Frolic, a collection of essays on Australian humour, was issued
in 2009, and the book mentions Henry Lawson and his works, including an

essay about Lawson's famous short story, "The Loaded Dog" .

It is remarkable that Henry Lawson and his works still remain in the
minds of Australian people today even though he was not necessarily what
is called a literary master. Lawson wrote several hundred poems and short
stories, but he did not write a novel, and this may be one reason why he did
not become known worldwide. However, he definitely became a national
writer in Australia because he vividly described people and their
surroundings during a period of rapid growth in Australia, often collecting
ideas for his writing from his personal experiences. Christopher Lee, who
is also a specialist in Henry Lawson and his literature, states: "The stature
of Henry Lawson in the cultural history of Australia is due to the historical
utility of his reputation for licensing various forms of social identity."12
Apart from Australia's identity, Lawson's popularity seems to be due to the
Australianism which he heartily implanted in his works, especially with his
attractive characters.
In 1901, Lawson composed a poem, "The Men Who Made Australia".
As the subtitle. of the poem, "Written on the occasion of the Royal Visit to
Australia, 1901", indicates, the poem describes one of the events concerning
Federation when the Duke of Cornwall and York (the future King George V)
came to Australia in May, 1901. 13 Lawson did not witness the event
because he was far from home in London at that time. Therefore, he wrote
about it only using his imagination.
Although the poem is not regarded as one of his best, nor has it been
taken up by critics so often, it is worth reading to know Lawson's views on
people he believed to be the true Australians. In the poem, Lawson fIrst

4
criticises snobby people who are proud to be attending the event and
demonstrate their cheap flattery of the British Empire by the festive mood
with which they welcome the royal visitors. At the same time, he points
out that the people who should be present at the event, are not invited:
There'll be royal times in Sydney for the Cuff and Collar Push,
There'll be lots of dreary drivel and clap-trap
From the men who own Australia, but who never knew the Bush,
And who could not point their runs out on the map.
o the daily Press will grovel as it never did before,
There'll be many flags of welcome in the air,
And the Civil Service poet, he shall write odes by the score -
But the men who made the land will not be there. (1-8)
He, then, emphasises that there used to be the pains and sacrifices of
the people who were indispensable to the development of Australian
colonies, and that their hard work enabled their employers to be rich and
allowed the Australian economy to grow:
Call across the blazing sand wastes of the Never-Never Land!
There are some who will not answer yet awhile;
Some whose bones rot in the mulga 14 or lie bleaching on the sand
Died of thirst to win the land another mile.
Thrown from horses, ripped by cattle, lost on deserts; and the
weak,
Mad through loneliness or drink (no matter which),
Drowned in floods or dead of fever by the sluggish slimy creek-
These are men who died to make the Wool-Kings rich.

Call across the scrubby ridges where they clear the barren soil,
And the gaunt Bushwomen share the work of men -

5
 Toil and loneliness for ever - hardship, loneliness and toil -
Where the brave drought-ruined farmer starts again!
Call across the boundless sheep-runs of a country cursed for
sheep
Call across the awful scrublands west of Bourke!
But they have no time to listen - they have scarcely tilne to sleep
For the men who conquer deserts have to work. (17-32 )
In the poem, Lawson suggests that they are drovers, farmers, women, and
others who have been working hard in the bush, toiling for their country,
sometimes at the cost of their own lives.
Finally, the poet gives something like a prediction for the country's
future:
For the sons of all Australia, they were born to conquer fate -
And, where charity and friendship are sincere,
Where a sinner is a brother and a stranger is a mate,
There the future of a nation's written clear. (53-56)

There are men amongst the Bushmen who were born to save the
land!
And they'll take their places sternly by-and-by. (63-64)

And wherever go the billy 15, water-bag and frying-pan,

They are drafting future histories of state! (79-80)
Lawson is definite that "the sons of Australia" or "men among the bushmen"
will shoulder the future of the country. He also explains that they are
"where charity and friendship are sincere," which means that those men
believe in "mate ship" . "A sinner is a brother and a stranger is a Inate"
means that many of them are probably sons of convicts or migrants, or both.

6
 The poem, as a whole, seems to be aimed at raising awareness of
independent Australians and to make readers think again about who the
people are who made Australia, and who genuine Australians are. It is
difficult, of course, to define "an Australian" individually because one
hundred Australians could have one hundred different characters.
However, it is logical to assume that people develop some characteristics in
common as a result of living extended periods in the same social
environment. Therefore, it is natural to think that by the time Lawson
wrote this poem, there were already a considerable number of people who
had potential characteristics which were to develop into Australian later on.
These traits in Lawson's characters in his poems and stories, may give us
some hints to help understand what Australianism really is.
In Lawson's writings, especially his short stories, people who live or
stay in the Australian bush for their livelihood are called bush people, or
bushmen and bushwomen. Russel Ward explains the historical
background of the origin of the Australian bushmen and their ethos:
... that the distinctively Australian ethos which developed before
1851, sprang primarily from convict, working-class, Irish and
native-born sources, and that it was associated particularly with
up·country life. In all these respects the first bushrangers were
more 'Australian' than anybody else .... , if bushmen were the
'true Australians', runway convicts were the first of the genus.
The very word 'bushrangers' had become a part of the language
by 1806 .... By the 1820's the phrase 'to take to the bush' had
become a cliche, but the word 'bushman' did not become common
until twenty years later.I6
Mter setting up colonial centres, such as Sydney, it seemed natural
that people would go to the outback. Especially, after the discovery of gold

7
in 1851, the number of fortune seekers who headed to the harsh interior of
the country increased tremendously, but these people are not covered under
the term, "bush people". Ward explains that "the bushmen" are "the
outback employees, the semi -nomadic drovers, shepherds, shearers,
bullock-drivers, stockmen, boundary-riders, station-hands and others of the
pastoral industry".l7 Lawson's bush characters are people who were
engaged in those occupations.
This thesis will examine the following two questions: 1) How Henry
Lawson describes people, who, he believed, had made Australia, in his
works and 2) How Lawson expresses their characteristics as Australians in
his works? Specifically, Chapter One reviews how Lawson's characters
change from his early years to the later ones, with the change of Lawson
himself as a person as well as a writer, living in the transitional times of
Australia. Chapter '!\vo studies how Lawson describes the great influence
of the Australian bush upon people in his writings. Chapter Three reads
one of Lawson's short stories, "The Hero of Redclay" and considers the
deaths of the bush characters in the story_ Chapter Four takes up
"mateship", one of the characteristics which symbolise the Australian
culture or "Australianism", and clarifies its peculiarity, especially
comparing it with human relationships of the Japanese townspeople in the
nineteenth century. Chapter Five discusses humour described in Lawson's
bush stories, and also examines how it is characterised. Chapter Six
focuses on Joe Wilson, one of Lawson's popular characters, and explores the
importance of this character and its role in Lawson's stories. Finally,
Chapter Seven deals with convicts and the Irish who both had a great
influence on the early period of Australia and helped the country own its
particularity, as the Australian bush did. This chapter also discusses how
those people are related to Lawson's literature.

8
 It is important to note that this thesis will not discuss the culture and
literature of Aboriginal people, the original inhabitants of Australia, who
had lived on the continent long before Europeans discovered it. This thesis
IS about "Australianism" of Henry Lawson who lived in an
Anglo'Celt"oriented society although Aboriginal people have their own
unique culture, and the people and their culture have certainly influenced
European culture in Australia.

9
 Chapter I
Change of the Characters in Lawson's Writings

The style of Henry Lawson's description changed in the course of his

writing career, especially in the description of people, or the characters
appearing in his poems and stories. His description in the early years is so
vague that his characters seem to be impersonal, or not to have their
individualities. In the later years, however, it is more specific and his
characters are lively, having their attractive personalities. This chapter
will discuss why and how they changed, studying some specific characters
in his works and also Lawson's personal experiences in the bush.

Lawson lived in Sydney mainly in his life after moving to the city with
his mother and siblings when he was sixteen. There, he met political
people who gathered around his mother, and as a result of their influence,
he composed several works about social reform in the very early years of his
writing career. As typically seen in his masterpiece poem, "Faces in the

Street", Lawson does not tell of a particular individual in the poem, but of
ordinary masses living under far from pleasant conditions in central Sydney.
People are described as part of a picture in which the poet tried to "draw"
the truth about the transitional period heading towards a new Australia.
People Lawson described in those early days seem to be impersonal.
This is one of the notable characteristics in his early works, in both verse
and prose. Andy, the character in "Andy's Gone With Cattle" (1888), is a
typical example. This poem is about a drover called Andy, but it gives
almost no information about him apart from his name. The narrator, who
sounds like a member of Andy's family, talks about their situation and
complains about Andy's absence:

10
 Our Andy's gone to battle now
'Gainst Drought, the red marauder:
Our Andy's gone with cattle now
Across the Queensland border.

He's left us in dejection now;

Our hearts with him are roving.
It's dull on this selection now,
Since Andy went a-droving. (1-8)
Interestingly, the narrator uses the pronouns "our" and "us" instead of "my"
and "me", which means that the feelings come not only from the narrator,
but also from all the family members. The tone of the narrator's voice also
suggests that Andy is the family leader who supports the rest of the family
financially as well as mentally:
Who now shall wear the cheerful face
In times when things are slackest?
And who shall whistle round the place
When Fortune frowns her blackest? (9-12)
In the poem, the narrator keeps on telling us how much the family
members are concerned about Andy and how much they hope his safe
coming back home soon. However, the narrator does not give any details
about Andy, not even his age, looks, or personality:
Poor Aunty's looking thin and white;
And Uncle's cross with worry;
And poor old Blucher howls all night
Since Andy left Macquarie. (21-24)

In the sequel, "Andy's Return", which was written just one month after
"Andy's Gone With Cattle", there is still very little information about Andy,

11
except for his appearance when he finally comes home:
With pannikins all rusty,
And billy burnt and black,
And clothes all torn and dusty,
That scarcely hide his back;
With sun·cracked saddle-leather,
And knotted greenhide rein,
And face burnt brown with weather,
Our Andy's home again!

His unkempt hair is faded

With sleeping in the wet,
He's looking old and jaded;
But he is hearty yet.
With eyes sunk in their sockets -
But merry as of yore;
With big cheques in his pockets,
Our Andy's home once more! (1-16)
Lawson wrote "Middleton's Rouseabout" in 1890 and this poem gives
us a lot of physical information about a character called Andy. However,
according to Colin Roderick, this Andy is a different person; he is Andy Page
who later appears as a mate of Dave Regan in some of Lawson's short
stories. 1
"Andy's Gone With Cattle" does not seem to tell us about the drover
himself, but tells more about how his family misses him while he is away.
And what is more, it tells about how hard the life of people living in the
Australian bush generally was at that time. In other words, Andy, the
character of the poem, only plays a role as a part of a picture which depicts

12
the harsh environment of the bush in Australia.
As for the impersonality of the characters, "The Teams" is another

good example. This poem was written in 1889 and along with "Andy's
Gone With Cattle", is another of Lawson's masterpieces:
A cloud of dust on the long white road,
And the teams go creeping on
Inch by inch with the weary load;
And by the power of the green-hide goad
The distant goal is won.

With eyes half shut to the blinding dust,

And necks to the yokes bent low,
The beasts are pulling as bullocks must;
And the shining tires might almost rust
While the spokes are turning slow.

With face half-hid 'neath a broad-brimmed hat

That shades from the heat's white waves,
And shouldered whip with its green-hide plait,
The driver plods with a gait like that
Of his weary, patient slaves. (1-15)
The poem makes us imagine a beautiful painting in our minds which
describes a scene of cattle pulling wagons and a drover organizing his stock.
Like the previous poem, "Andy's Gone With Cattle", this poem has almost
no information about the driver (drover). Even his name is unknown.
Lawson's descriptions of what the driver says and does are so vivid that it is
easy for us to visualize the driver's movement:
He'll sometimes pauses as a thing of form

13
 In front of a settler's door,
And ask for a drink, and remark, "It's warm,"

Or say, "There's signs of a thunderstorm;"

But he seldom utters more. (21-25)

However, the driver's words are not specific enough for us to be able to
imagine his exact personality. What the driver looks like also remains

vague.
This lack of information about personal details is also found in

Lawson's prose. Lawson describes the female character of "The Drover's

Wife" in the same manner. "The Drover's Wife" was written in 1892. It is
a short story, only ten pages long, but is undoubtedly the most popular story
that the author ever wrote. The dranlatis personae in the story are the
wife, her four children, a dog, and a snake. The other characters including
her husband, who is away from home, appear only in the wife's recollection.

The story is about an incident which happened to her and her children in a
short period of about twelve hours. One day, a snake COlnes and hides
somewhere in the house. The wife watches out for the reptile all night long
to keep it away from her children. She reminisces about a lot of past
hardships until she finally finds the snake and kills it.
The wife has no name; she is always called "the drover's wife". Her
age is also unknown, but judging from the age of her children, she is

probably somewhere around thirty. In contrast to the two poems already

mentioned, "The Drover's Wife" gives quite a lot of information about the

woman. Her strength as a bushwoman can be learned through her actions

to protect her children from danger, and at the same time her weaknesses,
through the stories about her past failures. However, the wife still lacks

reality. She is not described as a woman with specific personality, but

described as one of many typical women who lived in the Australian bush at

14
that time. Just like Andy or the driver in "The Teams", the drover's wife is
a model through which the author expresses the difficulties and bitterness
suffered by people living in the bush.
That Lawson had not had enough experience as a person himself was,
probably, one of the reasons why he could not produce an image of a
character with a strong personality. He was born and lived in the bush
until he was sixteen. He, as the eldest child of the family, mainly helped
his family, especially his father, doing farm work. He, then, observed
people such as his parents, relatives, and their friends while he was doing
his everyday work. He must have seen bushmen, drovers, and probably
the drovers' wives, but he was too young to be a drover himself. Therefore,
most of the bush characters Lawson described in his early works are
probably no more than products of his imagination, given his limited
experience. Brian Matthews explains the reason for obscurity in the
descriptions of the wife in "The Drover's Wife": "... Lawson, it seems, had
simply not developed his craft to that point (though the whole concept of
'The Drover's Wife' shows it is coming within his scope)."2
The characters described in Lawson's works gradually changed into
those with strong personalities like Mitchell, Dave Regan, and Joe Wilson.
The changing description of his characters seems to have been influenced by
two events which happened to the writer in 1892. One is a famous debate,
about the Australian bush, with 'Banjo' Paterson (1864-1941) which was
published in the Bulletin from July to October. The other event is
Lawson's journey to the outback, near the state border between New South
Wales and Queensland.
In the debate, Lawson insisted on his viewpoint of the bush and
Paterson replied with his own views expressed in the form ofverse. 3 Their
views of the bush were completely opposite, probably as a result of their

15
different backgrounds, especially in childhood. Lawson grew up in a poor
family, hence his overall impression of the bush was negative. Paterson
was also born in the bush, but went to school in the city and visited home
only on holidays, which left him with many good childhood memories. It
was probably difficult for Paterson, therefore, to understand the hardships
which Lawson had experienced growing up in rural Australia.
Paterson's poem, "Clancy of The Overflow" was written at about the
same time as Lawson's "Andy's Gone With Cattle" and "The Teams".
Paterson's poem clearly expresses his different attitudes to the bush:
I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan,
years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just 'on spec', addressed as follows, 'Clancy, of The Overflow'.

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,

(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in
tar)
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote
it:
'Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know
where he are.'

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy

Gone a-droving 'down the Cooper' where the Western drovers
go;

As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them

singing,

16
 For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never
know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices
greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.
(1-16)

The setting where the narrator is thinking of someone is the same as that of
"Andy's Gone With Cattle", and the descriptions of the drovers' journeys are
similar to those of "The Teams". However, Paterson's poem gives a much
more positive impression than Lawson's. For example, the narrator writes
to Clancy, and receives an answer from Clancy's mate. However, in
Lawson's poem, there is no connection between the narrator and Andy until
Andy comes back home in "Andy's Return". The acoustic impression of
Paterson's poem is also different from that of "The Teams". There are
Clancy's singing, the kindly greetings of bush people, the sounds of breezes,
and songs of a river: the sounds of joy. In Lawson's poem, the sounds are
the drover's shouts, the cracking of whips, and the bellowing of cattle: the
sounds of despair.
Lawson started his journey to the outback in the middle of the debate
with Paterson. During the journey, Lawson had time to think about what
the bush and the bushmen meant to him. The journey was to ascertain
whether his opinions in the debate were correct or not. He wrote about his
experiences in the bush in letters to his aunt, Emma, during the journey.
In a letter dated September the 21st, 1892, he mentioned his impression of
the countryside he saw from the train window: "The bush between here and

17
 Bathurst is horrible. I was right, and Banjo [Paterson] wrong."4 His
remarks reveal that Lawson had been uncertain about his opinions during
the debate, and wanted to confirm that he was right. He also told his aunt
about his first impression of Bourke: "Country very dry and dull, but I am
agreeably disappointed with Bourke. It is a much nicer town than I
thought it would be."5 It is interesting that he admitted that his
knowledge about the bush was not as accurate as he had thought.
Lawson set off on the journey with a train ticket and five pounds in
cash, heading toward Bourke, an outback town in north·western New South
Wales. In the bush, Lawson tramped, worked, camped out, and was often
hungry. He spent time alone, was sometimes with some companions, and
was away for about nine months. The journey was very hard for him
. because the bush conditions were more severe than he had ever experienced
before. Mter staying in Bourke for two months, he had two long tramping
trips along the Darling River, one before Christmas and the other after.
Those trips were from the end of November to the beginning of February
and the whole walk amounted to more than five hundred kilometres. 6 He
wrote to his aunt during those trips. One letter, dated January 16th, 1893,
was sent from Hungerford, a town located over the border between New
South Wales and Queensland, reporting Lawson's difficult days in the bush:
You can have no idea of the horrors of the country out here.
Men tramp and beg and live like dogs. It is two months since I
slept in what you can call a bed. We walk as far as we can ...
But it would take a year to tell you all about my wanderings in
the wilderness. 7
Lawson criticises bushmen in his early letter to his aunt, calling them
"The biggest liars that ever the Lord created".8 In the final letter dated
February 6th in the same year from Bourke, he made an interesting

18
comment about squatters: "A squatter who knew me gave me as much
tucker as I could carry, when I was coming down, and a pound to help me
along Squatters are not all bad."9 For Lawson, who came from a poor
family with little property, squatters were wealthy people for whom he
usually felt antipathy. During the trip, however, he realised that he had
been biased against them. Unlike his mother, Louisa, who was aggressive
and strong-hearted, Aunt Emma, an elder sister of Louisa, was one of
Lawson's favourite relatives, and he was able to tell her his honest feelings
about the bush in his letters.
Lawson had negative feelings about the bush since his childhood, and
his feelings likely became stronger during his outback journey. Denton
Prout quotes A.G. Stephens, editor of the Bulletin, in order to explain how
the bush experience influenced Lawson: "Lawson hates the bush; ... His six
months' journey to the Queensland border in 1892 ... was like the journey of
a damned soul swagging it through purgatory; and Lawson persists in
looking at Australia through the memories of those six months." 10 In
addition, Colin Roderick points out that Lawson came to have two opposing
feelings about the bush after his experience: "And Lawson was to remain all
his life in a confusing relationship of mingled love and hate towards it [the
bush]." 11
Apart from those hard experiences in the bush, what greatly
influenced Lawson and his literature was his personal contact with people
in Bourke. Soon after he arrived in the town, Lawson met with some men
involved in local politics and composed some poems for them. He also
made the acquaintance of local members of the Union. 12 Lawson's contact
with the Union members certainly inspired him to create many
masterpieces, including "The Union Buries Its Dead" and "That There Dog
0' Mine", both written in 1893, and "Send Round the Hat" and "That Pretty

19
Girl in the ArlllY" which were written in 1901.
Lawson had tramping trips along the Darling River with two men.
One of them was eighteen-year-old James William Gordon, who was looking
for a job in Bourke. The other was Ernest de Guinney, a Russian aristocrat
who is thought to be the model of "Dr Lebinski", a character in "The Hero of
Redclay" (1899). The companionship with those men as well as the Union
members in the outback journey trained Lawson as a writer. He turned
his attention to humanity by meeting, observing, and understanding local
people and learning more about human nature.
It was after his outback journey to Bourke that Lawson's popular
characters, with precise personalities started to appear in his prose. At the
same time, he started to describe his characters in much more details than
before. This transformation is obvious both in his verse and prose. A
poem, "Dan the Wreck" which was written in 1895 is a good example. The
poem describes a man called Dan:
Tall, and stout, and solid -looking,
Yet a wreck;
None would think Death's finger's hooking
Him from deck.
Cause of half the fun that's started-
"Hard"case" Dan-
Isn't like a broken"hearted,
Ruined man. (1- 8)

The poem continues to describe Dan in detail until the fourth stanza, so it is
easy for us to imagine what Dan looked like. This is different from the
impersonality seen in the characters from "Andy's Gone With Cattle" and
"The Teams", The first line of the stanza gives us specific information
about Dan's appearances and the other lines suggest Dan's real

20
circumstances. The rest of the poem tells many positive aspects of Dan.
Finally, it explains that his miserable appearance and miserable life are a
result of heavy drinking, but he is a charming drunkard.
A short story titled "Mr Smellingscheck" written between 1895 and
1896 is a prose version of "Dan the Wreck". This is a short story with
extremely detailed descriptions of a man named Smellingscheck. The
description of the man begins in the middle of the third paragraph: "He was
a fat man, slow and placid." 13 Soon it becomes more concrete with
information about the way Mr Smellingscheck dresses:
He wore a suit of cheap slops of some kind of shoddy "tweed".
The coat was too small and the trousers too short, and they were
drawn up to meet the waistcoat - which they did with painful
difficulty, now and then showing, by way of protest, two pairs of
brass buttons and the ends of the brace-straps; and they seemed
to blame the irresponsive waistcoat or the wearer for it all. Yet
he never gave way to assist them. A pair of burst elastic· sides
were in full evidence, and a rim of cloudy sock, with a hole in it,
showed at every step. 14
This passage is followed by a variety of descriptions of his behavior, from
how· to discuss politics, to how to have meals, and the manner of his every
action. These descriptions are very elaborate. "Mr Smellingscheck" is not
like a story, but more like a human documentary based on the author's close
observation. The story has a clear image of the existence of a particular
individual named Mr Smellingscheck, unlike "The Drover's Wife", which
only has a general image of a hard-working woman in the bush.
In addition to those specific descriptions of characters, there is another
important characteristic of Lawson's literature which became obvious after
his journey to Bourke. Some of his characters came to have two different

21
characteristics, or a duality in their personalities. In "Dan the Wreck",

Dan is emphasised as a person having two opposing characters. A similar

description is also found in "Mr Smellingscheck". In this story, Lawson

insists that Mr Slnellingscheck is a real gentleman despite his shabby

appearance. This probably proves that during his outback journey,

Lawson learned how to observe people from many angles in order to make

his characters rich with humanity.

It was in about 1893 that characters with strong personalities, fIrst

appeared in Lawson's works, especially in his short stories. Some

characters appearing in Lawson's short stories like Steelman, Mitchell, and

Dave Regan, are typical. Those characters make their appearances n1ainly

in the short stories written from 1893 to 1900. These characters seem to
have been created when Lawson was at the peak in his writing career, and

they each appear as the protagonist in more than one story. For example,

Steelman appears in six stories, Dave Regan, in nine, and alnazingly,

Mitchell, in as many as thirty stories. Each story is short so that it can

illustrate only one small episode of what happens to a character, and there
is almost no connection between stories as far as the plots are concerned.

The characters more or less changed their personalities each time they
were in a new story. According to Colin Roderick, Steelman is a parasite in

the fIrst story, a talkative humorist in the second, a fIxed character in the

third, takes over a vicious character from Mitchell in the fourth, and fInally

is a cynical messenger of Lawson in the fIfth and sixth stories. 15 Roderick

also explains that Steelman had to change to take over some aspects of

Mitchell as Mitchell's character developed.l 6 Mitchell is described as a

"colloquial swagman" in the first three stories, and from the fourth story

onwards he becomes an "educated traveler". L7 Generally, Mitchell's second

character, who is a philosopher as well as a good bush story-teller, is the

22
n10st popular.
Dave Regan is the main chal"acter in nine different short stories. He
is alone in four of the stories, and with his mates, Jack Bentley and Andy
Page in the others. While Dave Regan is a rather plain character without
his mates, he becomes a strong leader and causes numerous funny incidents
when he is with then1. Those three Inen are Lawson's model characters
who have vivid and distinctive personalities. They are also characters who
have one strong definite personality, rather than a duality of characters.
Others of Lawson's characters came to display a particular duality in
their personalities. That is a duality of virtuousness and secularity.
Giraffe in "Send Round the Hat" (1901) and Hannah in "That Pretty Girl in
the Army" (1901) are examples of this. Giraffe is described as a man of
justice and benevolence. He is always fair and never discriminates against
anyone because of who they are. In the story, he sends round his hat for
people involved in prostitution even though his mates say he should not do
it. As the story goes on, Giraffe is described as if he was someone heavenly.
At the end of the story, however, it is revealed that he has left his girlfriend,
who still loves him, in Sydney, and his fellow bushmen send round the hat
for him and persuade him to go back to her. Giraffe decides to return to
Sydney and becomes an ordinary working man.
Hannah in "That Pretty Girl in the Army" IS a female verSIon of
Giraffe. Lawson emphasises the contrast between her angelic features and
her human aspects. In the story, the girl always draws attention from the
bushmen and gradually becomes an idol for them. She also becomes to be
regarded as something heavenly. However, at the end of the story, her real
nature is exhibited in front of the bushmen when she starts a speech for
ChristInas Day. During her speech, Hannah notices her missing boyfriend
in the audience, which makes her upset, she forgets her position, and

23
becomes just another ordinary earthly person.
Lawson gradually changed his style as he grew as a writer as well as a
person, and his characters also changed themselves according to his
changing state of mind. In his works, his original impersonal characters
gradually gained identities, then personalities, and finally some became
divine. It is also possible that Lawson tried to seek a mental haven in his
fictionally idealised characters like Giraffe and Hannah. However, these
spotless characters are obviously not the main goal of Lawson's literature
because he gives them back their human nature at the end of each story.
He does not conclude his stories with conventional ethical sermons. This
means that Lawson wanted to express real human nature, including his
own weaknesses, and to appreciate it as it is.
When Henry Lawson started his career as a young writer, his style
was rather journalistic and people described by him were either anonymous
or impersonal. However, his style gradually changed, and the characters
in his poems and stories had vivid personalities. That was partly because
his personal experiences, including the hard hours in the bush, trained him
not only as a writer, but also as a person. Some of Lawson's characters,
like Giraffe and Hannah, are described as superhuman or even divine, but
they regain their essential humanity at the end of their stories. Lawson's
popular protagonists, such as Dave Regan, Mitchell, and Joe Wilson, were
also created in this transition, and eventually became the characters
representing the men, Lawson insists in his poem, made Australia.

24
 Chapter II
The Australian Bush and Lawson's Bush Characters

When Lawson was in his prime as a writer, he produced quite a few

masterpieces, especially in his prose, which describe the Australian bush
and bush people, the people who lived and worked there. As the writer
himself emphasises how those people in the bush made an enOrlTIOUS
contribution to the development of Australia, in his poem, "The Men Who
Made Australia", the bush and bush people are the major factors to
appreciate Henry Lawson's literature and also to search out what
Australianism is in his work. This chapter will study the Australian bush,
and the relationship between the bush and bush people described in
Lawson's writings.
Basically, the majority of Australians have always lived in the coastal
areas of the continent. When the Gold Rush started in 1851, a great many
people temporarily moved inland hoping to make their fortune.
Pastoralists had a golden time about the same time and made Australia the
world's largest wool producer. These incidents, which happened
particularly in the middle of 19th century, drew people away from the
coastal areas towards the interior, and this Australian nature has nurtured
the character of Australia and influenced its people during that tinle.
The Australian bush was different from English woods, the home of
mysterious fairies and spirits, and also different from the Wild West, a
symbol of America's exploitation and development. It was distant and
forbidding, so that it was not thought to be easily conquerable. In fact,
Australia has even now only developed the edge of its continent leaving a
huge empty area in the centre, unlike the United States which has cities

25
dispersed aln10st equally throughout the country. Therefore, the concept of
the bush for Australians was completely different from that of Americans
who believed they could aggressively exploit the land.
Even though most Australians have not experienced the bush directly,
they seem to have always had a strong image of it as a tremendous huge
void. In 1901, the whole population of Australia was still less than
3,800,000,1 therefore, even city people probably had a vague feeling of
insecurity caused by their isolated surroundings. China, whose area is
about 1.25 times as large as that of Australia, for example, also has a huge
desert, "the Gobi", in its centre. As its population in about 1900 was
roughly 500 million, at least 130 tin1es larger than Australia's, 2 the Chinese
people probably did not have such feelings towards their void as Australians
did. Besides, people must have felt like they would never be able to emerge
again once they went deep into the bush because they did not have any
developed transport systems such as we have today. Thus, the Australian
bush was special for Australian people particularly during the pioneering
period.
Geographically speaking, it is almost impossible to say exactly how
much of the Australian continent is covered by the bush because the concept
of what "the bush" is seems to vary between people. However, slightly
n10re than fifty percent of the whole continent has an annual rainfall of less
than four hundred millimeters, which is the rninimum rainfall required for
agriculture to be feasible. 3 Only a narrow coastal part of the continent has
enough rain, eight hundred millimeters or more, which is needed for people
to have a comfortable life. 4 The capital cities of all six states and the two
territories are located within this coastal strip which is very small in
cornparison to the area of the whole continent.
The climate cycle of Australian continent IS unIque. It does not
change on a 12-month cycle like on other continents; it changes irregularly
in a multi -year cycle, due to the influence of and ENSO, El Nifio-Southern
Oscillation. 5 This unusual climatic pattern often brings unpredictable
droughts and floods. 6 Especially in the bush, the meteorological conditions
are nothing but cruel. It is said that Aborigines, the original inhabitants of
Australia, never numbered more than a few hundred thousand in
population. 7 Because they had to live by hunting and collecting, their
family size was small compared to agricultural peoples who settled down
and increased their families. 8 The deadly climate and the unproductive
soil did not allow them to enjoy population growth. The Aborigines
survived in the severe environment for tens of thousands of years by
constantly moving from place to place. They never settled in one location.
Due to its idiosyncratic environment, it is no wonder that the
Australian bush was seen as a tremendous menace by European people,
and it must have been a symbol of "the unknown", especially for the
newcomers in the early times. It may have been even more threatening for
people who actually lived there for long periods of time. The bush gives off
a strong image of desolation, even for people who have never been there.
The bush, for the average Australian, feels like an alien place. In the
1890s, on the contrary, the Australian bush was positively used as a symbol
of "one nation" in the propaganda leading up to the federation of Australia.
Thus, the Australian people have long been concerned with the bush, no
matter where they live in the country.
That the bush was often taken as a theme by Australian poets and
writers before Federation, in 1901, was attributed both to the climate of the
time as well as to the policy of the Bulletin. 9 There was a growing
enthusiasm for nationalism among people in Australia at the time when
Lawson started his writing career. The Bulletin encouraged and supported

27
anyone who wrote about the bush, hoping to raise people's enthusiasm for a
federated Australia. The bush became an important theme for the writers
at that time, and quite a few of Lawson's contemporaries also vvrote about
the bush. As already mentioned, however, Lawson wrote more about city
subjects for the first few years of his writing career. It was not until the
outback trip in 1892 that he turned to the bush for the theme of his works.
Mter the trip, he devoted the bulk of his literature to describing the bush
although Lawson himself lived in urban areas for two-thirds of his life.
The bush is the main stage also for the characters appearing In
Lawson's stories. In his humorous stories, the bush is an ideal setting for
them, helping keep them alive and active. In other stories, however, the
bush is a huge, invisible enemy which always disrupts people trying to
survive there. Many of Lawson's popular characters suffer from various
difficulties caused by the bush. Its severe conditions undermine their
hopes, weaken their relationships, and finally drive them to despair.
In Lawson's bush stories, there are three major woes that his
characters often suffer from in the bush; they are loneliness, Inadness, and
death. In some cases, one character has all three misfortunes in succession.
This means that long-time loneliness in the bush undermines the
characters' humanity, and then, finally drives them to death.
Firstly, underlining the seclusion of the characters was a typical way
of Lawson to express the solitude of the bush. According to statistics from
1990, the population density in the western part of New South Wales was
zero point one per square kilometre. If the location of his stories is
assumed to be the area where Lawson travelled in 1892, the density is
probably even less than that. Even in areas closer to the east coast, there
were still only two people per square kilometre. 10 Bush people in Lawson's
days were forced to be in such isolation.

28
 A representative description of this is the second paragraph of his
most famous story, "The Drover's Wife", which explains the circumstances
under which the wife and her children live:
Bush all round - bush with no horizon, for the country is flat.
No ranges in the distance. The bush consists of stunted, rotten
native apple trees. No undergrowth. Nothing to relieve the
eye save the darker green of a few she·oaks which are sighing
above the narrow, almost waterless creek. Nineteen miles to
the nearest sign of civilization - a shanty on the main road. 11
This simple and curt description quite eloquently conveys Lawson's general
notions of the bush.
The sameness, monotony, and solitude of the bush are occasionally
emphasised in his other works, and above all, he uses she-oak trees as an
effective means of expressing melancholy. She-oaks 12, which are also
called casuarinas, look like oaks, but are inferior to oaks as timber. The
tree has about ten varieties and is distributed in all states of Australia. On
average they grow to about ten metres, and some varieties grow over twenty
metres high. Their leaves are very narrow like those of willows, so they
rustle in the breeze. Lawson often personifies the rustling saying
"She-oaks sigh", which helps emphasise the loneliness of a person living in
the bush.
"A Case for the Oracle" written in 1896, is a short story in which the
character's loneliness is described in an unusual way. Lawson wrote two
short stories whose titles include "the Oracle", the nickname of a particular
bushman. "A Case for the Oracle" is not actually about the Oracle, but
about one of his labourers, called Alfred O'Briar or "Al£' .
Alf is always stays alone in his tent, so his colleagues consider him to
be a little sly. One night, some men including Mitchell happen to hear Alf

29
talking with another man in his tent. Surprisingly, they hear a woman's
voice another night. They secretly peep into the tent, but they only see Alf
lying "on his back in his bunk with his arms under his head, ... " 18 They
conclude that the woman must have left the tent when she heard them
comIng. However, when they later hear four people, Mr. and Mrs.
O'Connor, their daughter, Mary, and Alf, talking in the tent, the men are
totally confused and try to make the thing clear. They visit Alf again.
'''Come in,' said Alf. Alf was lying on his bunk as before, with his arms
under his head. His face wore a cheerful, not to say happy, expression.
There was no one else in the tent." 14 Later, Mitchell says to Joe (the
narrator of the story), who is still puzzled: "'Can't you see it? ALF THINKS
ALOUD.' 'WHAT?' 'Talks to himself. He was thinking about going back
to his sweetheart. Don't you know he's a bit of a ventriloquist?'" 15
What the men heard is Alf's imitating the voices of various people,
including women, in order to relieve him from loneliness. The story, as a
whole, has a comic element right up until the explanation of the mysterious
voices in Alf's tent is revealed. The surprising ending makes the story
seem even more pathetic. Alf's pose, in particular, with his back lying to
Mitchell whenever he peeps in the tent, represents the loneliness that any
bushman would feel during his time in the bush. Although Alf is described
as a normal person in the story, his peculiar behavior ominously implies
that he is approaching to the verge of a breakdown.
Secondly, some of Lawson's works describe the madness of bush
characters. In "Rats" (1893), an old man has a fight with his swag, or bag
in which he carries his everyday belongings, and then, starts fishing in the
middle of a cotton-bush plain. In this story, Lawson expresses the strange
behaviour of the bushman in a hunlorous way.
Another bushman's queer behaviour in "No Place for a Won1an" (1899)

30
IS described rather sadly. The story is about an old man called "Ratty
Howlett", who lives alone in an old hut in the bush, and his acquaintance
with "I", the narrator of the story. The man's solitude is elnphasised by the
description of the area where he lives, in the opening of the story: "He had a
selection on a long box·scrub siding of the ridges, about half a mile back and
up from the coach road. There were no neighbours that I ever heard of,
and the nearest 'town' was thirty miles away." 16
In "No Place for a Woman", Ratty Howlett has lived in the bush alone
for more than fifteen years. He is well-known among bushmen for his
strange behaviour. He chases and talks to strangers whenever they
happen to travel in his vicinity. "I", the narrator, has a conversation with
Howlett after he is accosted by the strange Ulan in the bush. During their
conversation, "I" feels somewhat embarrassed by the old man's words
because he only talks and asks about old things, some of which are from the
years before "I", the narrator, was born. Above all, "I" feels most uneasy
when Howlett asks him an odd question: "... and then, after a pause, he
shifted uneasily, it seemed to me, and asked rather abruptly, and in an
altered tone, if I was married. A queer question to ask a traveller; more
especially in my case, as I was little more than a boy then." 17 Mter a while,
Howlett asks "I" to come to his place for dinner which, he says, his wife
would prepare for them. When they arrive, his house is clean and tidy, the
dinner is ready, but the house gives no sign of a wife, nor even any sign of a
woman.
Five years later, "I" conles the same way again and finds Howlett
seriously ill. "I" takes care of him and hears the true story of his wife who
died in the first year of their marriage as a result of complications with her
pregnancy. She could not get adequate treatment in such an isolated
environment. Her death had driven her husband to complete solitude, and

31
then, to mental disorder: "And he 'hatted' and 'brooded' over it till he went
ratty." 18 Soon Howlett's condition becomes very serious and finally dies
when "1" brings the doctor for him. At his house "1" finds the table set and
breakfast ready like five years ago.
Howlett makes out as if his wife is still living, or maybe he even really
believes it. Perhaps he tries to ease his loneliness by pretending to be a
married man, like AIf disguises himself as being with his family in his tent.
Alfis still sane because he still has a hope that he will see his family again,
although he feels strong loneliness in the bush. On the other hand,
Howlett has lost his mind after the shocking incident of his wife's early
death and his long solitude in the bush since then. In "No Place for a
Woman", Lawson expresses the fragility of human beings, especially those
who have been in remote environments for a long tinle, through the
character, "How lett" .
Henry Lawson seems to have believed that the bush is no place for
women to stay or live. Quite a few of his female characters in the bush are
doomed to die. As a result, Lawson has been criticised for being sexist
because of his tactless treatment of women, combined with one of his
important themes, mate ship , which represents only the men's world and
excludes women, and also of his defamatory descriptions of women which
are often found in his later works.
Basically, Lawson did not have good relationships with women in his
life. He often clashed with his mother during his boyhood even though she
supported his talent as a poet. He married Bertha Bredt in 1896, but they
had a bitter divorce seven years later. Not only did his marriage end in
failure, but his Inistress died during his stay in London, between 1900 and
1902. He gradually developed ill feelings against his wife, and then, it
seems, against women in general. But he was taken care of, mentally as

32
well as financially, by an elderly WOll1an in the later years of his life.
Therefore, his slanderous descriptions of women are only the expression of
his personal feelings, rather than a general criticism of women in society.
His negative descriptions about WOIllen do not necessarily mean a
definite denial of them. The best example of this is "The Drover's Wife".
In the story, "the wife", the main character, tries to protect her children from
a snake. She plays the role of "father" in place of her husband, a drover,
who is far from home for months at a time. At the end of the story, she kills
her enemy, the snake. The wife does not die, rather, her spirit is
transferred to her son in the light of the morning sun, which symbolises
"hope" for the future.
Some of Lawson's female characters toil in the bush, the same as male
characters, and eventually lose their minds, as Howlett did. For example,
Mrs. Spicer, in "Past Carin'" from "Water Them Geraniums" (1901), is an
interesting character who has survived even though she has mental
problems apparently caused by her hard life in the bush.
Mrs. Spicer seems to be a more developed version of the wife from "The
Drover's Wife". Brian Matthews compares these two female characters in
his book about Lawson's prose and says: "Mrs Spicer is the drover's wife
writ large; ... "19 This seems to mean that the drover's wife, even though
she initially overcame her enemy in the bush, could become like Mrs Spicer
in the future if she continues the same life vvithout any support from her
husband or other people. However, Lawson concludes the story just after
the wife kills the snake, without any specific inforlllation about her future.
And, as we have already discussed in chapter one, the writer mentions little
about the specific characteristics of the wife, making it impossible to clarify
her personality. Therefore, there see IllS to be no confirmation about the
likeness between "the drover's wife" and Mrs Spicer.
 Besides, Lawson gives different circumstances to them at the end of
each story. The wife, in "The Drover's Wife", survives even though the
bush environment is harsh to her. As the story's ending suggests, there
will be a positive future waiting for her and her family. On the contrary,
Mrs. Spicer in "Water Them Geraniums" dies in the end. She is virtually
killed by the harsh circumstances of the bush. And there appears to be no
bright light illuminating her future, except for her last words to her
daughter, "Water them geraniums" .20 These words may suggest the
continuity of life for the plant, as well as expressing a slight hope for the
future of the bereaved family.
To express Mrs Spicer's madness, Lawson explains some peculiar
characteristics of the woman in detail in the story. After explaining Mrs
Spicer's physical characteristics, the narrator continues:
She had an expression like - well, like a woman who had been
very curious and suspicious at one time, and wanted to know
everybody's business and hear everything, and had lost all her
curiosity, without losing the expression or the quick suspicious
movements of the head. 21
This description is hard to make out. It could be interpreted that her
actions are not always consistent with her feelings or perhaps she has a
touch of mental illness. Here is a scene which specifically describes Mrs
Spicer's strange behaviour:
.. , when she [Mrs Spicer] had a child with her, she'd start taking
notice of the baby while Mary was talking, which used to
exasperate Mary. But poor Mrs Spicer couldn't help it, and she
seemed to hear all the same. 22
The description probably means that Mrs Spicer does listen to other people
in spite of looking disinterested in what they are saying. She is not

34
comfortable showing her regard for Mary, but she does actually take notice
of her. To other people, Mrs Spicer may look as if she has lost her mind.
In addition, the narrator mentions Mrs Spicer's habit of l11aking
excuses immediately after she has said something embarrassing. She
always says, "Oh, I don't know what I'm talkin' about. You mustn't take
any notice of 1ne."2:3 When interacting with other people, Mrs Spicer
sometimes lacks consideration for thenl, however, her excuses help
maintain her tenuous connection with other people and also helps her to
remain sane. The descriptions of Mrs Spicer's peculiar behaviour
emphasise her unstable mental condition.
There is also an interesting description about Mrs. Spicer's voice:
Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice
coming out of a phonograph... But sometimes when she got
outside her everyday life on this selection she spoke in a sort of
in a sort of lost groping-in-the-dark kind of voice. 24
"A voice coming out of a phonograph" probably sounds like someone talking
through something like a filter. Undoubtedly, a phonograph in Lawson's
days did not have clear sound like a stereo system today. The meaning of
speaking "in a sort of lost groping-in-the-dark kind of voice" is more difficult
to understand. Brian Matthews puts the following interpretation on Mrs
Spicer's "groping-in-the-dark" voice: "But it is her 'groping voice' that

reveals Mrs Spicer to herself, shows the extent to which she has been
brutalised and hurt, turned away from a gentleness and gentility to which
she has the last shreds of a genuine response."2.5 This interpretation does
not directly explain what a "groping voice" actually sounds like. Matthews
seems to mean that her "groping-in-the-dark" voice shows the various
difficulties Mrs Spicer has been through in her bush life.
Another possibility is that this particular sound may have been heard
only by Lawson, who was handicapped with hearing. He describes a
rooster's crow in a similar way in a short story, "Bill, The Ventriloquial
Rooster" (1893):
We watched Bill, and sure enough he was a ventriloquist. The
'ka-cocka' would come all right, but the 'co-ka-koo-oi-oo' seemed
to come from a distance. And sometimes the vvhole crow would
go wrong, and come back like an echo that had been lost for a
year. 26

The metaphorical description is also interesting, but again, it is very hard to

imagine what Bill, the rooster, sounds like. The nature of the sounds that
Lawson is trying to describe in those two exanlples seems to be almost the
same, regardless of whether the sound is coming from a person or a fowL
Lawson first had a problem with his ears when he was nine years old,
and became deaf five years later in spite of being examined by an ear
specialist in Melbourne. He could hear a little during the five years his
hearing was deteriorating. 27 He may have heard sounds differently from
other people due to his poor hearing at that time.
The descriptions of Mrs Spicer surely indicate her unstable mental
state. At the same time, however, they also tell us that Mrs Spicer is not
completely insane, rather, she is on the border line between sanity and
insanity. In this respect, Mrs Spicer has a similar state of Inind to AIf, but
she is not in total isolation physically like Alf. She has her children and
married brother and sister living in the same district, who provide company
for her. However, her mental state is probably worse than Alf's because
she is always moving back and forth across the border line. She feels it
herself and says, "I do believe I'm gittin' a bit ratty at times."28 In her case,
there is a kind of dissociation of personality, but she see Ins to feel vague
about it. In the story, Mrs Spicer herself, explains, "1 somehow seem to
have got past carin'."29
"Past Carin'" are key words because they are also the title of the
second part of "Water Them Geraniums". The cause of Mrs Spicer's being
past carin' is not just the physical hardships the bush directly brings to her.
Mrs Spicer explains how she used to feel when her husband went away:
"I uster, once. ... - the first tilne Spicer had to go away from
home I nearly fretted my eyes out. And he was only goin' sharin'
for a month. ... He's been away ch"ovin' in Queenslan' as long as
eighteen months at a time since then. . . . Besides - besides,
Spicer was a very different man then to vvhat he is now. He's
got moody and gloomy at hOlne, he hardly ever speaks."30
Her husband also has some kind of mental problem after his repeated long
and lonely journeys in the bush. The taciturn husband has probably
driven his wife into further alienation. This is an indirect influence of the
bush on Mrs Spicer.
Mrs Spicer has no experience of achievement in her life, compared to
the drover's wife who succeeds in killing a snake, the enemy of her family,
Because of her husband's droving, Mrs Spicer was left alone in the bush
soon after her marriage and had to fight alone against many difficulties in
everyday life, without the support of her husband. For instance, she had to
treat the cattle when they were affected with "pleura-pneumonia", which is
a lung disease of cattle and sheep. The story says, " ... she bled and
physicked them herself, "31 When a bush fire broke out, she vainly
attempted to put out the burning grass by beating the flames with a tree
branch. Luckily her neighbours came to rescue her and together they were
able to put out the fire, otherwise, she might have been killed.
Mrs Spicer has many children who must provide pleasure in her life,
but they have to leave home as soon as they are old enough to work. Her

37
older daughter seems to be involved in prostitution in Sydney and her older
boys are missing up country for a long time. She only has the small ones at
home, and cannot give them a proper education. All these things have
always troubled her about being in the harsh environment of the Australian
bush. Nothing comes easily. The huge stress has gradually undermines
her healthy mind, and finally, she has loses her self-esteem and is past
. )

carln.
At the end of the story, Mrs Spicer is petrified to hear that one of her
sons is wanted by the police. She almost loses her senses and dies soon
after this incident. The ending is shocking because Mrs Spicer's death
comes too suddenly and easily. Her sudden death lnay represent the
insignificance of human beings in the "lnighty" bush, and also may
represent the cruel reality that life can be so suddenly ended in the bush.
A brief description about her death in the story makes the existence of Mrs
Spicer all the frailer.
Mrs Spicer's madness IS complex and thus impressive. She is a
model character who tries to tackle all the hardships in the bush, but is
crushed down in the end. Commonsensically speaking, it is hard to think
that madness is the cause of Mrs Spicer's death. In the story, she seems to
have been under enormous stress for a long time. Stress itself cannot be a
direct cause of death. However, long-term stress can lead to psychosomatic
disease, which can then become an indirect cause of death. 32 Some factors
of stress are biological, such as hunger, overwork, and lack of sleep, and
others are social, such as strain, fear, anxiety, and excitement. Especially,
extreme fear combined with other factors can cause a fatal heart attack. 33
Those factors are exactly what Mrs Spicer suffered from. This means that
a stress·stricken woman feels a tremendous fear when she hears her son is
in trouble with the police, and as a result, dies of shock. In other words,

:38
Mrs Spicer is a victim who experiences a chain of woes brought about by the
Australian bush.
Finally, Lawson treats "death" in different ways in his works. In his
bush stories especially, death is an invisible threat which haunts people like
an ominous shadow. Not only men and women, but also children can be
victims. Some of them lose their lives because of their own carelessness.
A union man who drowns in the river in "The Union Buries Its Dead" (1893)
and the small lost children who are found dead in the bush in "The Babies
in the Bush" (1900) are such examples.
Some of his bush characters take their own lives after long periods of
suffering. In "Water Them Geraniums", Mrs Spicer tells Mary and Joe
Wilson about a weird man who once asked her for some coffee, behaved
strangely, and later hanged himself in the bush. Dr Lebinski in "The Hero
of Redclay" (1899) shot himself after his friend was wrongly convicted in a
theft case. The death of Mary in "The Selector's Daughter" (1893) is, above
all, a typical example of "bush suicide". At the end of the story, Mary, who
is the only normal member of the family, breaks down and takes her life by
jumping into a waterhole. She does this because her father brings a new
woman home instantly after his wife's (Mary's mother's) death, and the
woman abuses Mary. Her final cry is bitterly pathetic: "I want to go away
from the bush! ... Oh! for God's sake take me away from the bush! ...
Anything! anything! - you know! - only take me away from the bush!"34
A character's suicide is not restricted to Lawson's writing. Banjo
Paterson, who was a poet and had different views on the bush from Lawson,
describes the "suicide" of a swagman in his famous poem "Waltzing Matilda" .
Compared to Lawson's sentimentalism in Mary's suicide, Paterson's
description of suicide in the poem seems to be so carefree:
Down came ajumbuck to drink at the water-hole,

39
 Up jumped the swagman and grabbed hinl in glee;
And he sang as he stowed him away in his tucker-bag,
"You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me!"

Down came the Squatter a -riding his thoroughbred;

Down came Policemen - one, two, and three.
"Whose is the jumbuck you've got in the tucker-bag?
You'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me."

But the swagman, he up and he jumped in the water-hole,

Drowning himself by the Coolabah tree;
And his ghost may be heard as it sings in the Billabong
"Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?" (9-20)
This poem was made into a song, "Waltzing Matilda" which is loved and
sung by Australian people as their second national anthem. It is said that
the swagman's decision to take his life before being shamefully caught by
the police, accords with Australian anti-authoritarianism.:35 It is
interesting that suicide seems to be accepted by Australian people as long as
it is related to the bush, even though taking one's own life is generally
regarded as "sinful" in western societies. With regard to "Waltzing
Matilda", this may be because of the catchy nlelody of the song and also of
Paterson's witty and humorous poenl. Banjo Paterson is always
considered a rival of Lawson because his descriptions of the bush are almost
opposite to Lawson's. No matter w hat their experience of the bush,
however, the thinking that the bush correlated with death was probably a
common idea among Australian people at that time.
Lawson's comedy, "The Loaded Dog" (1900) is an interesting story in
which there is a glimpse of "death" behind the humorous setting. The

40
story is about three bushmen who plan to catch fish by using dynamite, but

their excited dog tries to play with them while he has the fizzing cartridge

in his mouth. The descriptions of the three bushmen and other people in
the camp panicking and running away from the dog are really funny,

Ludicrousness, coming from the different perception between the men, who
know of perils and the dog, which is just playing, also produces many laughs.

At the saIne time, however, there is uneasiness about the imminent

possibility of an accident, which might kill the dog. The story concludes

safely when the dog finally manages to escape from his crisis.

The setting of a loaded dog with a lit stick of dynamite and panicked
people seems to be fictionaL However, Lawson got the idea of the story
setting from actual incidents in the bush, according to Colin Roderick: "It

['The Loaded Dog'] is built on one of the most common causes of mutilation
of the arm in the bush in former times - dynamiting fish" 36 "The Loaded

Dog" begins with a sentence, "Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were
sinking a shaft .. .in search of a rich gold quartz reef... "37 During the gold
rush in Australia, people first tried to get the alluvial gold which lay on the

surface. Then, their interest shifted to deep-mining. 88 Quartz mining

was also popular, but it required more equipment and labour to remove the
gold from the quartz. In the late 1870's, new machinery and lnethods,
including the use of dynamite, were introduced into Australia.8~) Although

dynamite may have made gold-mining easier for Australian diggers, it also

increased the number of serious accidents. "The Loaded Dog", which is

seemingly a "slapstick" kind of comedy, actually indicates that "death" used

to be close at hand not only for people in the bush, but also for Australians
who were engaged in gold-Inining.

The bush is an indispensable environment in the world of Lawson's

literature. Lawson's bush characters live their lives being suffered from

41
hardships the bush brings to them. Some of them writhe in loneliness,
some hover between sanity and insanity, and some result in death. Under
those severe circumstances, his bush characters develop their Australian
characteristics and greatly contributed to set up Australianism in Lawson's
literature.

42
 Chapter III
Deaths in "The Hero of Redclay"

This chapter examines how Henry Lawson describes "deaths"

specifically in his short story, "The Hero of Redclay" and also discusses what
the writer tried to convey us through those deaths.
Lawson describes three deaths directly and indirectly in "The Hero of
Redclay" . '!\vo are the deaths of main characters and are directly described
as part of the plot. One is the sudden death of a female character; Lawson
liked to doom bush women in his works. The other is the mysterious
suicide of a male character. It is interesting to examine the significance of
these two deaths in the story penned by Lawson, as well as in bush society
at the time when the story was written. The third death, however, is not
described in "The Hero of Redclay", but it does influence one of the major
characters of this story.
"The Hero of Redclay" is a short story which was written in 1899, in
the later period of Lawson's writing career. Compared to his early works,
many of which are often called "sketches", this story is quite longer than
most of his other short stories and is well-organized with a definite plot.
Like many of Lawson's stories, it deals with people in the bush and an
incident which happened to them. However, it atypically and uniquely
develops like a suspense story, and ends with a riddle and a peculiar feeling
of pathos.
The story begins with a scene where Joe, the narrator, who has
finished his work early, waits for and meets his mate, Mitchell. To Joe's
surprise, Mitchell appears with a strange man called "the Lachlan" who has
somewhat of a mysterious atmosphere about him. He seems to have

43
known Mitchell for a long time. Their strong friendship makes Joe feel
uneasy, and perhaps Joe feels a kind of jealousy because his friend, Mitchell,
who is generally believed to be an even-handed man, seems to be showing
special attention to his old mate. After the Lachlan has left, Joe tries to
lead Mitchell to talk about the mysterious man. He says, "You seem
mighty thick with the Lachlan."] Mitchell brushes it off and implies that
the Lachlan is not as special for him as Joe assumes. However, Mitchell's
cool reaction makes his mate all the more suspicious. Lawson's description
of Mitchell's awkward pondering over Joe's leading question is interesting:
Mitchell got up, re-lit his pipe at the fire, and mooned round
for a while, with his hands behind him, kicking sticks out of the
road, looking out over the plain, down along the Billabong, and
up through the mulga branches at the stars; then he comforted
the pup a bit, shoved the fIre together with his toe, stood the
tea -billy on the coals, and came and squatted on the sand by my
head. 2
Mitchell's behaviour obviously shows that he is wondering whether he
should tell Joe the real story about "the Lachlan" or not. After a while,
Mitchell fInally says, "Joe! I'll tell you a yarn."3 Joe expects to hear a story
about the Lachlan, but instead Mitchell tells a story about the Lachlan's
friend.

Mitchell's story is about a man named Jack Drew who is the editor of
the local newspaper in a town called Redclay. Mitchell comes to know Jack
while he is temporarily staying in the town, working as a house-painter.
Early one morning, before dawn, Jack is returning home from a secret
rendezvous with Ruth Wilson in her room when he is seen by Browne, the
n1anager of the only bank in town and also Ruth's uncle by marriage. The
next day, Jack is unexpectedly arrested on a charge of bank theft. Mitchell

44
witnessed the secret meeting of the couple, so he knows that Jack is not
guilty and can vouch for his alibi. Another character, Dr Lebinski, also
believes in Jack's innocence.
The doctor and Mitchell try to clear up the false charge, but things just
do not go right for Jack Drew. To make matters worse, Jack himself seems
to want to be guilty. As per his wish, Jack Drew is finally proven guilty
and the issue is all over. This brief outline of Mitchell's story gives the
impression that the story has nothing to do with the Lachlan.
The riddles of who Jack Drew really is and how he is related to the
Lachlan remain in Joe's mind until he finally realises that Jack Drew must
be the Lachlan himself. "I'd been puzzling for the last half-hour to think
where I'd met or heard of Jack Drew; now it flashed on me that I'd been told
that Jack Drew was the Lachlan's real name."4
As a matter of fact, before Mitchell starts his story, he gives a hint
about the identity of Jack Drew. When Joe asks if his yarn has got
something to do with the Lachlan, Mitchell says, "No. It's got nothing to do
with the Lachlan now; but it's about a chap he knew."5 Mitchell's answer is
perplexing because a story about a friend whom only the Lachlan knows
would not make any sense to Joe or to Mitchell. Mitchell also reveals,
while yarning, that he knows the friend quite well because he talks about
him in a lot of detail. The identity of the person (Jack Drew) is almost
clear at this point. What makes Joe feel irritated is not just the Lachlan's
existence, but probably, Mitchell's sneaky manner of disguising the
Lachlan's dubious background.
Obviously, Mitchell's manner toward the Lachlan is too protective.
His manner suggests that there is another reason, apart from the Lachlan's
criminal background, why he should behave that way. This other reason
turns out to be related to the fact that two people, who were close to Jack

45
Drew, died mysteriously. Mitchell then tells Joe the details of the death of
Ruth Wilson, Jack Drew's girlfriend, and the suicide of Dr Lebinski.
Ruth Wilson is undoubtedly connected to Jack Drew's false arrest and
the consequent criminal charges against him. Lawson provides the
following information about her and her circumstances:
His [of the bank manager named Browne] niece or, rather, his
wife's niece a girl named Ruth Wilson, did the housekeeping.
She was an orphan, adopted by her aunt, and was general slavey
and scapegoat to the family - especially to the brats, as is often
the case. She was rather pretty, and lady-like, and kept to
herself. The women and girls called her Miss Wilson, and didn't
like her. Most of the single men - and some of the married ones,
perhaps - were gone to her, but hadn't the brains or the pluck to
bear up and try their luck. 6
Ruth Wilson's difficult position is caused by her pretty looks, good graces,
and also perhaps her pl.lrity, which is not particularly described in the story.
These features make the local women feel jealousy because she looks
sophisticated but they, typical bushwomen, do not.
Ruth Wilson falls in love with Jack Drew in the story. Just after their
secret meeting, Jack is seen walking in the passageway by the bank
manager. In the middle of an argument between Jack and the bank
manager, a pistol the manager is holding, goes off and the bullet lodges in
Jack's arm. Ruth falls on the floor in a faint when she hears the sound of
gunfIre. Mter this incident she goes insane, becomes bed -ridden, and dies,
all before Jack's trial starts. Ruth's death is quite quick and unexpected.
Actually, the cause of her death is not directly mentioned in the story, but
judging fronl the circumstances around her, it seenlS that Ruth loses her
senses as a result of the tremendous shock, then loses her will to live.

46
 Ruth Wilson's death is so abrupt. It is not really strange that Ruth
goes crazy after she hears the gunfire and also learns of Jack Drew's arrest.
It is very strange, however, that she dies so soon. There is no description
which suggests that she had suffered from a certain fatal disease. It is
more natural to think that she loses her will to live, refuses to eat, and
finally dies of emaciation. Lawson never mentions anything about the
cause of her death. That is probably because her sudden death itself is
more important than the reason why and how she dies in the story. In fact,
her death distorts and obscures all the facts on the incident. Dr Lebinski
proves this when he says, "If she - the girl - had lived, we might have tried
to fix it up quietly."7 As already mentioned, Mitchell witnesses what is
happening in the bank manager's house, therefore, he can testify for Jack
Drew, without Ruth's presence. However, Jack does not want Mitchell's
help, nor does he want anyone to reveal the truth of his relationship with
Ruth. Rather, he takes all the responsibility on himself. As a result,

Ruth's death has two repercussions on Jack. One is that her death
conceals the true fact of the case from the public, and the other is that it
makes Jack's sufferings much worse.
Dr Lebinski's death is more mysterious than Ruth's because he takes
his own life. Even after Jack Drew is sent to prison, the doctor tries to
vindicate the young man. However, his assertion is not accepted by the
authorities. Mitchell explains the details of the doctor's suicide:
"The Doctor went to headquarters, but either a drunken doctor
from a geebang town wasn't of much account, or they weren't
taking any romance just then at headquarters. So the Doctor
came back, drank heavily, and one frosty morning they found
him on his back on the bank of the creek, with his face like
note-paper where the blood hadn't dried on it, and an old pistol in

47
 his hand - that he'd used, they said, to shoot Cossacks from
horseback when he was a young dude fighting in the bush in
Poland." 8
As far as the plot of the story is concerned, Dr Lebinski does not have
to die, and he does not really have any motive to kill himself. He is
certainly one of Jack Drew's few friends in the town, but he is not in the
position of a father or a brother where he has to feel responsible for what
Jack has done. It is understandable that he works hard to save his friend
out offriendship, but it is incomprehensible that he is driven to suicide as a
result of not being able to prove Jack's innocence.
There seems to be another motive for Dr Lebinski to kill himself.
Mitchell explains about the doctor's personal background: "They said he
was a Polish exile. He was :fifty or sixty, a tall man, ... "9 Mitchell
continues: "The Doctor was too gloomy and impatient over little things to be
popular.... He was clever, and drink had brought him down to Redclay."lo
In 1902 Lawson wrote a poem, "Ruth", which is a verse version of "The Hero
of Redclay". There is more information about the doctor in the poem:
There was Doctor Lebinski, my friend - and the friend, too, of all
who were down -
Clever, gloomy, and generous drunkard - the pride and disgrace
of the town.
He had been through the glory and shame -of a wild life by city
and sea,
And the tales of the land whence he came had a strong
fascination for me. (65-68)

"A man may be false to his country - a man may be false to his
friend:

48
 Be a vagabond, drunkard, a spieler - yet his soul may come right
in the end;
But there is no prayer, no atonement, no drink that can banish
the shade
From your side, if you've one spark of manhood, of a dead girl
that you have betrayed." (77-80)

The poem tells that Dr Lebinski has a secret in his past, and that he had to
leave his home, Poland, and come to Australia because of it. In the new
land, he has been still haunted by the past and tried to erase it out of his
mind by drinking. He drifted from place to place, and finally ended up in
Redclay, where he is treated coldly by the local people. His "unpopularity"
in the village seems to result from the negative atmosphere which
surrounds him as a consequence of those past experiences.
According to a survey conducted in 1891, eight years before "The Hero
of Redclay" was written, 93.3 percent of the population of New South Wales
was Anglo" Celtic. This obviously shows that the Anglo·Celtic people were
in an absolute majority in the colony, Other Europeans, except German
and Scandinavians, which included immigrants from Poland, made up only
1.8 percent of the population.l1 Dr Lebinski was thus from a minority
group.
Lawson's model for the doctor is thought to be one of his acquaintances.
When Lawson was travelling outback in 1892, one of his walking
companions was a man named Ernest de Guinney. Colin Roderick gives
some information about this man: "Guinney was a well"educated Russian of
good family and a self"confessed nihilist:" 12 Manning Clark also mentions
that Lawson's companion in the bush was Russian exile," although Clark
never gives any infornlation about the Russian's nalne. l3 Combining the
statelnents of these two critics, it is very likely that Ernest de Guinney

49
the model for Dr Le binski.
If Lawson created a character, "Dr Lebinski", based on his actual bush
companion, it is possible that he also adopted some actual incidents, which
happened at that time in Europe, as the background of the character. In
"The Hero of Redclay", Mitchell explains that Dr Lebinski Il1ust be in his
flfties. Supposing that this story is narrated by Joe in the year when the
story was actually written by Lawson, in 1899, the events in Mitchell's story
would have happened at least five years earlier, roughly in 1894, because
Jack Drew had been sentenced to five"years hard labour. Calculating
backwards, the years when the doctor is supposed to have fought in Poland
would have been the 1860s, if the doctor is assumed to have been a young
man in his twenties when the fighting took place.
Historically, the land which is now called the "Republic of Poland" was
divided and occupied by neighbouring nations throughout the 19th century.
IT nder these circumstances, uprisings, calling for their independence, were
a common occurrence. The last uprising took place between 1861 and 1863,
and when things finally settled down, many Polish people were exiled. 14
The doctor was probably involved in this final stage of the national
movement. There surely would have been Cossacks among the soldiers
that he encountered because a number of powers, including Russia used
them to settle conflictS.I5 It is a fair assumption that the doctor used his
pistol to take the lives of many Cossacks at that time.
In "The Hero of Redclay", Dr Lebinski is a symbol of non-Anglo· Celtic
migrants. In addition, he may also be regarded as a synlbol of many
migrants, including convicts, who were forcibly sent to Australia. Those
migrants were called "new chums" and were usually disdained by
"currencies", that is, Australian-born white people. IE} It is easy to imagine
that the doctor, who is a new chum and also from a minority, has had a hard

50
time surviving in Australian society, especially in the bush. Jack Drew and
Ruth Wilson would have been among his few friends in Australia. Dr
Lebinski says in the story, "I knew her [Ruth's] father and mother, ... "17
This implies that he has probably known Ruth since she was a little girl or
even a baby, and may have been asked by her parents to look after her.
However, the doctor cannot keep his promise to her parents. She dies as
soon as Jack's trial starts, and the doctor cannot defend Jack Drew from the
false accusation, either. Inevitably, Dr Lebinski feels depressed to realise
that he has not built firm human relationships in the new land, nor has he
found a place to settle down.
The third death in the story of "The Hero of Redclay" is hidden in Jack
Drew's past. In a short story which Lawson wrote before "The Hero of
Redclay", Jack Drew (the Lachlan) took responsibility for his brother's
death. Mitchell touches on the death of Jack's brother, Tom, in his yarn,
but does not tell about the story, in which the death happens to the Drew
brothers, itself.
Lawson wrote a short sketch titled "When the Sun Went Down" in
1893. The story is about a reckless young man and his elder brother who
work together in a gold mine. The young man is Jack Drew. The story
develops mainly around the mental conflict of his brother, Tom. Tom and
Jack have a quarrel just before Jack goes down to the bottom of the shaft.
On going down, Jack says to Tom, "You ain't going to let the sun go down,
are you, Tom?"18 The words hang around Tom because he thinks of an old
saying from the Bible: "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."19 Just
when Tom decides that he should make it up with his brother, he hears an
accident in the shaft. Jack was buried under the clay because he did not
support the sides of the shaft with timber. Tom and his mates dig
desperately to get Jack out, and finally they rescue the young man alive.

51
However, just before Jack is rescued from the shaft, Tom collapses from a
heart attack. Tom dies as the sun goes down. The story ends here and
does not say anything about the afterlnath of the accident. Undoubtedly,
~Jack Drew blames hilnself, and regrets his carelessness, even though he did
not directly kill his brother. Lawson sets the character, Jack Drew, in "The
Hero of Redclay", as a man who has already had the sad experience of his
brother's death.
Jack Drew's difficult past, which includes the deaths of three people
close to hin1, as well as five-years hard-labour, explains the mysterious
atmosphere Joe feels when he first meets the Lachlan (Jack Drew).
Mitchell's intense protection of the Lachlan is also understandable.
Although Mitchell is not a leading character in "The Hero of Redclay", his
presence in the story is important. His caring attitude toward his "broken"
friend illustrates mateship, which is indispensable among n1en in the bush.
More importantly, the last sentence of the story describing Mitchell in his
sleep represents an essential attitude the bush men must have in order to
survive in the Australian bush: "But Mitchell was sleeping peacefully, in
spite of a path of moonlight across his face - ... "20
An addition like this, which usually has a different mood, is one of
Lawson's typical ways of closing a story. Many of Lawson's stories with
endings like this could have been easily ended without them. However,
this technique effectively works to make a pathetic story more pathetic, and
the ending sometimes contains a hidden message froln the writer. "The
Hero of Redclay" is no exception.
The short story, "Some Day", written in 1893, six years earlier than
"The Hero of Redclay", gives a hint to help us understand Lawson's message
in "The Hero of Redclay":
They rolled out their swags on the sand, lay down, and
 wrapped themselves in their blankets. Mitchell covered his
head with a piece of calico, because the moonlight and wind kept
hiln awake. 21
Mitchell in his earlier days could not sleep comfortably with light on his
eyes. Six years later, he is able to sleep soundly in the moonlight, even
after talking about his mate's sad experience. This suggests that Mitchell

has changed after his arduous experiences in the bush.

If "The Hero of Redclay" stopped immediately after Mitchell finished
his story about Jack Drew, it would be a pathetic story about an unfortunate
nlan who always feels responsible for the deaths of his three important
people. With the addition of the final sentence, however, the story becomes
Inore than a simple pathetic story.
Seemingly, the description of Mitchell sleeping soundly gives the
ilnpression that he does not care about the difficult circumstances of his
mate at all. However, this casual behavior does not mean that he is
indifferent to his mate, but means that he has to be tough in order to
survive in the bush. He has to sleep in the open air, even if there is
nloonlight on his face because a good sleep is essential to get enough energy
for the next day. Mitchell has to remember that the Lachlan's case is just
one of the incidents that could happen to anyone if they stay long in the
bush. Even so, the Lachlan must continue to walk in the bush,
shouldering a heavy load, until he reaches his o"vn death sometinle in the
future. Mitchell, who used to share the hardships with the Lachlan, can
see his old mate be COIning a tiny shadow in the vast bush after they part.
Mitchell's indifference to his mate's tragedy in the ending of the story
should be interpreted paradoxically. Six years ago, he probably could not
have renlained composed in the same situation. He would have been
sleepless like in "Some Day". However, lVlitchell in "The Hero of Redclay"
has more experience as a bush Ulan and seems to be able to, almost
unconsciously, control his feelings. That is because he has to be always
conscious of "death" close at hand in the bush, and also this is his way of
surviving in the Australian bush. Apart from the main story, the epilogue
also has the writer's message about death.
The three deaths in "The Hero of Redclay" are iUlportant factors in
making the story more pathetic. Although the death of Jack Drew's
brother has nothing to do with this story itself, it potentially lays the
foundations of Jack's checkered life. Ruth's death undoubtedly affects her
lover, and as a result produces "the Lachlan", a different Jack Drew, with a
broken heart. Actually, a death such as Ruth's does not seem to have been
COUlmon at the time when the story was written. The writer of Families in
Colonial Aust1:alia explains the common causes of death in the 19th century:
The principal cause of death, however, among 15-
44-year-olds of both sexes was phthisis or tuberculosis, with the
rate of death being a little higher for women than men in the 15
- 24 age range and a little lower in the age 25 - 44. Typhoid
was also a major cause of death for people of these ages. 22
Another book indicates that there were three major causes of "the low
average life expectancy" in late 19th century Australian society: "the high
rate of infant mortality, the high accident rate of males, and the high
incidence of tuberculosis and other lung and respiratory diseases". 28 In the
former book, the writer in the chapter, "Death and the family in
nineteenth-century Western Australia" also points out that women
frequently died during or soon after childbirth.24 Ruth's death appears to
have been quite different to contemporary women of her time. Therefore,
it is logical to surmise that Lawson intended to use her death as a way to
express the hardships of the Australian bush nlore pathetically.

54
 On the contrary, Dr Le binski' s death seems to reflect the social
circumstances of those days in Australia. As there was the model of Dr
Lebinski among Lawson's acquaintances, it is highly possible that Lawson
used the personal background of his friend when he made the image of Dr
Lebinski. Dr Lebinski's demise is symbolic of the death of a migrant who
came to Australia with a stain on his past, and was not welcomed by the
new society. In other words, Dr Lebiski's death is ascribed to loneliness,
one of the three woes the Australian bush brings to people, although unlike
some other Lawson characters, he does not lose his sanity.
There are three deaths, two of which are described directly and the
other, indirectly, in "The Hero of Redclay". Those three deaths all take
place in the peculiar environment of the Australian bush. The first death
of Ruth Wilson is a typical case with which Lawson expresses the bush as
"no place for a woman" by driving women easily into insanity and death.
The second death of Dr Lebinski is the suicide of an immigrant who was not
accepted by his new society in the bush. The third death, which does not
occur in "The Hero of Redclay", is an example of unfortunate deaths which
seems to have happened to bushmen at various working places, including a
gold mine. Each of those three deaths conveys Lawson's perspective of the
strong correlation between the Australian bush and death.

55
 Chapter IV
Mateship Described in Lawson's Writings

Henry Lawson describes various hardships, which his characters

suffer from the Australian bush, in his vvritings, and at the saIne time, he
provides remedies which enable them to survive in the severe environment.
One of the remedies is mateship, a unique type of companionship, especially
exhibited by his male characters working in the bush. As long as the bush
is a basic and essential environlnent for "Australianism" of Lawson's
literature, as has been already discussed in Chapter II, mateship is also an
important factor as a kind of by·product of the bush. This chapter will
examine mateship and its social background, particularly by comparison
with the social background of Edo, the old capital of Japan. It will also
analyse mateship described in some of Lawson's stories.
Some Australian academics have a variety of definitions of mateship.
T. Inglis Moore gives his interpretation of it in the summary of a chapter
titled, "The Creed of Mateship", and explains that mateship is "the loyalty
of man to man in a special relationship, ... for bushmen living in a vast,
lonely, and often dangerous environment, ... ; strongest amongst bushmen,
workers in hazardous occupations, and the men of the fighting services in
wartime; ... " 1 Manning Clark says: "Ignorant of the consolations of
religion, untouched by the traditions and conventions of European society,
they [the bush workers] looked for a comforter to offset the loneliness of
their lives and to protect them against its dangers. They found it in
mateship."2

It is said that the concept of mateship is partly ascribed to the fact that
the number of men and women was disproportionate in the early period of

56
Australian society. This ilnbalance existed frOlll the beginning of
colonization. Russel Ward explains that the proportion of men to women in
the First Fleet was three to one, and that the population imbalance became
worse and worse during the period of transportation.:3 Moreover, Ward

provides the actual numbers of transported convicts and their gender ratio,
quoting A.G.L. Shaw: "When the last 'exile' landed in Western Australia in
1868, about 162,000 had been transported, of whom about 25,000, or one in
every six or seven, were women."4 From 1865 to 1900 the ratio slowly
improved. In 1865, two years before Lawson was born, there were 125.38
men for every 100 women. In 1895, about the time when he wrote many
bush poems and stories, there were 113.41 men for every 100 women. But
even in 1900 the ratio was still 110.23 men for 100 women!'>, and this was
the highest in the world, with the exception of New Zealand. 6 These
statistics clearly show that Australia used to be a male-dominated society,
particularly during the colonial period.
The correlation between mateship and the population imbalance in
early Australia society can be more clarified in cOlllparison with a similar
case of imbalanced number of men and women which took place in the 19th-
century Japan. Edo, which used to be the centre of the Tokugawa
shogunate and was the original name for Tokyo, the present capital of
Japan, had a gender imbalance. As Edo was newly built for the shogunate
government, it was, at first, an extrenlely lllale-dominated city, mainly
consisting of samurai who came from other domains to serve under the
Shogun, and also labourers whose job was to build the city. Gradually,
women joined them, but men generally outnumbered them. According to
the demographics of Edo in 1841, a few decades before the Meiji Restoration,
out of the total population of 563,689 7, the nUlllber of men was about
300,000 and, WOlnen, about 250,000. 8 Especially, the male apprentices for
big shops and nlen living at "Nagaya" units behind ll1ain streets seem to
have been ll10Stly single. The shortage of women in the working class
brought them favourable treatment by men. As a result, it is said that
wives became stronger than their husbands, and the term "Kakaadenka",
meaning "petticoat government" has been popular among the Japanese
people ever since.
In Australia, similarly, ll1en outnumbered women everywhere in the
country throughout the colonial period, and this tendency was much worse
in the outback than in cities, Russel Ward explains about the shortage of
wonlen: "The famine of females in the interior was remarked even more
widely, and deplored more deeply, than that of clergYll1en," and continues, "."
even at the end of the decade [1840's], four out of every seven men must still
have been doolned to bachelorhood, ." the proportion of single men among
the nOlnad tribe of pastoral labourers was very much higher than this,"9
At that time, the Australian economy largely depended on the pastoral
industry which usually forced people to be nomadic, and this did not suit
femininity,
It is quite interesting that both Australia and Japan experienced a
shortage of women while constructing their new society. However, the
causes of the population imbalance are different for each country. In the
case of Edo, the government did not, rather deliberately, bring women to the
city because they were not needed for the infrastructure work. On the
other hand, in the Australian outback, not only the imbalanced population,
but also the severe environment forced men to be separated from women.
This is an important difference between the two societies.
The extreme lack of women caused physiological inconvenience to men
both societies at that time. As is often the case, prostitution developed,
and in Edo, there was a government-authorized amusement area, which
included brothels, called "Yoshiwara". Australia did not have any public
facilities of the same kind, but did have private ones in the slums of big
cities such as Sydney. According to A. J. C. JVlayne, the writer of Fever,
Squa]ol; and VIce, there were a considerable number of organized brothels

in the slums providing for not only men in the working class but also the
lniddle class. 10 In the outback, the shortage of WOlnen must have been also
a serious problem for bushmen. However, they were basically forced to be
alone, without even families or partners, to work in the bush, before the
problem of women's shortage.
Edo, which was the world's biggest city in the 19th century, was often
threatened by fIres mostly because the houses were constructed of wood and
paper. Commoners suffered the most because their houses were built so
closely together. During the Edo period (1603-1867), there were ten big
fIres which destroyed the large areas of the city, and people living in the
crowded residential areas would have experienced many more snlaller
fIres. ll In 1657, Edo experienced the worst fIre ever. Many buildings,
including the Edo castle, temples and shrines, warehouses, bridges, and
commoners' houses were burnt down, and more than a hundred thousand
people died. 12 Mter the disaster, the government organized a systenl to
prevent and fight fires. In the early years of the 18th century, the original
form of the present fIre fIghting system was introduced to the commoners
and a group of men in each neighbourhood worked together against fIres. 18
It is said that the frequent fIres in Edo also provoked people to think
that they should spend all their money on the day they earned it, because of
the likelihood of losing everything when a fire broke out. Interestingly,
people did not suffer great despair about the disasters because workmen, for
instance, were able to earn extra money in the aftermath.]·~ This type of
attitude among the people in Edo n1eans that they never created any
particular idea of partnership which was so desired by Australian bush
men.
More generally, there was an implicit agreement of helping each other
among working class people in Edo. As has been mentioned, Edo needed
labourers for construction, many of whom came from other parts of the
country. As they were all newcomers to the city, they developed a spirit of
cooperation among themselves.1 5 Furthermore, people in the working
class were crammed into a small living area. They were allowed only
fourteen percent of the whole area of the city to live in, in comparison to
samurais who occupied about seventy percent of the city. This means, in
other words, that more than 60,000 people were densely packed into an area
of only one square kilometre. 16 Therefore, working-class people came to
have strong ties in which they were all like a big family, and they helped one
another in their everyday lives. In this way, the Edo people had their own
cooperative system, but it developed into a different form from mateship in
Australia.
Comparisons between these two societies shows that Australian
mateship was not formed simply because of the shortage of women, or
because of the various dangers inflicted on people working in the bush.
Actually, at that time (and still now), there were no absolute dangers to take
a man's life in the Australian outback. There were no precipitous
mountains as well as no dangerously deep canyons. There were no fierce
wild animals. People did not die from physical dangers such as falling off a
precipice or being attacked by a beast of prey, but rather they died in
circumstances where they could not easily get help. Therefore, bushmen in
nomadic jobs, who regularly had to move from one place to another,
naturally wanted to walk and work with another person, a mate, in order to
protect themselves physically as well as mentally. They desperately

60
needed the ties of mateship to survive in the bush.
Usage of the term, "mateship" did not originate with Lawson, but "was
expounded by him as a national faith .. ,"17 as some of Lawson's early works
have "mate" in their titles, such as "His Father's Mate", "Macquarie's Mate",
and "Meeting Old Mates". In his later works, however, mateship is not
talked about so specifically in a story, but always lies in the background of
the story.
Mateship is described in various ways in Lawson's writing. "The
Union Buries Its Dead" (1893) and "Telling Mrs Baker" (1901) have been
often taken by Lawson's critics as typical examples of the writer's mateship
stories. Both stories show specific practices of mateship that Australian
bushmen used to have, and also indicate the uncertainty of their principle
through descriptions of the characters' behavior.
In "The Union Buries Its Dead", Lawson describes both the merits and
demerits of mateship. The basic theme of the story is a young bushman's
death, but both his life and death are treated quite casually by the writer.
The bushman is alive only in the first short paragraph. The story mostly
consists of descriptions of other bushmen's behavior during the funeral of
the young man who is thought to have been a Union member. It seems
that the man's death is a requisite for making a situation where bushmen
can freely demonstrate their character.
The story has a sluggish atmosphere from the beginning. The
drowned man was a stranger to the other bushmen, but they have a funeral
for him because he seems to have been a member of Union. No one is
really sure about the man's background. The little they know came from
his belongings in his swag. The narrative explains: "The departed was a
'Roman', and the majority of the town were otherwise - but unionism is
stronger than creed."18 This sounds like an ideal form of mate ship.

61
However, the narrative continues: "Drink, however, is stronger than
unionism; and, when the hearse presently arrived, more than two·thirds of
the funeral were unable to follow. They were too drunk."19 Even a
funeral is an opportunity to drink for them, and the identity of the deceased
does not matter to them.
It is said that Australian trade unions developed greatly in the 1850s.
During the Gold Rush, many Australian workers as well as migrants
scrambled to the interior. As a result, the number of city workers
decreased, their circumstances became vulnerable to management, and
finally, the city workers, skilled ones in particular, organized a union. This
wave of unionism also spread to unskilled rural workers, especially pastoral
workers. 20 In 1886, a fall in the wool price was used as an excuse for
pastoralists to cut shearing wages. This decision encouraged bush
employees to establish the Amalgamated Shearers' Union, the predecessor
of the Australian Workers' Union, early the following ye ar. 21 The
Amalgamated Shearers' Union originally consisted of three bush towns'
organizations, Ballarat, Wagga Wagga, and Bourke. As has been already

mentioned, Lawson visited Bourke, one of these towns, in 1892. When he

had contact with Union members there, five years had passed since the
establishment of its union.
It is also said that unlike other nations such as Britain and the United
States, Australian bush workers were a fundamental force in the rapid
development of unionism. Unionism for the bush workers seems to have
been an ideal form of strong comradeship emphasising their mateship.
Thus, mateship conducted by Union members is well-known in Australia.
However, anyone who deserted the union was treated harshly. They were
held in low regard by union members and other people in the town, and
were called "scabs" .22 Some of Lawson's critics make reference to William

62
G·uthrie Spence, a chairnlan of the shearers' union, when writing about the
relationship between unionisn1 and mateship as well as its contradictions:
Unionism came to the Australian bushman as a religion. It
came bringing salvation from years of tyranny. It had in it that
feeling of mateship which he understood already, and which
always characterised the action of one "white man" to another.
Unionism extended the idea, so a man's character was gauged by
whether he stood true to Union rules or "scabbed" it on his
fellows .... The man who fell once may be forgiven, but he is not
fully trusted. The lowest term of reproach is to call a man a
"scab".23

The bushlnen's attitudes toward the funeral described in "The tJnion

Buries Its Dead" represent characteristics of Australian unionism at that
tilne. It is worth noting that the mateship described in the story might not
have necessarily resulted from a bushman's own principles as a Inember of
the Union, but may have been from a fear of being ostracized if he did not
follow the union rules.
In the description of the funeral, which covers most of the story,
uncertainty of relations among the bushmen is emphasised by Lawson's use
of the word "stranger[s]". Not only is the drowned man a stranger to the
rest of the bushmen, but also they are almost all strangers to each other. It
seelns that the bushmen are in the town by chance, because of their work
contracts and the only reason for their solidarity is that they belong to the
Union. In contrast to normal situations when a group of people do not
kno\v each other, the bushmen's behavior toward the funeral in the story
seems very considerate. However, they may be simply observing customs
that are required of theln as union Inenlbers. It see Ins as if their sense of
solidarity itself is more important than what they could actually do for their
mate. This inconsistency between their minds and their actions gives the
story its sluggish atmosphere. The writer himself expresses it: "Just here
lnan's ignorance and vanity made a farce of the funeraL"24
On the whole, Lawson displays cynicism of bush conventions in "The
Union Buries Its Dead". He criticises a grave-digger, for example, for his
polite way of throwing soil on the coffin, saying that there is no difference
between his way and other ways. This criticism also sounds like a general
warning from Lawson towards all ceremonial customs in society. His tone
of voice is quite sharp. That is probably because he wrote the story at the
age of twenty· six, when he was not quite old enough to realise that life goes
on regardless of whether or not one is serious about it. Also, he wrote the
story just after the journey to Bourke where he learned many things, lnerits
and demerits, about the bush, as he told his aunt in a letter dated 21st
September, 1892:
" .. , but I am agreeably disappointed with Bourke. It is a much
nicer town than I thought it would be. I got a lot of very good
points for copy on the way up .... Most of them [bushmen] hate
the bush. ... I have already found out that Bushmen are the
biggest liars that ever the Lord created."25
At the end of the story, Lawson touches upon the name of the buried
bushman. The other bushmen, who attend the funeral, do not know the
man's name until they finally see it on the coffin. They cannot find any
way to get his personal information, apart from some union papers. As a
postscript, the narrator, obviously one of the bushmen, explains:
It turned out, afterwards, that J. T. [James Tyson] wasn't his
real name only "the name he went by".

Anyhow he was buried by it, and most of the "Great

Australian Dailies" have lnentioned in their brevity columns that
 a young man named James John Tyson was drowned in a
billabong of the Darling last Sunday.
We did hear, later on, what his real name was; but if we ever
chance to read it in the "Missing Friends Column", we shall not
be able to give any information to heart-broken Mother or Sister
or Wife, nor to anyone who could let him hear something to his
advantage - for we have already forgotten the name. 26
This passage shows a sharp irony about how to prove one's existence in the
bush. In other words, the Union membership of the deceased man, the
only evidence with which to identify him, makes the other bushmen gather
for his funeral. This means that mateship saved the dignity of the
bushman.
"The Union Buries Its Dead" implies that Australian bush unionism
was mainly based on mateship in its formative period. Because Australian
trade unionism was in its early stages, it probably seemed to Lawson that
the formality of rules was more important than substance. It seems to be
certain, however, that the mateship found in union membership was a kind
of safety net for bushmen who were tormented by loneliness in the bush.
And, what is more, mateship developed rapidly and also contributed to the
establishment of the nationwide Australian Labor Party later on.27
Lawson's other typical story of mateship is "Telling Mrs Baker" and
this story also has a basic theme of a bushman's death. Compared to "The
Union Buries Its Dead", human relations among the bushmen described in
this story are solid, and the significance of mateship seems to be strongly
understood by them. Yet, there is a misunderstanding among ,those
bushmen about how to perform their mateship. And, Lawson's cynicism
still remains.
The story can be roughly divided into three parts. The first part

65
explains about how Bob Baker, "the Boss", dies, the second part describes
how Andy and Jack ("1", the narrator) make up a story about Bob Baker's
death to tell Mrs Baker, and the final part depicts how they actually meet
and tell her their story. As a whole, the story interestingly expresses how a
bushman suffers from three woes of the Australian bush, which have
already been discussed, and also how mateship can save him. In other
words, this short story seems to include all of Henry Lawson's views about
the bush and its people.
The way Bob Baker was defeated by the bush is clearly described in
the first part of the story. Bob is a squatter28, who makes money and then
loses it repeatedly. Mter a bad drought, he loses his sheep and eventually
his station. Bob, who was originally a drunken drover, becomes an
alcoholic. Finally, he loses his senses and dies miserably during a terrible
tremor which is a typical symptom of alcoholism. The cause of his heavy
drinking is not mentioned in the story; the narrator merely explains that
Bob became a drunkard during his long droving days. Loneliness is the
likely cause because he was far away from his wife and children for many
years. As a terminal symptom of alcoholism, he behaves abnormally and
tries to hang himself. He finally becomes completely deranged and dies in
madness. Thus, Bob Baker is described as a typical victim of the
harshness of the Australian bush through the three stages of loneliness,
madness, and death.
In the second part of the story, Andy and Jack display their mateship
for Bob Baker. They care about their drunken boss while he is alive. And
even after his death, they discuss how to inform his wife nicely of what
happened to her husband. They make up a false story in order to save the
Boss's face to his wife, for the time being. In the third part, their story
succeeds in pleasing Mrs Baker. Mter they step out of the entrance of her

66
house, however, they finally tell the truth to her sister. Mrs Baker will
learn the truth from her sister sometime in the future, but this is the way
the two bushmen express their friendship as well as their respect towards
their mate.
In the first part of the story, there is a small paragraph which explains
what mateship ideally should be: "We could have started on the back track
at once, but, drunk or sober, mad or sane, good or bad, it isn't Bush religion
to desert a mate in a hole; and the Boss [Bob Baker] was a mate of ours; so
we stuck to him."29 This paragraph means that bushmen should take care
of their mate in any circumstances, even when the rest of the world Inight
turn their back on him, and it also indicates that there is a kind of devotion
like a religion in bushmen's mateship.
However, Lawson does not describe the Inateship of Andy and Jack as
perfect in "Telling Mrs Baker". He expresses the uncertainty of it in the
conversation between Jack and Andy:
"Why not let her know the truth?" I asked. "She's sure to
hear of it sooner or later; and if she knew he was only a selfish,
drunken blackguard she might get over it all the sooner."
"You don't know women, Jack," said Andy quietly. "And,
anyway, even if she is a sensible woman, we've got a dead mate to
consider as well as a living woman."
"But she's sure to hear the truth sooner or later," I said, "the
Boss was so well known,"3o
Probably, Jack's question is everybody's question because it is alnl0st
impossible for them to keep the truth away from Mrs Baker forever. Jack
sounds rather indifferent about their implementation of nlateship.
However, Andy adheres to it and continues to explain the advantages of his
plan:
 "And that's just the reason why the truth might be kept fronl
her," said Andy.... - if he wasn't so well known the truth might
leak unawares. She won't know if I can help it, or at least not
yet a while." :31

Andy's persistence shows his deep consideration for the poor wife, as Colin
Roderick points out: "the person they [Andy and Jack] are sticking to is not
Bob Baker, but his wife.":32 For Andy, however, telling Mrs Baker an
untruth does not necessarily seem to mean considering her feelings, but
rather means saving Bob's face as a bushman even though he was an
infamous drunkard. In addition, Andy also seems to want their mateship
to be ideally achieved without any obstruction, such as a fuss which the
widow might raise if she knows the truth. In other words, he unwittingly
reveals that mateship is fragile enough to be spoilt by a women's
interference even though it is generally believed to be sacrosanct.
Andy and Jack seem to speak for Lawson and his own VIew of
mate ship. Andy represents the writer's uncertain belief in the Australian
comradeship, and Jack represents his objective view of it. Colin Roderick
mentions Lawson's uncertainty about mateship:
"Telling Mrs Baker" brings his [Lawson's] ideas on the
destructive isolation of the implacably hostile outback and the
saving power of neighbourliness to a focus. ... Yet he still has
his doubts of its efficacy. He has to go further before he can
dispel the irony with which he has so far treated the idea of
mateship.:3:3

Mateship was undoubtedly an inevitable consequence for bushmen

who used to share their hardships with each other in order to survive in the
bush. In later years, Australian trade unions, which were originally
connected with bushmen's mateship developed greatly from the end of the
19th century through to the 20th century. By the end of the 19th century,
there were about two hundred groups across the country, and membership
had risen to approximately 100,000, about nine percent of the total labour
force of Australia. 34 In this respect, mateship has certainly had a strong
impact on the Australian workforce and helped the country develop.
In Lawson's writings, mateship seems to be a kind of remedy for his
characters supplied by the writer who also gives them hardships of the bush.
His bush characters are saved by various conducts based on this principle
from their mates. However, Lawson does not simply praise this bushmen's
dogma; he rather expresses his concern about the uncertainty of their
fellowship. Mateship is necessary not for describing an ideal form of
human relationships, but for building Lawson's "Australianism". Lawson's
characters are just illaudable beings without m ate ship, but, with it, they
seem to be attractive and become competent enough to represent Australian
features.

69
 Chapter V
Humour in Lawson's Bush Stories

Henry Lawson wrote some of his bush stories rather humorously

although many of them are basically about hardships his characters
undergo. His humour has a characteristic; It does not work for its own
sake, but also involves pathos, and vice versa. In other words, Lawson
uses humour not only as another remedy for his bush characters in their
harsh environment like m ate ship , but also as an effect to make a pathetic
story more pathetic. This chapter will examine how Lawson's humour is
described in his stories and how it functions in its own way. In order to
make its characteristic clearer, the chapter will also study Japanese
humour which is displayed in "Koten Rakugo", a traditional story-telling in
Japan, and make a comparison between those two patterns of humour.
"A Vision of Sandy Blight" (1899), one of Lawson's bush stories, well
expresses his complicated style of humour. This story is clearly divided
into two parts. In the first part, a man, who is the narrator of the story,
suffers from sandy blight or inflammation of the eyes, and Mitchell, the
man's mate, gives him a bottle of eyewash for his damaged eyes. In the
second part, Mitchell, a well-known character in Lawson's short stories,
tells his companion about an incident in which his family was attacked by a
swarm of bees when he was a boy. The second part is a comedy. It depicts
how each member of his family reacts to the sudden attack of the bees.
Mitchell's mother, who believes that her ideas are always right and possibly
even the best in the wor ld, wants the rest of the family follow her
instructions. But, MitchelYs father instructs his children in a completely
different way. At the exact moment when mother is insisting her idea is

70
much better than her husband's, she is stung by a bee. She suddenly
becomes silent. While father is trying to get rid of the bees, his shoulders
are shaking and he is uttering strange sounds as if he were crying:
But father wasn't weeping, and bees weren't stinging him; it was
the bee that stung mother that was tickling father. ... ,and he
bathed mother's eyes and rubbed mud on, but every now and
then he'd catch inside, jerk and shudder, and grunt and cough.
Mother got wild, but presently the humour of it stuck her, and
she had to laugh, ... Then she got hysterical, and started to cry,
and father put his arm around her shoulder and ordered us out of
the house. l
It is ironic that mother, who is self· confident about controlling bees, is
the only family member to be stung. Hence father cannot help laughing at
her misfortune, although he really does feel sorry for her. This is one of the
funniest scenes in the story. At the same time, however, this scene makes
us feel some kind of satisfaction because it illustrates the strong bonds
between husband and wife and also allows us to imagine the days when the
couple were fighting over various difficulties together in the bush.
Therefore, the second part of "A Vision of Sandy Blight" is not tragic, nor is
it simply comic. The whole story has a particular feeling of pathos that is a
blend of tears and laughter.
Lawson's humorous stories became more popular when he began
writing about Dave Regan and his mates. Colin Roderick provides an
explanation:

Dave Regan and his mates are vehicles for Lawson's portraits
of the humorous aspect of bush life. They give the lie to
suggestions that Lawson never saw its funny side. In the body
of his work they do not bulk large; but they are there. Millions

71
 of people have chuckled over "The Loaded Dog", and millions
more will enjoy it. Like the rest of these stories, it depicts an
incident that must have occurred somewhere or other in the
Australian bush. 2
As Roderick points out, Dave Regan and his mates are representative
characters of Lawson's humorous bush stories, and above all, "The Loaded
Dog" is the most famous and dramatic with hilarious scenes of the
characters and their dog.
"The Loaded Dog" is said to have been written in 1900. 3 It is only
seven-and-a-half-pages long in paperback size, but is undoubtedly one of
Lawson's most widely read short stories. The story describes people
panicking and running away from a dog which has a live stick of dynamite
in its mouth. Lawson depicts the course of the turmoil in a lively and
comical manner. The hectic, but not too messy development of the story
draws us in and makes us laugh. The story is surely a comedy, even
though it is not full of funny scenes from beginning to end. Its humour is
actually concentrated in the second half. The first half consists of
explanations about the story's background and the characters. This style
is typical of Lawson's short stories. He often starts a story with at least
one whole paragraph of general descriptions of the setting and/or characters
before embarking on the actual story line. In the case of "The Loaded Dog" ,
the general descriptions take up about half the story. This is definitely its
most noticeable characteristic.
The story begins by introducing Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy
Page. Dave Regan, like Mitchell, is one of Lawson's most popular
characters. The other two men also appear in other Dave Regan stories.
The introduction explains that these men are goldminers who like fishing,
and the story starts with a scene in which they are trying to catch fish by

72
blasting the river with explosives. Today, this method of catching fish,
called "blast fishing', is prohibited in almost all countries, including
Australia, for ecological reasons. The three characters work in a gold mine,
so they are presumed to be accustomed to dealing with explosives.
The gold rush in Australia started in 1851. People first tried to get
the alluvial gold which lay on the surface, then, their attention shifted to
deep-mining. 4 Quartz mining was as popular as alluvial mining on
Australian goldfields, but it required more equipment and labour to remove
the gold from the quartz. 5 In the late 1870's, new machines and methods,
including the use of dynamite, were introduced. 6 Lawson's story is set in
this period. It is also the time when Lawson himself experienced the gold
rush in Gulgong and other neighbouring areas in New South Wales.
Life on the goldfields was basically dominated by men. Day after day,
the diggers struggled, under extreme conditions, to find gold. Once in a
while, they needed amusement to entertain themselves, especially when
they were off work; they relaxed themselves by drinking, and playing music
and sports. 7 Those goldminers tried to think of creative ways to entertain
themselves and they even invented the basic form of some games which are
still popular in Australia today, such as Australian Rules football. 8
Fishing was also a popular pastime. In the story, Dave Regan and
Andy Page are introduced as fishing enthusiasts. Edgar Waters explains
in The Pattern ofAustralian Culture: "Fishing in streams has always been
an important form of relaxation for many men, especially for men in lower
income groups, and it has the added motive of providing cheap food or ... "9
During the gold rush, fishing was probably a common activity. It would
have been a relatively easy way for them to get food, not only from the fish,
but also by exchanging their catch for butcher's meat. In "The Loaded
Dog', the narrative explains: "The butcher was always willing to give meat

73
in exchange for fish when they caught more than they could eat."l0
Swimming was also a popular recreation on the goldfields. Waters
mentions: "Recreational swimming appears to have been popular in
Australia, at least among men, almost from the beginning of settlement." II
"The Loaded Dog" has a description of Dave, Jim, and Andy enjoy
swimming with their dog.
The most interesting part, before the actual comedy begins is an
explanation of how to make an ideal dynamite cartridge which will explode
in the river. The explanation is elaborate and professional. It sounds like
genuine instructions. Generally, such a detailed explanation is not a very
wise idea because it can distract the reader's attention before the main story
really starts.
Whether such a detailed explanation is really necessary for the story
or not is questionable. It may not be necessary because it would be
sufficient to say something like "Andy made a powerful cartridge." In this
story, however, Lawson's technique works effectively for the following three
reasons. First, the detailed technical explanation about the cartridge helps
change the unreality of the story into "reality" or at least, into "probability".
Secondly, the lack of action in the first part makes a good contrast to the
dynamic second part. It works to settle down the chaos which occurs in the
second part. In other words, there is a balance between the two parts of
the story, and this balance helps the whole story become a sophisticated
comedy. Finally, as a long wait can elevate a person's anticipation of what
happens next, the long introduction encourages us to imagine what might
happen to the men, their dog, and the cartridge. And what is more, such a
lengthy and technical explanation helps make the farce, which comes in the
latter part of the story, more effective. Literally, it is like a long "fuse"
which can lead us to an "explosive" laugh.

74
 Following the explanation of the cartridge, comes the description of
the dog, the main character in the story. Here again, Lawson gives a
detailed explanation, describing the dog's physical characteristics as well as
its nature. In this case, however, the particulars are necessary because it
is these characteristics which become the cause of the farce.
The dog, Tommy, is silly but friendly, and has a habit of retrieving
anything and everything. Lawson gives a humorous description of what
the dog looks like: "Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering
grin of appreciation of his own silliness." 12 This description is interesting
because it not only depicts the ugly appearance of the dog, but also conveys
a kind of affection which the author might feel toward his canine character.
Instead of the clever description, the author could simply say, "The dog looks
ugly," because the dog's ugliness has nothing directly to do with the cause of
the incident in the story. The blunt description of the dog's ugliness also
causes us to pity the poor dog. This is Lawson's paradoxical sense of
humour.
As has already been mentioned, the humour of "The Loaded Dog" is
concentrated in the second half of the story. It begins when the dog
appears before the men with the cartridge in its mouth, and to make
matters worse, the cartridge is already lit. The men and the dog react
differently. The men immediately run for their lives because they are
afraid of the impending explosion, whereas the dog runs because it wants to
play with them. Terror and amusement are happening simultaneously in
the same scene. This imbalance between the two opposite feelings makes
us feel somewhat uncomfortable, but soon makes us laugh.
The reactions of each of the men are also amusing. Often in an
emergency, different people have different reactions. Some immediately
run away without thinking, but others panic and are unable to move. In

75
the case of Dave and his mates, each one of them runs, but they unwittingly
follow each other, making a line like a train. And, adding to the farce, the
dog follows at the rear of the line. The men shout at each other to spread
out, but they actually do the opposite. This behaviour fits our common
understanding of people under pressure; they often do silly things that they
would never do if they were thinking rationally. This makes us smile with
discomfort, realising that we too could be just as stupid in such a frenzied
situation.
Many dogs would not fetch an unknown object, especially, if it is
inedible, and a smart dog would sniff the object first and leave it alone if it
smelt gunpowder. However, the unlikely setting in this story makes sense
to us because of the information that the dog is a foolish retriever. Given
the information, we can understand that the dog is happy even with a
hissing cartridge in its mouth. In addition, without it, the scene, which
illustrates the fuss between the dog and each of the men, would be too
stereotyped and melodramatic. The description of the dog's stupidity
allows all the ridiculous incidents in the story to seem quite probable.
Specifically, an explosion of the dynamite in the dog's mouth at the end of
the story becomes more of a real possibility.
Besides the vivid description of the characters' actions, Lawson uses
sound effects or onomatopoeia in order to make the story more realistic.
"Hissing," "spitting," and "spluttering" are effectively used to depict the live
fuse burning steadily toward the cartridge. The onomatopoetic effect of
those words works like a metronome and its regularity stands out against
the irregular movement of the men. Onomatopoeia also helps make the
scene more realistic because it stimulates our sensory organs to 'feel' the
story, whereas words can only arouse people's imagination by using their
meamng.

76
 The story finally comes to its climax: the explosion. The cartridge in
the dog's mouth may explode at any moment, but at the same time, it is not
really expected. A finale that keeps the dog alive is definitely expected. It
is quite interesting that this scene requires us to have two different or even
opposing feelings at the same time. One feeling is of enjoying the humour
of the story, and the other feeling is of having apprehensions about the
destiny of the dog. In other words, the story is not a comedy which simply
draws a laugh, but is disturbing because of the mixed feelings it causes.
If the story allowed the cartridge to explode in Tommy's mouth, it
could not end as a comedy, instead it would become a tragedy. To avoid this,
Lawson provides a scapegoat. The scapegoat is a villain dog which is
under the floor of the kitchen Tommy runs into. The other dog snatches
the cartridge from Tommy. Although Lawson gives many reasons for the
vicious dog to become a sacrifice, the setting is once again quite contrived,
but it gives us a sense of relief and a good laugh. When the explosion
finally comes, no one is disappointed.
The explosion leaves the villain dog as an only victim of the accident.
Lawson describes the aftermath humorously, and the story does not become
a tragedy at all. The description of Tommy romping around his masters as
usual illustrates the men's relief and satisfaction that their dog is still alive.
It also exposes a kind of fear that even though their normal routine has
returned, death is always close at hand. "The Loaded Dog," has complex
humour interwoven with potential tragedy.
In a journal-like sketch, "In a Dry Season" (1892), the narrator
(Lawson) mentions: "Death is about the only cheerful thing in the bush." 13
There are two ways of interpreting this enigmatic comment. One
interpretation is that in the bush, a place of extreme sameness, even
someone's death can seem dynamic with its ceremonial procedure such as a

77
procession, hymns, and flowers offered for the deceased, as already seen in
"The Union Buries Its Dead". The other interpretation is that everything
in the bush, even cheerful things, may possibly be, more or less, associated
with death. In "The Loaded Dog", the hilarious actions of the characters
ominously reflect "death" which may be inflicted at any moment by an
explosion of the stick of dynamite held by the dog. There is a subtle
tension dividing the comical and tragic elements of the story. And each
time the comedy surpasses the tragedy, tension is released, evoking a laugh
from the reader. The humour of "The Loaded Dog" does not exist without
the overhanging shadow of death or the implication that death is a constant
companion of bush dwellers.
Lawson's short story, "The Iron-bark Chip" (1899) is a good example of
his ironical humour. "The Iron-bark Chip" was written a few years earlier
than "The Loaded Dog". It is also part of the "Dave Regan Series" which
has Dave Regan, Jack (or Jim) Bentley, and Andy Page as the main
characters.
In the story, they work at a railway construction site. Railway
construction in New South Wales gradually developed towards the end of
the 19th century. The first railway in the colony was built between Sydney
and Parramatta in 1855. 14 As for the background of the story, Colin
Roderick states that "The Iron-bark Chip" is based on Lawson's personal
experience in his teens. Roderick also explains that good timber like
iron-bark was not easily obtained at the time and occasionally, substitute
timber was used. In Roderick's opinion, Lawson used this fact as the basis
of his comedy.15 "The Iron-bark Chip" is not the type of comedy which
draws laughter from events, or the comical behaviour of the characters as in
"The Loaded Dog". Actually, there are few scenes in which the characters
move around busily. Humour in this story rather seems to be found in

78
Lawson's description of the characters' psychology.
The story mainly develops within one setting, a railway construction
site. Lawson briefly explains the background of the story in its opening.
In particular, his descriptions of the government inspector for construction,
including his personality, are interesting:
But the Government inspector was a reserved man who poked
round on his independent own and appeared in lonely spots at
unexpected times - with apparently no definite object in life -
like a grey kangaroo bothered by a new wire fence, but
unsuspicious of the presence of humans. 16
The metaphor in the second half of the passage literally means that a
kangaroo would be troubled by a newly-built fence that blocks its way, but it
would not realise its problems are caused by humans. In other words, the
kangaroo would see no connection between the fence and humans. As for

the inspector, it suggests that even though he may notice a problem

immediately in front of him, he is unable to relate the problem to its source.
In other words, he is a man who is interested only in his duty as a
stereotypical government officer. This is sharp irony and will make sense
at the end of the story.
In the scene where the inspector appears unexpectedly before Dave
and his mates who have sneakily used substitute timber, Lawson describes
the casualness of how the inspector turns up, by comparing him with an
ordinary bushman: "... the Government inspector drifting down upon them
obliquely, with something of the atmosphere of a casual Bill or Jim who had
dropped out of his easy-going track to see how they were getting on, and
borrow a match." 17 This is another irony because Lawson explains that the
inspector, a typical officer, appears just the wayan ordinary bushman would.
Furthermore, he develops his description of the inspector into a general

79
criticism of government officials. He mentions that they never take action
when people ask them, but they try to come nearer when people wish to
ignore them.
Lawson uses another interesting expression to describe the inspector's
countenance. When he comes to the site and looks at the spurious timber,
his eyes take on sad expression. They look" as if there had been a very sad
and painful occurrence in his family, way back in the past, and that piece of
timber in some way reminded him of it and brought the old sorrow home to
him."18 This expression is incompatible in the scene because it should be

Dave or someone else in his party who becomes sad in this desperate
situation, not the inspector. The expression can be interpreted in three
possible ways. First, the inspector's sad look could be typical for a
government officer in any situation. Secondly, perhaps the inspector feels
sad because he has already recognised their sham work. Finally, his sad
look may have nothing to do with the situation at all. In any case, his
baffling expression confuses the three dishonest men. When the inspector
aptly asks them about the material of "the timber", they become so
confounded that they answer and talk more than the inspector might expect
them to. Their struggles are all the funnier because the inspector's
behaviour is ambiguous and off-the"point.
This scene, which is the beginning of the climax in the story, is mainly
composed of dialogue between the inspector and the three bushmen.
Remarkably, the pattern of the development of their conversations is
similar to that of Japanese traditional story-telling, "Koten -rakugo." It is
interesting to compare some dialogue patterns in "The Iron-bark Chip" with
those in Rakugo stories and to investigate similarities between these two
types of humour, which are thought to be different both historically and
culturally,

80
 The first dialogue is fronl a scene where the inspector asks Dave and
his mates some questions about the material used. As mentioned before,
his questions confuse the men who have disguised the wood. Although the
questions are simple, their answers are excessive, as they desperately try to
hide the truth. At first, their explanation sounds plausible, but actually,
does not Inake any sense in spite of the many words they use. Humour
here is in the mental gap between the calm officer and the nervous men,
and also in the situation where the more excuses they make, the less true
they sound:
"Is that iron-bark?"
Jack Bently, the fluent liar of the party, caught his breath
with a jerk and coughed, to cover the gasp and gain time. "I
iron-bark? Of course it is! I thought you would know iron-bark,
mister." (Mister was silentJ "What else d'yer think it is?" ... "L
look here, mister!" ... "B - but don't the plans and specifications
say iron-bark? Ours does, anyway. I - I'll git the papers from
the tent and shovv yer, if yer like." ... He (the inspector) stooped,
and with an absent air picked up a chip .... "Did this chip come off
that girder?" Blank silence. The inspector blinked six times,
divided in threes, rapidly, mounted his horse, said "Day", and
rode off.19

There is a similar dialogue in one scene of a Rakugo story titled,

"Nibansenji", or "The Second Brew". It is a comical story about a
night-time fire patrol in winter. One night, shopkeepers from the
neighbourhood meet and make patrols in two groups. While the first
group of men wait for the second group to return after their first duty, they
start a drinking party in order to warnl thelnselves. Just as they are in the
middle of the feast, a samurai officer comes to check on their patrols.
soon as they hear the samurai commg, they try to hide everything.
However, the samurai glimpses a teapot which contains Japanese sake and
asks them about it. The men answer that it is a pot of brewed medicine
which works for a common cold. Then, the samurai asks for some of it
because he himself has a cold. Of course, they turn it down saying that the
medicine works only on commoners, not on samurai officers. Finally, the
samurai takes the medicine (sake), almost empties the pot, and leaves them
saying "Prepare the second one while I have another patrol."20
The development of the two scenes is quite similar because in both,
their excuses make the situation worse as the men struggle to cover up their
deception. The common source of humour in the two stories obviously lies
in the comical behaviours of the flustered characters. They are funny
because the adults make excuses like small children when their mischief is
discovered. And each story ends with a disappointing result, even after
their agonising efforts at cover-up.
In "The Iron-bark Chip", Dave works very hard to retrieve a chip of the
false timber from the inspector, but in the end, the officer goes back to his
office leaving the chip on the fence. Dave's efforts do not payoff. He is
extremely frustrated and can do nothing but curse. In "Nibansenji", the
men's drinking is overlooked by the samurai who wants to have a share of it
himself, but they are eventually deprived of their portions and even asked
to brew another batch. The story ends with the samurai's request and has
no description of the shopkeepers' reaction to it. However, it is easy to
guess that they might complain to each other about their misfortune.
The second dialogue in "The Iron-bark Chip" is a comical conversation
between Dave and his mates after the inspector abruptly picks up a chip
from the substitute timber and takes it away. Andy Page does not
understand their difficult situation because he does not realise that the

82
inspector will examine the chip and discover their dishonesty. The
dialogue excluding the narration goes as follows:
"Wha - what did he do that for?" asked Andy Page.
"Do what for, you fool?" enquired Dave.
"Ta - take that chip for?"
"He's taking it to the office!" snarled Jack Bentley.
"What - what for? What does he want to do that for?"
"To get it blanky well analysed! You ass! Now are you
satisfied?" "Gimmiamatch!"
"We - well! What are we to do now?" enquiredAndy.
"Grain and varnish the bloomin' culvert!" snapped Bentley. 21
Andy's poor understanding of the matter irritates the other two.
Humour coming from the gap between a foolish character and others
as seen in the dialogue above is also a typical pattern in Rakugo stories.
There is a similar dialogue in a story titled "Tsukuda Matsuri", or "Tsukuda
Festival" . The main character named "Jirobei" goes to Tsukuda Island to
enjoy the Festival. The last boat going back to his town is overloaded and
sinks due to too many passengers. Fortunately, Jirobei does not get on the
boat. However, the rumour of his death circulates among his neighbours.
In this scene, there are two conversations which have a similar
pattern to that of "The Iron-bark Chip". One conversation is between two
neighbours in Jirobei's area. The other is between Yotarou, who is a typical
foolish character often used in Rakugo, and those two neighbours. The
English interpretation of the dialogue is as follows:
Neighbour A: Have you already heard of Jirobei's death?
Neighbour B: Yes, I have ... Is that true?
But, it's strange because I saw him at the
public bath last night.

83
 Neighbour A: Someone may die even though you see him there.
It doesn't matter if you see him at a
public bath or not. Someone may survive even if
you don't see him.
Neighbour B: You are right.

Neighbour: Hey, are you home, Yota?

Yotarou: Yes, what?
Neighbour: Well, Jirobei has gone.
Yotarou: Has he? Where?
Neighbour: Don't be silly! He died!
Yotarou: Oh, was he serious about it?
Neighbour: Of course, he was. Nobody is dead for a
joke.
Yotarou: Well, he shouldn't have been so.
Neighbour: Oh, you fool! Nobody should have been so. The
boat he was on overturned yesterday.
Yotarou: He could have swum if a boat had overturned.
Neighbour: But, Jirobei couldn't swim.
Yotarou: Why didn't he learn to swim?
Neighbour: That's useless now! 22
This pattern of conversation between Yotarou and another person is a
typical way of drawing laughter from the audience in Rakugo. Rakugo
stories based on this pattern are called "Yotarou· banashi", or "Yotarou
stories". Yamamoto Susumu, the editor of the Rakugo Handbook, explains:
"In Rakugo stories, Yotarou is a person who is slow and weak in social
matters, but is also a good craftsman."23 In "The Iron-bark Chip," Lawson
describes Andy Page as "the hardest grafter, but altogether helpless,

84
hopeless, and useless in a crisis like this."24 It is interesting that the
descriptions of these two characters are very similar, even to the extent of
including information about the character's merits. A foolish character
saying or doing something stupid in a serious situation is probably a
universal pattern of humour.
The idea of the characters trying to disguise what they have done is
also similar in both stories. The reason for their matching reaction is that
both groups are powerless citizens under the supervision of authorities.
They know very well that they are supposed to obey the social rules;
otherwise they will be punished severely. The authorities are the British
Empire in "The Iron-bark Chip", and the shogunate government in
"Nibansennji". Dave and his mates try to conceal their dishonesty because
they would fail to get their wages for the railway construction or even lose
their future occupation if the truth of their poor workmanship was disclosed.
The shopkeepers in "Nibansenji" also tell a lie because they may be banned
from doing business in their area or at least, lose their customers if their
behaviour becomes known. From the viewpoint of social background, both
stories are about periods which had a definite class structure consisting of a
powerful authority and powerless people.
However, it is interesting to note that the characters in both stories
are humorous characters, not tragic ones, although they both live in such
regulated societies. "The Iron-bark Chip" was written in 1899, just before
Australia achieved Federation in 1901, ending the British Empire's direct
reign over the colonies. The rate of native-born population to total white
population reached about seventy-five percent in 1891. 25 The atmosphere
of nationalism among people was at its peak around the same period. 26
Therefore, it is probable that tensions between the government officials and
the common people had already been loosened and their loyalty to authority

85
was just superficial. The characters were created and described under
such circumstances by the author.
The social background described in "Koten-rakugo" is similar to that
in "The Iron-bark Chip". The characters of "Nibansenji" and "Tsukuda
Matsuri" are people living in the Edo Period (1603-1868). Japan was
isolated from nearly all of the world during most of the Edo Period because
of the policy of "national isolation" by the shogunate government. As a
result of this isolation, Japan had no wars against other countries. Even
domestically, there were no civil wars except for a revolt by the Japanese
Christians in Shimabara, Nagasaki Prefecture, between 1637 and 1638,
which was actually the main cause of the political isolation. Japan
internally experienced the lively and prosperous time during these
relatively peaceful times. 27 Especially, mass culture made a remarkable
development among the people in Edo, and many kinds of entertainment
became popular then. 28 It is interesting that both the Australian and
Japanese characters in these stories live under powerful administrations,
but at the same time, they also live in the middle of transitional times just
before the change of an era.
However, there is a definite difference in the process of change in the
two countries. In Japan, the hierarchical system was established early in
the Edo period, having the samurai as the ruling class. Society was
basically divided into four classes; samurai, farmers, craftsmen, and
tradesmen. Ironically, however, various duties imposed by the shogunate
government on the feudal lords in order to keep their power, exhausted the
samurai society particularly in regard to their finances. As a result, they

had to ask the tradesmen for financial support and this eventually resulted
in an erosion of the whole system.
In Australia, there seems to have been a sense of "egalitarianism"

86
among people even in the relatively early times. Since Australia originally
started with two kinds of people, convicts and the government officers who
managed them, there was an explicit polarisation in society from the
beginning. Russel Ward explains: "... early Australian society was, in some
important respects, perhaps even more class· conscious than British society
of the period."29 Ward also gives his interpretation of the position of each
class:
The wealthy and articulate minority for a long time continued
to think of themselves as Britons in temporary exile ...
Thus the great majority of the population, derived from a
British working· class background, came to look upon Australia
as their home much earlier than did the small group of
middle·class colonial employers and transient officials. 30
However, such a clear polarisation in social class, at the same time,
suggested a possibility of social breakdown. Babette Smith explains the
reason for the early prevalence of egalitarianism in Australia:
The first, which occurred soon after the Europeans' arrival when
they were facing starvation, was Governor Arthur Phillip's
decision that all people regardless of rank should share equally
in the remaining supplies. .., Phillip overturned every
expectation of the class·ridden society from which the colonists
had come, making it clear that the humanity of the most lowly
convict was as important as his own. From that moment,
sharing on an egalitarian basis became entrenched in the ethos
of the convict community and, .. , was common practice among its
residents by the 1830s. 31
Beverley Kingston mentions that visitors to the colonies in the late 19th
century often made comments on Australia's "egalitarian tone of society."32

87
Kingston also explains that the sense of egalitarianism was attributed not
only on the absence of an upper class in the colonial society, but also on "the
weakness of traditional institution, or even the absence of tradition
itself... "33
This background of early Australian society surely lies behind the
humour of "The Iron-bark Chip". The gap between the inspector and the
workers also reflects the relationship between the two classes in Australian
society at the time.
In contrast to the dialogue, there are few humorous actions by the
characters in "The Iron-bark Chip". Dave trying to exchange the false chip
for a real iron-bark chip is perhaps the only dynamic scene in the whole
story. The overall impression of this scene is that everything, except Dave,
is motionless, and only Dave moves, restlessly sneaking from place to place
trying to hide himself from the inspector's view.
For the climax of the story, Lawson uses some rhetorical devices in his
description. It is interesting that he describes characters' movements by
comparing them with animals such as a kangaroo, a kangaroo dog, a snake,
and a go anna, which is an Australian lizard. In one simile, he describes
Dave approaching the inspector's horse "on all fours."34
However, Lawson uses the same pattern of simile several times, which
seems to be a little redundant. The first "kangaroo" simile used at the
beginning of the story is witty, but the second one does not sound as good.
In fact, it seems to spoil the first one. He may have used those metaphors
of Australian animals for a different purpose, other than making the story
more amusing. He seems to use the similes to advertise Australia outside
the country, in particular, in Britain. In fact, about the time when Lawson
wrote "The Iron-bark Chip", he complained about the poor literary
environment in Australia. He also insisted that the talented needed to go

88
to London to be appropriately appreciated. He wrote a long letter to the
Bulletin in January, 1899, and concluded it with:
My advice to any young Australian writer whose talents have
been recognized would be to go steerage, stowaway, swim, and
seek London, Yankeeland, or Timbuctoo - rather than stay in
Australia till his genius turned to gall, or beer. Or, failing this -
and still in the interests of human nature and literature - to
study elementary anatomy, especially as applies to the cranium,
and then shoot himself carefully with the aid of a looking-glass. 35
He also sent a letter to Earl Beauchamp, Governor of New South Wales, to
ask for financial support. In April, 1900, he and his family actually left for
London. Under such circumstances, it is possible that Lawson
intentionally highlights Australian animals in his similes, demonstrating
Australian humour.
In the end, Dave reaches the false chip and the other characters start
to try to distract the inspector from Dave's movements. Dave finally
succeeds in swapping the chips, but the inspector hurriedly leaves them
because a storm is coming. The man is gone and the chip is left behind.
Dave does nothing but curses in the pouring rain. The ending of "The
Iron-bark Chip" is thus really ironic.
The end result of the tremendous efforts made by Dave and his mates
coming to nothing is undoubtedly funny. Dave dares to take a risk because
he knows that the chip has to be real in order to secure their future
employment. He also believes that the inspector wants to check the chip to
find out what type of wood they were using. Unfortunately, however, a
coming storm is more important to the inspector than ascertaining whether
the chip is real or not. And even though the inspector is caught in the
storm, he is only made wet by the rain. On the contrary, a storm could be a

89
big problem for Dave and his mates because they work as contractors.
Finally, it turns out that the ambiguous attitude and the sorrowful
looks of the inspector are almost meaningless. Dave, Jim, and Andy run
and rush for nothing as a result of their feelings of guilt and their overactive
imaginations. The fact that Dave's exertion does not payoff is ethically
right. However, this ending is not really expected because it would be
more exciting if Dave succeeded in deceiving the government officer. That
is why this ironical ending draws laughter. In addition, this ending can be
taken as a caution by the author. The caution is aimed at the inspector
and the authorities. It criticises their inattention to the people and their
labour.
Humour in "The Iron-bark Chip" comes from, for one thing, the
excellent descriptions of the characters and incidents by Henry Lawson,
using fme similes and comparisons. It also comes from the conventional
patterns of humorous dialogue between the characters which are also seen
in the Japanese Koten Rakugo. The humour is also reinforced by the
particular social background of Australia at the time when the story was
written. And finally, Lawson's ironic conclusion completes the humour of
the story.
Humour described in "The Loaded Dog" and "The Iron-bark Chip" does
not necessarily draw a lot of laughter. Rather, it results in a suppressed
laugh, more like a chuckle because the humour comes from seemingly dire
situations such as the verge of a tragedy and deceit which is about to be
exposed. This humour may have developed from the unique environment
of the Australian bush and also from people who were battling to overcome
their hard lives as cheerfully as possible.

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 Chapter VI
Joe Wilson, a Family Bushman

Joe Wilson is the central character in a sequence of the several short

stories which were written by Lawson between 1898 and 1901 and is called
the "Joe Wilson sequence" or the "Joe Wilson quartet". Joe Wilson is also
one of the important characters in Lawson's bush stories because he is quite
different from other bush characters. He has a family in the bush although
other popular characters, such as Steelman, Dave Regan and his mates, and
Mitchell, are all single. This chapter will feature Joe Wilson, the only
family man of Lawson's popular protagonists and explore the reason why
this unique character fails to maintain his family life in the bush and what
his failure means to Lawson's literature.
Lawson basically believed that the Australian bush is no place for
women, so the bushmen in his stories are unmarried. Lawson also felt
that "mateship", a remedy for loneliness, was only available for men.
Consequently, most of Lawson's bush characters live solitary lives and only
occasionally have companions. In most cases, their struggles in the bush
do not end in success. A typical pattern of Lawson's bush characters, when
faced with the severe environment, is for some to go mad, and others to die.
Some characters wish to have their own families, for example, Giraffe in
"Send Round the Hat" decides to go back to his girlfriend in Sydney, and Alf
in "A Case for the Oracle" disguises himself as a family man. Joe Wilson is
an unusual character for Lawson because he tries to raise his family in the
bush. Rather than being a nomad like many other characters, he gives us
an image of being with his family in the stories.
The stories in the Joe Wilson sequence were mostly written in London

91
where Lawson and his family stayed between 1900 and 1902, and were
published there in a book titled "Joe Wilson and His Mates" (1901). The
stories are supposed to be based on Lawson's own experiences of marriage.
Even before they left Australia, he did not already get along well with his
wife, Bertha, and their relationship became even worse in London.
Lawson seems to .use Joe Wilson as a way to express his opinions of the
husband-wife relationship and also to make excuses for himself as an
unreliable, often drunk husband.
In addition, the Joe Wilson sequence of stories seems to be a kind of
experiment Lawson attempted to find out whether or not a family or home
can be maintained in the bush, and if it can also become a haven for people
trying to survive there. Joe Wilson demonstrates how difficult it is to cope
with the hard bush life and a family. In the end, he loses his wife, Mary,
forever, and his family life breaks up.
The Joe Wilson sequence is said to be Lawson's last highly appreciated
work, 1 so it has significance as more than just an experiment about survival
in the bush, or as a means for the author to make excuses about his own life.
The sequence consists of four short stories, "Joe Wilson's Courtship" (1901),
"Brighten's Sister-in-Law" (1898-1900), "Water Them Geraniums"
(1899-1901), and "A Double Buggy at Laheys Creek" (1900).
"Joe Wilson's Courtship" describes Joe's first meeting with, and
engagement to, Mary. Two years after their marriage, their first child, Jim,
is born. Unfortunately, he is a sickly child who often has convulsions.
"Brighten's Sister-in-Law", the second story in the sequence, is about a
woman who helps Joe when Jim has a fit while they are camping in the
bush. "Water Them Geraniums" is a story about Joe and Mary after they
have been married for about five years. Finally, "A Double Buggy at
Laheys Creek" is about the couple's difficult relationship and its fleeting

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improvement after a surprising gift £rom Joe to Mary.
Out of the four stories, "Water Them Geraniums" will be the main one
examined in this chapter. Especially, the relationship of the main
characters, the cause of death of two women, and the meaning of Joe Wilson
as "a family bushman", or an unusual character in the bush, will be
discussed, with particular reference to the historical background of
Australia.
The structure of the Joe Wilson sequence of stories is quite
complicated. This is partly because the chronology of the stories does not
match with the order in which they were written. For instance, "Joe
Wilson's Courtship", the story about Joe's first meeting with his wife, Mary,
was actually written last, in 1901. "Past Carin"', the second part of "Water
Them Geraniums", was written one year earlier than "A Lonely Track", the
first part of the story.
Another reason for the structural complexity of the sequence comes
£rom Joe's sudden premonition of Mary's death in "A Lonely Track", the first
part of "Water Them Geraniums":
What women some men are! But the time came, and not
many years after, when I stood by the bed where Mary lay, white
and still; and, amongst other things, I kept saying, "I'll give in,
Mary - I'll give in," and then I'd laugh. They thought that I was
raving mad, and took me £rom the room. But that time was to
come. 2
This suggests that Joe is narrating the story, recalling the past, and at this
point his married life was already over. This confusing setting can be
interpreted in two ways. One interpretation is that all stories in the Joe
Wilson sequence are premised on the assumption that Mary will die in the
end. Possibly, Mary's death was added later by the writer because "A

93
Lonely Track" was written in the second to last in the sequence. Another
interpretation is that Joe's attempt to overcome the bush will end in failure
with the death of his wife. This means, in other words, that Lawson's
experiment also proves unsuccessful.
The reason Joe Wilson fails to master the bush seems to be deeply
connected to the reason why Mary dies. However, there are almost no
descriptions of the cause of her death in the stories. In "Water Them
Geraniums", Joe foresees his wife's doom when he sees his neighbour, Mrs
Spicer. Even with this foresight, however, in the end, he cannot prevent
his wife's death. Examining the story closely may give us some hints about
the true story of the Wilson family's misfortune.
"Water Them Geraniums" is the third story in the sequence. The
story describes the delicate relationship between Joe and Mary and
involvement with their neighbour, Mrs Spicer. The story consists of two
parts: the first, "A Lonely Track" and the second, "Past Carin"'. The first
part is about their trip to the new place where they will live, what Joe
thinks about on the way, and their quarrel after arriving. The first part
also contains Joe's foreboding of Mary's death, as has been already
described. This shocking revelation makes all the incidents described in
the four stories, including all their conversations and even all their feelings,
happy or unhappy, meaningless. The story is not a simple family story; it
is always overshadowed by Mary's death.
"A Lonely Track" was apparently written hastily by Lawson to connect
the gap between the time when Joe and Mary were in their first home in
Gulgong, and the time when they move to Lahey's Creek and meet Mrs.
Spicer. The first part, therefore, is not as highly regarded as the second
part. Colin Roderick emphasises this, referring to the opening of the first
part:

94
 ... and the fact that the periodical printing began with the curt
reference to its being "the first morning at our selection on
Lahey's Creek" indicates that "A Lonely Track" had to be hastily
thrown together to bridge the gap. The opening sentence of "A
Lonely Track" is bald and perfunctory. 3
However, the first part is important because it illustrates Joe and Mary's
precarious relationship which will develop into a permanent separation in
the future. Moreover, the restrained tone of voice in this part helps the
second part appear more impressive and dramatic.
The first part mostly illustrates the delicate relationship between Joe
and Mary. There is virtually no conversation between husband and wife as
they make their way to their new house in Lahey's Creek. Mary misses the
little son they left with her sister and weeps as she thinks about him, while
Joe sensing his wife's sullenness, begins brooding. Joe says in his
narration that they could not have heard each other anyway because of the
constant rattle from both his wagon and the cart Mary drove. However,
this is just an excuse. As soon as they arrive at their new place, they start

blaming each other. Mary complains, "I can't stand this life here; it will
kill me!"4 Her words scarily foretell her future. Joe answers, "You run me
on to this!"5 This argument displays a fundamental gap of viewpoints
between husband and wife. Joe thinks he is doing what is best for his
family, but unfortunately, it is not what his wife wants. It is surprising
that the author is able to analyse a woman's thinking so clearly. It must be
because of his keen insight.
After their bitter quarrel, Joe walks aimlessly in the bush, thinking
about various things. He knows how he should have dealt with their
argument. About four miles from home, he sees the property where Mrs.
Spicer and her children live. Mr Spicer is away droving. Seeing and

95
listening to the haggard woman, Joe has a suspicion that Mary will become
like her in the future: "I felt - and the thought came like a whip-stroke on
my heart - that this was what Mary would come to if I left her here."6 On
the way back home, Joe decides that he and his family will leave the bush
the next morning and go to Sydney. However, when he comes home and
sees Mary looking normal as if nothing had happened between them, he
changes his mind. Joe gently suggests, "Somehow I didn't feel satisfied
with the way things had gone."7 Ifhe had found his wife depressed like she
was before he went for his walk, he would have taken her out of the place,
and then, at least, Mary might not have died. Joe's indecision might have
been the first of his mistakes which eventually lead to the end of their
married life.
Joe tends to think about things seriously, but also to give up before
carrying out his plan, even though he knows what he should do. For
instance, whenever he thinks of their future, he always adds a special
condition to his thoughts: "... when things brightened up". 8 This is a good
excuse for him to postpone making a decision. T. Inglis Moore mentions:
"In ... Joe, the chief characteristic is the determination 'never to submit or
yield', but to battle on whatever the odds."9 However, Moore's opinion is
definitely denied by Joe's wife. Mary blames her husband in their
argument: "... why weren't you more decided?"l0 Although Joe can foresee
his wife's doom, he is too irresolute to take actions to prevent the outcome.
The second part of the story, "Past Carin'" is mainly about Mrs. Spicer,
a key person in the story. She is described also as the embodiment of
misfortune, and also as an ominous being who could bring Joe and his
family unwelcome news. Mrs Spicer's unusual characteristics and some
possible causes of her madness and death have been already discussed in
the second chapter. Although some of Lawson's female characters suffer

96
miserable lives like Mrs Spicer, the writer does not generally explain
enough about the process of their deaths. This lack can be partly
explained by the social background at Lawson's time.
In "Past Carin''', Mr Spicer, the breadwinner of the Spicer family, is a
"dummy", not a selector. A selector or a free selector is defined as a farmer
who selected and settled land by lease or license from the government.l1
Joe, the narrator, explains about the difference between a selector and a
dummy as follows:
I had an idea that he [Mr Spiced wasn't a selector at all, only a
'dummy' for the squatter of the Cobborah run. You see, selectors
were allowed to take up land on runs, or pastoral lease. The
squatters kept them off as much as possible, by all manner of
dodges and paltry persecution. The squatter would get as much
freehold as he could afford, 'select' as much land as the law
allowed one man to take up, and then employ dummies (dummy
selectors) to take up bits of land that he fancied about his run,
and hold them for him. 12
The passage explains that Mr Spicer is just one of the employees the local
squatter holds. According to Marilyn Lake, one of the writers of Families
in Colonial Australia, selectors at the time were divided into two groups,
successes and failures. The failed ones were usually poverty-stricken, and
their family members, wives and older sons in particular, had to work to
help the head of their family because they could not afford to hire labour or
buy machines. 13
In the Spicers' case, they "kept a few cows and steers, and had thirty or
forty sheep."14 The small number of livestock shows that the Spicer family
is very poor. Mr Spicer is usually away from home, "shearin' or fencin', or
workin' on somebody's station."15 Therefore, care of the domestic animals

97
is left to Mrs Spicer and the children. Mr and Mrs Spicer seem to have at
least six children, perhaps one or two more. However, the three oldest
seem to have already left home in order to help with domestic finances or to
reduce the number of mouths to feed. Without any help from her older
children, Mrs Spicer mainly takes care of the livestock by herself. With
small children to look after and a lot of work to do on the farm, she must
have felt tremendous physical and mental stress for a long time.
However, this is not the only reason for Mrs Spicer's severe
circumstances. In the past, many Australian women living in rural (bush)
areas were forced to carry excessive work loads. In the late 19th century,
the idea of "separate spheres"16 for married couples was generally accepted
in Australia. This means that husbands and wives had separate spheres of
work. The general idea was that the wife's duty was inside the house,
doing housework and child-raising, and she was not allowed to interfere in
her spouse's sphere. In reality, however, wives also had to be ready to be
relief workers and help their husbands when necessary. This extra
workload was a big problem. Especially in poor families, quite often the
wife had to do part of her husband's work on the farm, as well as keep up
with the strenuous domestic duties. In particular, wives were usually
required to milk the cows because men felt that it was a monotonous and
unattractive job. 17
At that time, in early Australia, it was believed as a matter of course
that women should work as part of labour force in the men's sphere, even
though they were extremely busy with work in their own sphere. The
overworked women often became ill, and for some of them this resulted in
separation from their husbands, and for others the end result was even
more severe; they died from exhaustion. Lake gives some examples of
women and their families who were sacrificed to the ideology of "separate

98
spheres" .18 These examples prove that Mrs Spicer is an accurate model of
a real bushwoman, who lived during the hard times in Australian history.
It is obviously unwise for Mr and Mrs Spicer to have so many children
because the large family is also a cause of the heavy burden on Mrs Spicer's
shoulders. Although the older children have left home, there are still
several small children bustling around her.
Birth.control was generally accepted in Australia, especially in urban
areas, in the 20th century because "the costs of raising a family had become
too great; children were of no great economic value to their parents." 19
However, children were still "an asset in rural areas". 20 Therefore, in the
late 19th century, women in the bush, like Mrs Spicer, had little knowledge
and information about how contraception could make their lives easier.
Lots of children were also considered to be a labour resource. Thus, Mrs
Spicer can be regarded as a victim of the particular Australian society in
which she lived.
Joe imagines that his wife will become like Mrs Spicer in the future in
"A Lonely Track", probably because he can already see some similarities
between the two women. That is still strange, however, because there are
so few features in common between them, except perhaps being a wife, a
mother, and living in the bush.
Compared to Mrs Spicer, Mary seems to have a sophisticated style of
speech. She is supposed to be from a good German family, according to Joe
in his narration: "I thought at times that there was something very German
about her expression; also something aristocratic about the turn of her nose,
which nipped in at the nostrils when she spoke. ... Mary was German in
figure and walk."21
Joe's initial meeting with Mary occurs in the first story of the sequence,
"Joe Wilson's Courtship." This story explains that Mary has a German

99
background, and her mother was the daughter of German immigrants. 22
In the middle of the 19th century, Germans were the second largest
population group in Australia, after the British, and they were, in general,
successful. 23 Joe's description gives the impression that Mary is from a
prosperous German immigrant background.
Mary only has two children, so it is improbable that she will be
overloaded with child-rearing in the future like Mrs Spicer. But she is, of
course, concerned about her son's chronic convulsions. This is detailed in
"Brighten's Sister-in-Law", the second story of the Joe Wilson's sequence.
In this story, their son, Jim, almost dies from a convulsion, but is saved by
Mr Brighten's sister-in-law. This incident happens about a month after
their move to Lahey's Creek, in other words, somewhere in the earlier time
of "Past Carin"'. This experience gives them knowledge about how to cope
the next time Jim has a convulsion.
Considering this information about Mary, it is quite unlikely that she
could suffer the same fate as Mrs Spicer. Many words and deeds prove
that she is sensible enough to understand the situation she is in and to
know how to manage it. Mary and Mrs Spicer seem to be two different
types of women even though both live in the same environment in the
Australian bush, as well as in the same period of Australian history.
The comparison between Mary and Mrs Spicer rather suggests
another possibility about the cause of Mary's death. There are actually
some indications in the sequence stories of the possibility that Joe Wilson,
her husband, might have some responsibility for her death.
For one thing, Joe is a heavy drinker, a typical trait of Lawson's bush
characters. His drinking makes Mary uneasy, and disappointed in her
husband. She is anxious about Joe's drinking and believes that her
husband can keep away from drinking only when he is working hard in the

100
bush. She says to Joe, during a bitter argument just after their arrival at
Lahey's Creek: "As long as you take a glass there is danger."24 An episode
in the short story, "Drifting Apart" (1901-1902), proves her statement to be
true. In the story, the family go to Sydney for a short holiday.
Unfortunately, they often have arguments which usually start with Mary's
concern about Joe's drinking. In this story, the family have lived in Lahey's
Creek for several years, and Mary still has the same worry.
Lawson also wrote three short stories in which Joe Wilson appears as
an unmarried young man. Those stories are "Shall We Gather at the
River?" (1901), "His Brother's Keeper" (1901), and "The Story of
'Gentleman-Once'" (1901). They were included in a book, "Children of the
Bush" which was published after "Joe Wilson and Mates", in 1902. Joe's
heavy drinking is described in an episode of the story, "His Brother's
Keeper". The story is about Joe's mate, Jack Barnes and his wife, Clara.
Joe used to long for Clara, but she eventually married Jack. One day,
before going on a trip in the bush, Clara asks Joe to promise not to drink
during the journey. However, Joe breaks the promise and buys some
whisky after being tempted by a shameless shanty keeper who encourages
his customers to drink heavily for his own gain. Jack also drank heavily
after Joe, contrary to Carla's wishes.
Joe's indecisiveness has been already mentioned in this chapter.
When Mary reproaches his weakness in "A Lonely Track", he gets furious
not because he knows she is right, but because he misunderstands the root
of their problem:
... The trouble was that I never liked to "give in" or go half-way
to make it up - not half-way - it was all the way or nothing with
our natures.
"If I don't make a stand now," I'd say, "I'll never be master. I

101
 gave up the reins when I got married, and I'll have to get them
back again. 25
Then, Joe makes a decision:
I turned and started to walk home, fast. I'd made up my
mind. I'd take Mary straight back to Gulgong in the morning -
I forgot about the load I had to take to the sheep station. I'd say,
"Look here, Girlie" (that's what I used to call her), "we'll leave
this wretched life; we'll leave the Bush for ever! We'll go to
Sydney, and I'll be a man! and work my way up." And I'd sell
wagon, horses, and all, and go. 26
However, Joe does not take any action, proving he is nothing but an
irresolute man. Mary may well be disappointed with her husband.
Marilyn Lake indicates in her research of rural Australians in the early
20th century that overworked wives gradually realised that their husbands
were not men enough to feed their families, and the men themselves also
became aware of their shortcomings as breadwinners. 27 Joe and Mary
must have had a similar recognition about their husband -wife relationship.
Marilyn Lake also mentions a term for over-worked women which
used to be popular among Australian settlers in the late 19th century. At
that time, wives of poor settlers were forced to work, as already explained,
doing such chores as milking the cows, as well as managing the household
work and having total responsibility for child-rearing. These wives were
called "helpmates", a term which originated from "helpmeet", a word used
in the Bible. 28 The term was used conveniently by men as a way to make
their wives work outside of their sphere. The term was used in Australia
until the 1920s. 29 Lake's explanation indicates that Mrs Spicer is a typical
example of a "helpmate".
Lake also explains that there was a particular dependence between

102
husband and wife in isolated areas:
In rural districts, women's usefulness as unpaid farm workers in
addition to their customary services as sexual partners,
nursemaids, cooks and cleaners, often led to a situation in which
settlers developed a debilitating dependence on their wives. 30
Lake provides some examples of Australian settlers who were overly
dependent on their wives. Lake has one example of a settler who went
crazy after his wife died, then he also died leaving his eight children
orphaned. Another settler lost his sanity and took his own life when his
wife deserted him. These incidents took place in the 1920s, and it is worth
noting that men actually became insane and lor died as a result of their
hardships in the bush.
Joe Wilson could be, as in Lake's examples, more dependent on his
wife than he realises. Or it is possible that Joe himself goes mad like the
settlers mentioned above, and imagines that Mary is dead. Joe's
confession of Mary's death in "A Lonely Track" supports this supposition:
"They thought that I was raving mad, and took me from the room."31
Joe's misunderstanding about what a family, including the
husband·wife relationship, should be is one cause of Mary's misfortune.
Joe tries to deal with the affairs of his family on his own, without any help
from people close to him. Joe has no relatives of his own in the district
where he lives. According to Ellen McEwen, one of the writers of Families
in Colonial Australia, in Britain, there was already a custom for young
couples to live independently from their parents, hundreds of years before
the industrial revolution, and in 19th century Australia, nuclear families
were common due to legislation which discouraged large families. 32
In "Water Them Geraniums", Mary's younger brother, James, lives
with Joe's family in Lahey's Creek and Mary's sister lives in Gulgong, a

103
town about thirty kilometres away from where they live. Joe and Mary
used to live in Gulgong, but when they move to Lahey's Creek, even their
nearest neighbours live about four miles [about six and half kilometres]
away. Away from Gulgong, Mary may feel frustrated about not seeing her
sister regularly. When Joe was single and nomadic, his mother was his
only family member and lived alone in Sydney, but whether or not she is
still alive is unknown in this story. Joe, therefore, may not be able to
understand his wife's feelings and there could be a difference of views on the
importance of family between them. This gap may have affected their
relationship, too.
Historically, in the late 19th century, people in some areas of Australia
tended to live close to their relatives. Although each family lived
separately, they lived close and helped each other in their everyday lives
because they originally immigrated together. 33 They did not live together
in the same house as an extended family, nor did they live completely alone
as a nuclear family. This historical information suggests that Joe's
independent style of living is not so common, and is not wise for survival in
the Australian bush.
There is another interesting study about the correlation between
family structure and prosperity of farmers in the late 19th century in the
state of Victoria. According to the study, successful farmers made good use
of their family relationships:
The first significant factor was the sheer difficulty of making
good on a selection when it was confined to the original small
grant: selectors who prospered almost always did so by acquiring
adjacent selections from less successful neighbours. Contiguous
family selections offered a ready chance of achieving this end. 34
It also explains that, "Family relationships were crucial in the acquisition of

104
larger farms, because contiguous selection by kin enabled families to
consolidate holdings" .35 The same study indicates that unsuccessful
farmers, to the contrary, are usually those who have "many young children
but no neighbouring adult kin to rely on."36 This statement interestingly
fits the situation of the Spicer family, And it partly fits that of the Wilson
family as well. It is ironic that these unpromising families never cooperate
for success, and the husbands negatively influence their wives. In addition,
the family relationships study gives a hint about the failure of Joe Wilson:
"The existence of kin also offset some of the loneliness of the frontier, and
provided emotional and psychic support that enabled many to withstand
other privation."37 If Joe had family in his neighbourhood, he would feel
more relaxed and comfortable, and as a result, his relationship with Mary
might be improved. And, their future would be very different.
Joe Wilson is a unique bush character. He is basically a family man,
rather than a bushman, although most of Lawson's bush characters
struggle alone, occasionally with a little help from their mates, in the harsh
Australian bush. It is important to discuss why Lawson made or needed to
make a special character like Joe Wilson, who is different to all his other
bush characters.
According to John Barnes, the writer of Henry Law80ns Short Storie~
all the sequence stories were written while Lawson was in Britain. 38
Barnes adds that Lawson wrote those four stories in a relatively short
period of time in spite of his "personal ordeal" in which not only his wife but
also Lawson himself suffered from mental illness. 39 Lawson reveals in his
letter to a dramatist in 1916 that the models for Mr and Mrs Joe Wilson
were in fact, Mr and Mrs Henry Lawson, writing: "Mrs Joe Wilson was, in
face and figure, a portrait of Mrs Henry Lawson (as I idealized her then) ....
My father and myself (with intervals of many years) were also Joe Wilson's

105
of strenuous moments."40 Therefore, it is possible to regard the Joe Wilson
sequence simply as a reflection of the difficult married life of the author and
his wife in their new environment. And it is also possible that the reason
why Lawson gave Mary such a pathetic destiny was because of his
experience with his wife's breakdown while he was writing the stories.
Lawson was living in England when he wrote these stories, and it
seems likely that he was keeping the British readers in mind then. Barnes
agrees with this, saying: "There is an obvious awareness of a foreign
audience in Joe Wilson's explanations ... "41 Lawson seems to have tried to
advertise Australia in his writing.
To make his name, and to have his stories accepted by British readers,
it may have seemed more acceptable to write about a promising bushman
with a family, rather than a nomadic wanderer who is constantly travelling,
and looking for work, in a harsh environment. It is true that if Lawson
had written successful stories about Joe Wilson, the character might have
been welcomed by British people as a kind of Australian hero from the bush.
Joe would have become the first heroic character in Lawson's literature,
however, Lawson did not give Joe that prestige. Surely this treatment of
Joe cannot be solely due to Lawson's poor relationship with his wife in his
own personal life.
Rather, Joe's character may be deeply linked to the unique Australian
view of a hero. The image of an Australian hero seems to be different from
that which is generally expected in other countries. This can be
highlighted by the Australian public's special feelings for bushrangers like
Ned Kelly.42 Russel Ward provides an explanation in his book, The
Australian Legend, although he also says that the matter was not quite that
simple:
No doubt bushrangers came to occupy such a prominent place

106
 in Australian legend partly because, in the last century [the 19th
century], Australia took part in no great wars, and thus there
were no colourful military figures to serve, as they tend to do in
other countries, as symbol of nationalist sentiment. 43
Ward also points out that Australian popular taste did not change much
between the 1840's and 1958, the year he first published this book. 44 Ward
does not necessarily mean that the Australian public applauded the
wrongdoings of the bushrangers. The Australian people, at that time, just
had sympathies for the men's daring challenges to authority, whether they
were successful or unsuccessful.
Susan K. Martin writes about two men in her essay, "Dead White Male
Heroes". Ned Kelly (1855-1880) is one of them. Ned Kelly, son of Irish
migrants, was wanted as a bandit and was eventually caught and hanged.
However, people in the working class supported him because many of them
dreamed of being able to stand up, as he did, to the corrupt authorities.
Ned Kelly attracted the public's attention because he freely rode about the
bush demonstrating his resistance to those in power who oppressed the
working class people, including his family.
The other hero Martin writes about is Ludwig Leichhardt (1813-1848).
Leichhardt, a Prussian, succeeded in walking between Brisbane and Port
Essington, near Darwin, in 1845, and disappeared in 1848 with his whole
party, on the way from Roma in Queensland to Perth in Western Australia.
Leichhardt was a foreigner and just one of many explorers who tried to
traverse the Australian continent at the time. His sudden disappearance
in the bush may have helped to romanticize him.
Those Australian heroes are basically different from other
world-renowned figures like Viscount Nelson in Britain, and George
Washington in the United States of America, who made great achievements

107
for their nations. They are both highly respected for their
accomplishments. The Australian heroes, to the contrary, did not change
history. Conceivably, they are regarded as heroes because of the processes
of their ventures, not the results.
The Australian people's distinctive view of a "hero" may be influenced,
for one thing, by the country's history. Australia did not experience any
landmark battles or revolutions, as Ward points out, thus there was no
chance for a hero to appear. For bushmen, the difficult environment in the
Australian bush obliged them to cooperate with each other in order to
survive, and did not allow anyone to stand out individually. In other words,
the particular circumstances yielded "mateship", but did not bring an idea
like "the American dream" into Australia.
In Lawson's literature, there are not any special characters that can be
called "heroes" in a general sense. Ohama Eri mentions the "American
Adam" as a literary motive in the United States in her paper, '''Shiturakuen'
kara Amerikan Adamu to shite no Hakkuruberii Fin e: Uchinaru Jiyuu 0

Shirube to shite" [From Paradise Lost To Huckleberry Finn as the American

Adam: In accordance with inner enthusiasm for freedoml. Ohama
explains that the "American Adam" is a new Adam who shares some
character traits with the original Adam from the Bible. The "American
Adam" left corrupt and frustrated Europe and then, in America, developed
his own characteristics. 45 Ohama gives three major requirements for a
man to be called an "American Adam": 1) He should be a person heading
toward the future, not receding to the past. 2) He should have inherited
the puritanical image of being in "the wilderness" as a hero in the myth of
frontier development. 3) He is a symbol of American democracy, supported
by individualism, freedom, and equality as a truly independent free person,
and she adds that "self-reliance" is, in particular, an indispensable factor for

108
the "American Adam".46 Finally, Ohama quotes R. W. B. Lewis to explain
what the" American Adam" is like:
a radically new personality, the hero of the new adventure: an
individual emancipated from history, happily bereft of ancestry,
untouched and undefiled by the usual inheritances of family and
race; an individual standing alone, self-reliant and
self-propelling, ready to confront whatever awaited him with the
aid of his own unique and inherent resources. 47
Lewis' description of the "American Adam" suggests that there was
almost no possibility of such a person arising in Australia. People in
Australia were always conscious of the country's background as a penal
colony and their convict history, and of family and race which were essential
elements for migrants. And above all, the idea of "self-reliance", which was
necessary for the "American Adam" was totally foreign to the Australian
concept of mateship.
Joe Wilson is the only character in Lawson's literature who could have
possibly become an "Australian Adam". He lives with his family, so that he
is free from loneliness, madness, and death, which other bush characters
often suffer from. In other words, he is given a privilege, as a Lawson's
character, to master the bush, and then, become the first successful
bushman. However, Joe fails to be such a heroic character because he loses
his wife in the typical circumstances of the bush Lawson regularly gives to
his female bush characters; Joe fails to maintain his family life in the bush.
In Lawson's literature, bush characters have to always have hard
times and never excel others to become a hero. Such men of perspiration
are the members who, Lawson believed, would contribute to the
establishment of their nation and should be praised as the men who made
Australia.

109
 Chapter VII
Convicts and the Irish for Lawson's Literature

This chapter will discuss two factors which seem to have helped
Australian people have their own characteristics, in addition to the
influence of the bush already discussed in the previous chapters. One
factor is an influence of the country's convict origins and the other factor is
that of immigrants from Ireland. The chapter will also examine how those
factors influenced Lawson to produce "Australianism" in his writings.
The origin of Australia as a penal colony of Britain was undoubtedly
part of the base of its particularity or "Australianism". It had a negative
effect on the people, and they tried to ignore the fact for a long time. 1 It
seems as if this historical background of the country has been a kind of
mental stigma for general Australians, regardless of whether they are
descended from a convict family or not.
As for historical information about the issue, Babette Smith, the
writer of Australia's Birthstam, explains how the nuisance was treated in
the 19th century:
Shame about the convict origins of the Australian colonies and
shame about convict ancestry increasingly coalesced during the
nineteenth century to a point where convict topics were avoided
in public discourse as well as private conversation. This
reaction was well established by the 1870s when novelist
Anthony Trollope, who visited all the colonies, noticed the
colonists' sensitivity about the subject, their reluctance to discuss
it, ... , a tendency to downplay the convicts' crimes. 2
Smith also explains how people's reaction changed as years went by:

110
 What began as an unspoken agreement to avoid an
uncomfortable subject, over time turned into ignorance. The
penal colony that had been the most talked about experiment in
the world in its first 100 years subsequently became the object of
distortion, cover-up and, finally, silence in the second. 3
People's attitude toward the issue like this is understandable because it was
a shameful start for the new country, unlike the United States which was a
free country from the beginning; besides, Australia has not yet achieved
complete independence from Britain, unlike the United States which broke
its ties in 1783, after the war of independence.
Certainly, the Australian people felt shame about their origins at the
time of Lawson's writing. Interestingly, however, none of Lawson's main
protagonists are clearly described as convicts or ex· convicts, even though
Lawson was thought to be a realistic writer of his times. As for the reason
why there are no obvious convict characters in Lawson's writings, Dr. Peter
Kirkpatrick of the University of Sydney suggests that Lawson did not want
to acknowledge his country's convict past and regarded it as "dishonour",
the same as other Australians of his time. 4
Seeing the social background of Australia in the time Lawson was
active as a writer, Kirkpatrick's viewpoint must be probable. Henry
Lawson published his first poem in 1887, and then, was energetic in his
writing about the last decade of the 19th century. It was the time when the
Australian colonies were striving to unite and form a federation. Therefore,
negative characters could dampen people's spirits, whereas positive
characters such as the bush and people living there were regarded as good
symbols of nationalism, as has been already discussed. Under these
circumstances, it is not surprising that Lawson avoided links between his
bush characters and convicts.

111
 Apart from the social background of his country, Lawson seems to
have been concerned about his personal background despite the fact that he
was not descended from convicts. His father was a Norwegian seaman
who came to Australia and decided to leave his ship in 1855, at the
beginning of the gold rush. He met his future wife, Lawson's mother,
Louisa, in New Pipeclay, New South Wales. Thus, Lawson's father and his
Norwegian family had nothing to do with any "dishonour" .
On the contrary, Lawson's mother, Louisa, was born in Australia and
her parents were immigrants from Kent, England. It is said that Louisa's
father had gipsy blood, and Lawson himself often suggests the possibility of
gipsy roots in his writings. He explains in his autobiography: "We were tall
and dark on Mother's side and generally supposed to have descended from
gipsies."5
His poem, "Gipsy Too", composed in 1902, suggests this because the
line, "I came of the Gipsies too" (8,16,24,32,40) is repeated five times at the
end of each stanza. Colin Roderick refers to interesting research about the
poet's roots by T. D. Mutch, Lawson's supporter in his later days, in his
notes of the poem:
T. D. Mutch ... points out that at least as far back as Lawson's
maternal great-grandparents there is no evidence of a gipsy
strain. Mutch concludes: 'And yet, there remains the
great-great-grandfather, Henry Albury, ... If his identity could
be ascertained, the mystery would be cleared, and the Gipsy
story determined, ... '6
Whether Mutch's research was true or not, Lawson himself seems to have
used his roots as an excuse for his bohemian lifestyle. 7 At the same time,
his possible gipsy background may have made him hesitant to cast his
characters in the part with a questionable background.

112
 The first fleet which transported convicts from Britain to Australia
consisted of about one thousand people divided among twelve ships: the
First Fleeters. Three-quarters of those people were convicts: 564 men and
192 women. 8 Between 1788, the year of their arrival, and 1868, the year
when the last transport ship arrived at Fremantle, in Western Australia,
approximately 168,000 convicts came to Australia. 9 Russel Ward lists the
number of convicts, emancipists, and colonial-born people, who possibly had
some involvements with convicts, and that of free immigrants, who had
nothing to do with convicts, in New South Wales, in his book, The
Australian Legend According to Ward, in 1828, forty years after the first
fleet, the number of convict-related citizens was 31,925 and that of free
citizens was only 4,678. By 1851, about fifteen years before Lawson was
born, 110,713 people were related to convicts and 76,530 were free. 10 Ten
years after the transport of convicts to New South Wales finished, more
than fifty percent of the total population of the colony were convict-related.
This high rate means that the convicts would have had considerable
influence on Australian society at that time.
The origin of Hokkaido, the second largest island of Japan, is quite
similar to that of Australia in respect of a society which started with
transportation of convicts. Examining the Japanese case of penal
settlement and comparing those two cases may give us a clearer view of the
influence of Australian convicts on their society.
A number of convicts were sent to Hokkaido, which is located in the
northern part of the Japanese archipelago, towards the end of the
nineteenth century. The beginning of the event was in 1604, when the first
shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, designated a feudal lord, Matumae, as governor
of Hokkaido. First, Matsumae only managed the southwest tip of the
island and the rest of the vast land was a left to the Ainu, the native

113
inhabitants. For almost all of the Edo Era, the Tokugawa shogunate also
did not pay any particular attention to the island. Towards the end of the
era, however, the government decided to exploit the land because they were
concerned about a possible Russian invasion of Hokkaido from the north.
In 1869, the second year of the Meiji Era, the government sent the first
group of migrants, as well as some officers, to the island. The five hundred
migrants were virtually all paupers who had been forcibly collected from the
streets of Edo. ll
Mer the first transportation, large numbers of convicts were sent to
various prisons in Hokkaido between 1881 and 1894. They were forced to
work mainly as miners or labourers for building roads, bridges, and
barracks. 12 Their working conditions were so miserable, especially in the
coal mines, that many of them died of diseases of their eyes, skin, and
respiratory and digestive systems. I3 Not a few convicts who tried to run
away from their cruel labour were killed with a sword. 14 Because there
were many casualties and the transportation project was abolished in
1894. 15 After the end of convict labour, however, indigent people were
fraudulently taken into custody and forced to do the mining and laboring
work, and this labour system continued until 1946. 16
Opinions of the use of the convict labour in Hokkaido seem to vary
from researcher to researcher. One of the writers of Hokkaidou no
Hyakunen (One hundred years of Hokkaido) considers it, compared to the
system in other prisons in Japan, to have been extraordinary because of the
relentless outdoor labour, in very poor conditions, away from public eyes.
This writer also points out that the forced labour has been questioned for a
long time as "the dark age" in the history of Hokkaido. I7 On the contrary,
Shigematsu Kazuyoshi, the writer of Hokkaido Kangoku no Rekislri (The
History of Prisons in Hokkaido) has an opposite view. Here is a summary

114
of his view, translated by the present writer:
The exploitation of convict labour ill Hokkaido was, as a
whole, conducted with not much, but some consideration by the
staff, otherwise it could not have continued for such a long period
of time. The whole system was well organized and assignments
were devised for the convicts. The labour was equally allocated
to each prison in rotation in order not to isolate one group from
the others. Although there are actually pros and cons for the
exploitation of convicts, the system definitely played a roles as a
tractor for Hokkaido's development as well as being a form of
atonement for the convicts' crimes. 18
In the same book, Shigematu compares the banishment system used
in Hokkaido to that in Tasmania's Port Aurthur, Australia, specifically on a
list. 19 However, he does not provide any details about how the two systems
influenced the national characteristics of each country. Shigematsu
comments that the treatment of convicts was generally the same regardless
of when or where they were confined. 20
Generally speaking, however, there is a definite difference in what
immigration, including the transportation of convicts, brought to people in
each country. The difference is mainly due to the scale of immigration, not
only in quantity but also in the distances involved. In Hokkaido, it was
basically domestic migration. The settlement was set up as a branch of the
central government, and in due course it became a part of the nation of
Japan. On the other hand, Australia's immigrants were transported far
away across the ocean to build a colony which was over thirty times as large
as the mother country. 21 The enormous new country needed many more
convicts, than Hokkaido did to maintain the land, and after transportation
ended, Australia accepted migrants from many different countries and is

115
now a multi-cultural society. In addition, in contrast to Hokkaido,
Australians do not consider themselves a part of their mother country.
Regarding the exploitation of Hokkaido, in addition to convict labour,
there was a project of colonial soldiers, "Tondenhei". The Meiji government
enlisted ex-samurais, who became unemployed at the end of the shogunate
era, and sent them to Hokkaido to provide defence as well as supplement
the labour force. Although they had previously been the privileged class,
they were now masterless and also inexperienced in manual labour. Yet,
these samurais, who had been disciplined for many years with "Japanese
chivalry", were generally patient, diligent, and sensible, and they became
model labourers. The soldiers were also expected to supervise the convict
labourers. About 14,000 "Tondenhei" and their families were sent to the
island between 1875 and 1890. 22 They, along with the convicts, greatly
contributed to the settlement of Hokkaido. Besides, their work was so
positively evaluated that it may moderate the harsh facts about the
beginnings of Hokkaido and the cruel use of convict labour. This is also the
definite difference from the Australian case which had no counterparts of
"Tondenhei" .
Australia and Hokkaido both started with exploitation using convicts
as the main work force. However, there were clear differences in the
purposes of development of two colonies. Australia was first exploited as a
destination for exiles from Britain, and then, became a federated nation in
itself, whereas Hokkaido was originally used as a defence to fortify against
Russia and eventually became a part of Japan. Also, the scale of
colonization differed between the two places, as did the influence of the
events on the inhabitants. Babette Smith explains the Australian
sentiment: "Australia has suffered from a major distortion of its convict
history, a distortion that has been accompanied by an obvious desire to

116
avoid the subject altogether if possible." 23
It seems that Lawson avoided writing about the convicts while he was
prosperous. However, he actually wrote some pieces of verse and prose
about prison (gaol) and prisoners in his later years. Of those works, the
poem "One-Hundred-and-Three" is an unexpected masterpiece which was
produced when Lawson was almost finished as a writer.
Lawson wrote the poem twice, first in 1908 and then again in 1917.
The 1917 version consists of ninety-six lines or twenty-four stanzas, which
is twenty-eight lines or seven stanzas shorter than the 1908 version. The
1917 version is in his final anthology of verse, Selected Poem~ which was
published in 1918. George Robertson of the publisher, Angus and
Robertson, asked Lawson to cut down the poem because it was too long.
"One-Hundred-And-Three" is said to be the only notable prison poem
In Australian literature. 24 It was written based on Lawson's actual
experiences in Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney, which is now occupied by the
National Art School. He was charged with wife desertion and child
desertion twice each, neglect of child maintenance three times, and public
drunkenness, and detained eight times, spending a total of 159 days in the
gao125 Lawson was ordered to pay thirty shillings a week maintenance to
his family, but he was often behind in his payments. 26 During his second
imprisonment of about three weeks, Lawson wrote two pieces of prose, "The
Rising of the Court" (1907) and "Going In" (1907),
"One-Hundred-And-Three" was written during his fourth detention
between the 8th and the 31st of August, 1908. 27 It is said that this
well-known poem was surreptitiously written on scraps of paper with a
stolen pencil, and smuggled out of the gaol by visiting friends. 28 The title,
"One-Hundred-And-Three", represents the number given to a particular
prisoner, but the actual number given to Lawson at that time is unknown.

117
It is certain that Lawson was Prisoner "One-Hundred-and-Seventeen" in
November, 1909. 29
The reasons for Lawson's degradation, and eventual imprisonment are
not so simple. Certainly, his excessive drinking had a serious impact on his
life. He first started drinking in his early teens when he helped his father
in the Blue Mountains. 30 As an adult, his drinking never stopped, rather,
it became worse, which was always a serious problem for his wife, Bertha.
His alcohol consumption increased during his stay in London from 1900 to
1902. It is generally believed that Lawson's decline was more obvious after
his return from Britain. His heavy drinking caused his wife to have a
mental breakdown, so that they had to return home earlier than originally
planned. 31 However, Meg Tasker and Lucy Sussex conclude that alcohol
abuse was not the only cause of the Lawsons' problems while in London:
.. , it becomes clear that the Lawson's domestic crisis was largely
caused by the extreme isolation, deprivation and anxiety she
(Bertha) suffered. Drunkenness and poverty were nothing new
-... In the long term, the English sojourn precipitated a marital
crisis leading to irretrievable breakdown and acrimonious
disputes over maintenance and drink. 32
Soon after their return to Sydney, they decided to separate.
In "One-Hundred-and-Three", Lawson describes some of harsh
punishment meted out to prisoners and the poor conditions in the penal
institution, and also criticises the juridical system and social inequality.
For example, he gives the exact measurements of the cell where he stayed:
"They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air," (9) He
also describes the food distributed to prisoners, and then, emphasises the
prisoners who were on the verge of starvation because of their poor diet:
"Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud, / They send

118
a half-starved man to the Court, where the hearts of men they crave - /
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve." (9,
63-64)

There are the descriptions of the constant steps by the prIsoner,

one-hundred-and-three, repeatedly, in the poem. The prisoner seems to be
walking, but it is actually a punishment. Walking in a circle was one of the
punishments imposed on prisoners in Britain. 33 Lawson's descriptions
suggest that the same punishment was used in Australia. The walking
seems to have been done regularly, for an hour every day, according to the
third stanza: "'l\venty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues
there." (10) Deborah Beck adds extra information about the conditions
Lawson describes in the poem:
All prisoners sentenced to three years or more had to
undergo the first nine months of their sentence in solitary
confinement. Their diet consisted of bread and water, no
letters could be written or received, no tobacco was allowed and
there was no verbal communication. For 23 hours a day they
were confined to a silent cell, with only one hour's exercise a day
for the first six months, and then two hours a day for the next
three months. 34
Probably, these prison experiences would soften Lawson's opinion of
Australian convicts.
In fact, in a poem, "The Song of a Prison", there is the name of the
prisoner who provided a pen and paper for the poet, while in Darlinghurst
Gaol:
And I paid in chews of tobacco from one who is in "for life";
He is scarcely a pal for a poet, but he only killed his wife.
(He is cherub-like, jolly, good-natured, and frank as the skies

119
 above,
And his Christian name is Joseph, and his other, ye gods! is
Love!}

(17-20)

Colin Roderick points out that the prisoner's name was George, not
Joseph. 35 Roderick also explains that Lawson was thinking of modeling
new characters on George Love and Charlie Ah Sun, a Chinese prisoner, for
his stories, but his plan was not accepted by the Bulletin. 36 If the writer
had been able to produce appealing characters, such as he did with Mitchell
and Joe Wilson, those two prisoners could have been models for new convict
characters. However, it seems that Lawson's long-term involvement with
hospitals and the courts had already undermined his creativity.
The Irish have also influenced Australian society and contributed to
the development of the country since the early days, not only as convicts but
also as free migrants. Forty-one percent of all convicts transported to
Australia by 1802 were from Ireland. 37 Because there was a long term
conflict between England and Ireland over differences of race, religion, and
language, a large number of Irish convicts were political prisoners. 38
The Irish suffering originally began as early as in the 12th century,
and worsened in the 17th century. Protestant settlers began confiscating
Catholic estates, and land in Catholic ownership decreased sharply from
90% at the beginning of the 16th century to only 5% by 1778. 39 Under
these circumstances, Irish farmers and rural workers were transported to
Australia.
Apart from the convicts, a number of free Irish came to New South
Wales under an official assistance scheme provided by the state government,
especially between the 1830s and the 1850s. 4o Russel Ward says about the
influence of the Irish population on Australia: "We have seen that during

120
the two pre-Gold-Rush decades about a third of the whole population and
more than half of the immigrants were Irish, ... "41 This was partly related
to the social background at that time in Ireland. There was a disaster
called, "the Potato Famine" in the second half of the 1840s in Ireland. The
famine was caused by a new type of blight which killed potato plants, the
major crop in the country. The English government knew about the famine
but did nothing to help the Irish people. During the five-year famine, as
many as a million Irish people died and another million fled overseas. 42
The majority of them went to North America, and about four thousand
braved the longer journey to Australia. 43
Irish people were generally poor even before the "Famine". Especially,
the Catholic Irish who were persecuted also had their land confiscated by
the English Protestants, and they were barely able to survive on their
remaining cropland. Ward quotes George De Beaumont to express how
desperate the Irish were: "in all countries, more or less, paupers may be
discovered, but an entire nation of paupers in what never was seen until it
was shown in Ireland". 44 By the 1870s, Irish children were faced with a
choice of either emigrating, or remaining unmarried at home, when they
grew Up.45
Some of the Irish, under those circumstances, may have been happy to
leave and wished to try their luck in a new place. However, most of them
had a hard time like other migrants to Australia, or it was probably harder
for the Irish because they had to endure ethnical and religious prejudice
from the Anglo-Australians. In other words, the deep-rooted conflict
between England and Ireland was brought into Australia.
Ned Kelly (1855-1880) is a popular example of a person whose
hardships in Australia were caused by the fact that they came from Ireland.
He was born in Australia, and his father was a freed convict who was

121
originally transported from Ireland on a charge of pig theft. Growing up
under the influence, not only of his father but also his mother's family, Ned
himself was caught stealing and was imprisoned when he was sixteen.
When his mother was unjustly imprisoned for trying to prevent his
brother's arrest, Ned and his friends decided to become bushrangers. He
was a rogue, but never a bully; he robbed the rich and gave their money to
the poor. This meant that he was always wanted by the police, but he also
had many supporters. He was finally captured and hanged in 1880. Ned
Kelly came to be regarded as a hero who bravely resisted authorities. He
was seen as a representative of not only poor Irish settlers but also ordinary
oppressed Australians.
Considering his personal background, Ned Kelly could have become a
model for a new Lawson character, and this bushr anger ,s sensational life
could have provided the writer with some materials for a variety of
interesting bush stories. However, Lawson did not write any stories whose
characters were obviously modeled on Kelly, nor did he describe Kelly and
his life directly in his writings.
Nevertheless, there are some scenes in his stories which seem to
suggest that Lawson was impressed by the bushranger. "The Selector's
Daughter" has a scene in which three troopers visit the Wylies (the
daughter's family) and one of the troopers makes fun of her. This scene is
similar to an episode in Ned Kelly's autobiography where a police officer
came and stayed at the Kelly's place and then, made improper jokes about
Ned's sister. When Mrs Kelly tried to stop the officer she was unjustly
arrested.
Ned Kelly was arrested wrongly on a charge of horse theft and forced
to serve three years in prison for a crime he did not commit. This reminds
us of the series of events regarding the false arrest and trial of Jack Drew in

122
"The Hero of Redclay". In "Telling Mrs Baker", the name of Bob Baker's
brother is Ned, and while Andy is burning some troublesome letters of "the
Boss", he says, "Such is life!", which were the last words of Ned Kelly just
before his execution. Lawson may have been trying to highlight the
bushranger's adventures using his own original characters although he did
not do it openly.
Lawson wrote two other short stories in which Irish characters appear.
One is "Bill, The Ventriloquial Rooster" . Mitchell, the narrator, talks about
the strange crow of a rooster which his family owned. The rooster fights
with another rooster owned by their neighbour, an Irishman named Page.
In the story, Mitchell's family and the Pages have a disagreement over the
fence dividing their properties. According to Colin Roderick, this story is
based on an actual experience of Lawson in his childhood and Page is
modeled on the real "Page", the Lawsons' Irish neighbour:
The original Page was an Irishman also named Page, ... By
the time Lawson was old enough to take notice of Page, the
Irishman had leased the selection adjoining the Lawsons'.
Lawson describes in the Chapter IV of "A Fragment of
Autobiography" (PW., p. 731) how Page and the Lawsons came
to be at loggerheads. It appears that Page had hired a bull
which he refused to lend to the Lawsons and that somehow the
dividing fence between the selections had collapsed and allowed
Page's bull access to the Lawsons' heifers. 46
In "Bill, The Ventriloquial Rooster", there is an amicable scene in
which Page brings Bill back to Mitchell's family treating it carefully, saying,
".. , I bear no malice. 'Twas a grand foight[sic1,"47 despite Bill knocking out
Page's rooster in the fight. Lawson relates the original story of this
incident in his autobiography and describes the real Page in the same scene:

123
"He had our rooster and [was] handling him gently. 'Yere cock beat my
cock!' he said, 'but I bear no malice - 'twas a grand fight. There he is.' And
he set him down carefully." 48 Lawson mentions that their family and Page
finally got to something like friendship, although he also explains, "There
was a feud between him and our family until we left". 49
"A Wild Irishman" (1894) is one of the few stories in which Lawson
writes about Ireland or Irish people, and is probably the only one that has
an Irishman as the main character. The Irishman, nicknamed "The Flour
of Wheat" and his wild episodes of drunkenness are the central part of the
story. These episodes, which are not admirable at all, are described
sympathetically by the author. It is interesting that the character of "The
Flour of Wheat" seems also to be based on Page, the Lawsons' Irish
neighbour.
In a scene where the Flour carries his dying friend to a hospital, he
calls, "Inside there - come out!"50 at the reception room. Lawson mentions
in his autobiography that Page often called them this way when he had
something to ask the Lawsons. In addition, Lawson uses another phrase,
which Page seems to have often said, at the end of "A Wild Irishman".
When the Flour farewells the doctor who could not save his friend from
dying, he says, "It was the will 0' God. Let bygones be bygones between us;
gimme your hand, doctor.... Goodbye." 51 In "A Fragment of
Autobiography", Lawson recollects the day his family left the selection:
He [Page] was at feud with all his neighbours, ... , but the
morning we were leaving the selection for good, he came up to the
gate and shouted: "Inside there, come out." We came out.
"Here's some fruit," he said. "'Tis a harrd worrld and it's little
we have to be foightin' for. Shake hands and let bygones be
bygones US."52

124
 Lawson may have had an image of Page as a typical Irishman from his
childhood, and the image was not really negative. This may be the reason
that he even shows affection in his descriptions of Page in "Bill, The
Ventriloquial Rooster" and The Flour of Wheat in "A Wild Irishman" .
Lawson went to a Catholic school for only a few months when he lived
in an interior district of New South Wales, called Eurunderee, according to
his autobiography. He and his family were not Catholic, and he explains
the reason for his attendance at the school: "I don't know why I was sent
there (to the Catholic school); but probably because my mater had become
disgusted with our own churchmen as they were then."53 Lawson also
mentions several Irishmen other than Page in the description of his school
days in the autobiography, and his tone of voice is generally friendly.
It is quite a riddle, therefore, why Lawson did not express much
interest in the Irish in his writing. Dr Peter Kirkpatrick comments that
there was a fear of Catholicism among many Australians at the time when
Lawson lived. 54 The Irish, who accounted for a large proportion of
Australia's population at Lawson's time, were resolutely supported by the
Roman Catholic Church, and were undoubtedly seen as a social threat to
Protestant Australians.
T. Inglis Moore supports Dr Kirkpatrick's opinion explaining the
background of this fear of non-Catholic Australians:
Thus [in Ireland] the Roman Catholic Church became closely
associated with the Irish people in a common struggle for
freedom. It grew radical in outlook, with a philosophy of revolt
against the heretical, foreign oppressor. This outlook and
philosophy were preserved in Australia, especially as the great
majority of the Church's Irish adherents were members of the
working class, a class inevitably radical as a result of a long

125
 history of poverty, oppression, and suffering,55
However, their viewpoints do not seem to apply to Lawson. As far as the
description of his Catholic school days is concerned, Lawson does not seem
to have had a fear or a dislike to the Irish only because of their religion. He
only says that he was bullied by other boys wbile he went to the Catholic
school. 56 Therefore, it is not so realistic to think that Catholicism had
something to do with a paucity of Lawson's writing of the Irish, but probably,
thinking that he did not write about them positively because the Irish and
Catholicism reminded him of his unpleasant memories of being bullied is
more realistic.
Lawson did not write about convicts and the Irish so much as he
actively wrote about the bush and its people to describe what he believed
was the real Australia. He did not produce any noticeable protagonists
with Australian characteristics out of those people, either, although they
greatly contributed to the foundation of Australia. That is perhaps
because he was influenced by public opinion of the times, or he did not
consider them to be real Australians, or he just could not do it due to a
decline in his creativity, especially in his later years. The definite reason
for this still remains obscure, but at least, it is clear that Lawson did not
regard them as materials to express "Australianism" he believed. It is
interesting, however, that bis less writing about what could have
represented "something Australian" paradoxically emphasises the negative
inclination of Australians towards the inconvenient existence in course of
their history. Lawson's attitude itself is an expression of "Australianism"
without writing about it.

126
 Conclusion

The great south land of Australia had existed, as an uncivilised

continent in the southern hemisphere, for millions of years, completely
separate from the European culture. When the first Europeans landed on
it, the environmental and ecological distinction of Australia provided the
new inhabitants with the unique groundwork on which they were to develop
their own characteristics as Australians in later years. Above all, the
Australian bush influenced the spontaneous evolution of Australia after it
had been established artificially by transporting people from Britain.
In Lawson's literature, the bush is also the important environment
where the characters of his poems and stories develop their particular
characteristics. His bush characters, both men and women, basically have
hard and unsuccessful lives because Lawson's bush typically drives them
into three woes, loneliness, madness, and death. Such unfortunate
characters, who always suffer in the adverse circumstances, are the
prototype of those people Lawson praises as the true contributors of their
country in his poem, "The Men Who Made Australia" .
However, Lawson did not leave those characters to be just the poor
victims of their circumstances. He also gives them some alleviative
measures. Mateship is one of those measures for Lawson's bush
characters, especially bushmen. In Lawson's literature, mateship is an
essential accompaniment of the bush. It is often exercised by his bush
characters in various situations to save their mates, and it makes their
fellowship more distinctive.
Historically, the Australian bush forced men to be single or to live
apart from their family because the living conditions were so harsh. These

127
men gradually developed a spirit of mutual aid to help them cope with the
difficult circumstances. Under the principles of m ate ship , the lateral
relationships among the men were considered more important than vertical,
power relationships. Mateship later metamorphosed into two Australian
attitudes: anti-class-consciousness and anti-authoritarianism.
Humour is another measure. Although humour is not the
mainstream of Lawson's literature, it helps its bush characters and stories
become active and lively. Some of Lawson's humorous stories were written
for the sake of humour. In most cases, however, his humour functions to
make a pathetic story more pathetic and to bring out cruelty of the bush
hidden in a story. In Lawson's literature, humour sometimes works
complicatedly, resulting in further emphasis on sufferings of the bush
characters.
Family is also one of those measures and a trump card of Lawson to
keep his characters free from the three woes and enable them to survive in
the bush. One of Lawson's characters, created as a bushman with his
family, could be the first such heroic character and Lawson's new type of
bush character. However, the writer does not allow him to be so, probably
because, in Lawson's belief, his ideal bush character should obey the
principles of mateship and should not stand out from other bushmen.
Besides the Australian bush, which was a natural influence,
immigrants and their backgrounds also had a strong affect on the new
nation. The fact that the first group of immigrants was mostly convicts
has lingered in the minds of Australian people for a long time. A convict
background, for them, was a kind of common skeleton to be hidden in their
cupboards.
Convicts and the Irish could have been the necessary characters for
completing the particular world of Lawson's literature, but actually, they do

128
not appear so much in his works. Whether Lawson did not write about
them intentionally or not still remains uncertain. However, consequently,
not writing about those people represents his views on "Australianism" as
eloquently as expressing it through the other characters he actually
describes in his works.
When Lawson wrote the poem, "The Men Who Made Australia" in
1901, almost all his popular characters, from Andy to Joe Wilson, had
already made appearances in his writing. These characters were created
on the basis of the writer's ideas about what bush people, especially
bushmen, should be in the Australian bush. However, they are not just a
product of his imagination, but are embodiments of images Lawson actually
got from his own experiences in the bush. Therefore, Lawson's characters
are the representatives of the Australians who used to work for the
foundation of their nation. Lawson's characters demonstrate their
"Australianism" under the above-mentioned conditions given by Lawson,
sometimes tragically, sometimes humorously, but mostly in a lively way.
Lawson's characters actually encouraged the Australian people of that
time, by showing different ways to survive in the harsh surroundings.
This is demonstrated by the fact that Lawson's collection of short stories,
"While the Billy Boiled" sold 7,000 copies in 1896. 1 Selling 7,000 copies in
Australia, which had a population of about 3,800,000 at the end of 1900
would be equivalent to sales of nearly 240,000 copies in present day Japan,
with an approximate population of 128,000,000. 2 The remarkable number
of books sold shows that this book was widely read by Australians at the
time.
Lawson's readers may have rediscovered, through the bush characters
in his poems and stories, their characteristics as Australians as well as
learned more about the significance of living in Australia. Even city people

129
may have had a similar sense of rediscovery because they would have been
in a similar situation with regard to trying to adapt to a different

environment. Mer all, Australian cities were constructed on areas which

had been originally the same bush. Wherever they lived, therefore, people
were constantly influenced by the same Australian environment. In his
time, Henry Lawson may have played a role as a renovator of the country3.
If present day Australians also learn from Lawson's literature, they will see
the track their ancestors marked in the growing periods of the country
through the words and deeds of the characters in his bush stories. If his
bush characters can provide the present Australians with some hints of
what they should be and do, Lawson should be remembered, not only as a
reminder of the past, but also a renovator for the future of Australia.

130
 NOTES

Introduction
1 See a passage from Vance Palmer quoted in Russel Ward's Concise
History ofAustralia, 187.
2 John Barnes, Henry Lawson~ Short Stories, Essays in Austrahan
Literature (Melbourne: Shillington House, 1985) 1.
3 Beverley Kingston, The Oxford History of Australia (South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001) 108, 113.
4 Kingston, The Oxford History ofAustralia 113.
5 Helen Irving, ed., The Centenary Companion to Australian
Federation (1999; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 441.
6 Kingston, The Oxford History ofAustralia 113.
7 Geoffrey Sherington, Australia's Immigrants (1980; North Sydney:
Allen & Unwin, 1990) 85.
8 Sherington, Australia~ Immigrants 85.
9 Otsu Yoshihiro, Oosutorariajin Monogatari [The Story of
Australians] (Tokyo: Taishukan-shoten, 1996) 167.
10 Russel Ward, Concise History ofAustralia, 5thed. (StLucia:
University of Queensland Press, 1992) 277.
11 Christopher Lee, City Bushman: Henry Lawson and the
Australian Imagination (Fremantle: Curtin University Books, 2004) 13-14,
233.
12 Lee, City Bushman 234.
13 Irving, Australian Federation 433.
14 Mulga is any of several species of Acacia found in drier parts of
Australia. The Macquarie Dictionary, 1985 ed.

131
 15 Billy is a cylindrical container for liquids, sometimes enameled,
usually having a close-fitting lid. The Macquarie Dictionary, 1985 ed.
16 Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, 2nd ed. (1958; South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2005) 146.
17 Ward, Legend 2.

Chapter I
1 Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson Commentaries on his Prose
Writings (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1985) 189.
2 Brian Matthews, The Receding Wave: Henry Lawson's Prose
(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972) 16-17.
3 See Roderick, A Life, pp 86-87 for the details of Lawson's debate
with Paterson.
4 Colin Roderick, ed. Henry Lawson Letters 1890-1922 (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1970) 49.
5 Roderick, Letters 49.
6 See Roderick, A Life, pp 89-99 for the details of Lawson's trip in the
outback.
7 Roderick, Letters 53.
8 Roderick, Letters 50.
9 Roderick, Letters 54.
10 Denton Prout, Henry Lawson: The Grey Dreamer (Adelade: Rigby,
1963) 106.
H Colin Roderick, ed. Henry Lawson Criticism 1894-1971 (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1972) xxiv.
12 See Russel Ward, Concise History ofAustralia, pp 198-200 for the
history of "the Union" in Australia.
13 Henry Lawson, Selected Stories (Sydney: A & R Classics, 2001)

132
189.
14 Lawson, Selected Stories 190.
15 Roderick, Commentaries 114.
16 Roderick, Commentaries 115.
17 Roderick, Commentaries 75.

Chapter II
1 Helen Irving, ed., The Centenary Companion toAustralian
Federation (1999; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 441.
2 "Stress," My Pedia (electronic), 2005 ed.
3 Hori Nobuyuki, and Kikuchi Toshio, eds. Sekai no Sabaku: Sono
Shizen, Bunka, Ningen [Deserts in the World: Their Nature, Culture, and
People], Meguro City College Sousho [Meguro City College Series] 7. (Tokyo:
Kyodo Insatsu, 2007) 81.
4 Hori and Kikuchi, Deserts 81.
5 Jared Diamond, Gun~ Germs, and Steel: The Fates ofHuman
Societies, trans. Kurahone Akira (New York: W W Norton & Company,
1997) 148.
6 Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel 148-149.
7 Diamond, Guns, Germ~ and Steel 153.
8 Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel 153.
9 Irving, Australian Federation 342.
10 As for information about the population density in this paragraph,

see the figure 4-4 on page 81, Hori and Kikuchi, Deserts,
11 Henry Lawson, Selected Stories (Sydney: A & R Classics, 2001) 84.
12 Denise Greig, A Photographic Guide to Trees ofAustrah'a (1998;
Sydney: New Holland Publishers [Australia] 2001) 37-41.
13 Henry Lawson, Over the Sliprails (1900; McLean: Indy Publish)

133
51.
14 Lawson, Sliprai1s 54.
15 Lawson,_Sliprai1s_54.
16 Henry Lawson, On the Track (1900; McLean: Indy Publish) 56.
17 Lawson, Track 57.
18 Lawson, Track 64.
19 Brian Matthews, The Receding Wave: Henry Lawsons Prose
(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972) 21.
20 Lawson, Selected Stories 352.
21 Lawson, Selected Stories 340.
22 Lawson, Selected Stories 345.
23 Lawson, Selected Stories 346 and others
24 Lawson, Selected Stories_341.
25 Matthews, Receding Wave 22-23.
26 Lawson, Selected Stories 184.
27 Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson:ALife (North Ryde: Angus &
Robertson, 1991) 23.
28 Lawson, Selected Stories 344.
29 Lawson, Selected Stories 344.
30 Lawson, Selected Stories 344.
31 Lawson, Selected Stories 343.
32 Bunmei no Jinkoushi [History of Population with the Progress of
Civilisation], table (Tokyo: Shin-Hyoron) 195.
33 Toujima Wako, Shiin Jiten [Dictionary of Death Causes] ( Tokyo:
Kodansha, 2000) 158-160.
34 Lawson, Selected Stories 262.
35 "Waltzing Matilda," New Concise Australian & New Zealand
English-Japanese Dictionary, 2001 ed.

134
 36 Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson Commentaries on his Prose
Writings (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1985) 181.
37 Lawson, Selected Stories 388.
38 Geraldine Carrodus, Golct Gamblers & Sly Grog: Life on the
Goldfields, 1851-1900, Inquiring into Australian History (1981; Melbourne:
Oxford University Press, 1984) 30-32.
39 Derrick I. Stone, and Sue Mackinnon, Life on Australian
Goldfields (Sydney: Methuen of Australia, 1976) 25.

Chapter III
1 Henry Lawson, Selected Stories (Sydney: A & R Classics, 2001) 226.
2 Lawson, Selected Stories 226.
3 Lawson, Selected Stories 226.
4 Lawson, Selected Stories 240.
5 Lawson, Selected Stories 227.
6 Lawson, Selected Stories 228-229.
7 Lawson, Selected Stories 238.
8 Lawson, Selected Stories 240.
9 Lawson, Selected Stories 228.
10 Lawson, Selected Stories 228.
11 Geoffrey Sherington, Australia's Immigrants (1980; North Sydney:
Allen & Unwin, 1990)116.
12 Colin Roderick, The Real Henry Lawson (Adelade: Rigby, 1982) 47.
13 Manning Clark, Henry Lawson (Carlton: Melbourne University
Press, 1985) 70.
14 Ito Takayuki, Iuchi Toshio, and Nakai Kazuo, eds., Porando,
Ukuraina, Baruto Shi [The History of Poland, Ukraine, and Balt] Sekai
Kakkoku Shi [The History of Each Nation in the World] 20. (Tokyo:

135
Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1998) 206-211.
15 Ueda Shigeru, Kosakku no Roshia [Cossack's Russia] (Tokyo:
Chuokoron Shinsha, 2000) 173.
16 Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, 2nd ed. (1958; South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2005) 62-63.
17 Lawson, Selected Stories 231.
18 Lawson, Selected Stories 20.
19 Lawson, Selected Stories 20.
20 Lawson, Selected Stories 240.
21 Lawson, Selected Stories 83.
22 Patricia Grimshaw, Chris McConville, and Ellen McEwen, eds.,
Families in Colonial Australia (North Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985)
67.
23 Beverley Kingston, The Oxford History of Australia (South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001) 121-122.
24 Grimshaw, Families 34.

Chapter IV
1 T. Inglis Moore, Social Patterns in Australian Literature (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1971) 20.
2 Manning Clark, A Short History of Australia, 3rd Rev. ed. (New
York: Nal Penguin Inc, 1987) 118.
3 Russel Ward, Concise History ofAustralia, 5th Rev. ed. (St. Lucia:
University of Queensland Press, 1992) 52.
4 Ward, Concise History 52.
5 The Oxford History of Australia, Table (South Melbourne: Oxford
University Press, 2001) 114.
6 Beverley Kingston, Oxford History 114.

136
 7 Oishi Manabu, Ooedo Maruwakari Jiten [Dictionary of the Whole
Edo] (Tokyo: Jiji Press Publication Services, 2005) 88.
8 Tamura Eitarou, Edo Shomin no Kurashi [Edo People's Lifel
(Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 2003) 18.
9 Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, 2nd ed. (1958; South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2005) 94-95.
10 A. J. C. Mayne, Fevez; Squaloz; and Wce: Sanitation and Social
Policy in Wctorian Sydney (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1982)
108.
11 Yamamoto Hirofumi, Edo Jidai [The Edo Period] (Tokyo: Nihon
Bungei-sha, 2003) 278.
12 Yamamoto, Edo Jidai 279.
13 Kato Takashi, Edo 0 Shiru Jiten [The Dictionary of Edol (Tokyo:
Tokyodo Shupp an, 2004) 21-22.
14 Yamamoto, Edo Jidai 280-281.
15 Uetsuki Masumi, Nihonjin nara Mi ni Tsuketai Edo no Iki [The
Sophisticated Style ofEdo Japanese Should Acquire] (Tokyo: Kawade Shobo
Shinsha, 2008) 15.
16 Yamamoto, Edo Jidai_203.
17 Moore, Social Patterns 203.
18 Henry Lawson, Selected Stories (Sydney: A & R Classics, 2001) 55.
19 Lawson, Selected Stories 55.
20 Ross M. Martin, Trade Um'ons in Australia, trans. Hori Takeaki
(Penguin Books, 1980) 3.
21 Ward, Legend 213.
22 Moore, Social Patterns 214.
23 Moore, Social Patterns 214.
24 Lawson, Selected Stories 57.

137
 25 Colin Roderick, ed., Henry Lawson Letters 1890-1922 (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1970) 49-50.
26 Lawson,_Selected Stories 59.
27 Moore, Social Patterns 44.
28 A squatter is one who settled on Crown land to run stock.
29 Lawson, Selected Stories 431.
30 Lawson, Selected Stories_ 434.
31 Lawson, Selected Stories 434.
32 Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson Commentaries on his Prose
Writings (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1985) 215.
33 Roderick, Commentaries 214-215.
34 Martin, Trade Um'ons 3.

Chapter V
1 Henry Lawson, Selected Stories (Sydney: A & R Classics, 2001)
172-173.
2 Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson Commentaries on his Prose
Writings (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1985) 177.
3 Roderick, Commentaries 181.
4 Geraldine Carrodus, Gol~ Gamblers & Sly Grog: Life on the
Gold:6.elds, 1851-1900, Inquiring into Australian History (1981; Melbourne:
Oxford University Press, 1984) 32.
5 Carrodus, Gold 30.
6 Derrick I. Stone and Sue Mackinnon, Life on Australian Gold:6.elds
(Sydney: Methuen of Australia, 1976) 25.
7 Carrodus, Gold 74-77.
8 Stone and Mackinnon, Life on Australian Gold:6.elds 199-200.
Australian Rules (football) is a popular sport especially in Victoria which

138
was originally formed in the middle of the 19th century.
9 Edgar Waters, "Recreation," The Pattern ofAustralian CultureJ. ed.
A. L. Mcleod (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963) 426.
10 Henry Lawson, Selected Stories (Sydney: A & R Classics, 2001)
388.
11 Waters, "Recreation," The Pattern ofAustralian Culture 425.
12 Lawson, Selected Stories 390.
13 Lawson, Selected Stories 63.
14 Russel Ward, Concise History of Australia (1965; St. Lucia:
University of Queensland Press, 1992) 149.
15 See Roderick, Commentaries 179-180 for Lawson's experiences of
goldfields and information of iron-bark trees.
16 Lawson, Selected Stories 174.
17 Lawson, Selected Stories 175.
18 Lawson, Selected Stories 175.
19 Lawson, Selected Stories 175-176.
20 Kokontei Shinchou, perf., Niban Senji (The Second Brew)
audiocassette, Sony, 1982.
21 Lawson, Selected Stories 176.
22 The dialogue is translated by the present writer.
Kokontei Shinchou, perf., Tukuda Matsuri (Tsukuda Festival) audiocassette,
Sony, 1980.
23 The quotation is translated by the present writer.
Yamamoto Susumu, Rakugo Handobukku (Handbook of Rakugo) (1996;
Tokyo: Sanseidou, 2007) 88.
24 Lawson, Selected Stories 176.
25 Ward, Concise History ofAustralia 190.
26 Ward, Concise History ofAustralia 189.

139
 27 Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese Today: Change and Continuity
(1977; Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1988)
68-70.
28 Reischauer, Japanese 74,77.
29 Russel Ward, "The Social Fabric," The Pattern of Australian
Culture 23.
30 Ward, "The Social Fabric," The Pattern of Australian Culture
24-25.
31 Babette Smith, Australias Birthstain: the Startling Legacy of the
Convict Era (2008; Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2009) 111.
32 Beverley Kingston, The Oxford History of Australia (South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001) 277.
33 Kingston, Oxford History ofAustralia 278.
34 Lawson, Selected Stories 178.
35 Colin Roderick, ed., Henry Lawson Letters 1890-1922 (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1970) 94.

Chapter VI
1 John Barnes, Henry Lawsons Short Stories, Essays in Australian
Literature (Melbourne: Shillington House, 1985) 33.
2 Henry Lawson, Selected Stories (Sydney: A & R Classics, 2001) 331.
3 Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson Commentaries on his Prose
Writings (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1985) 262.
4 Lawson Selected Stories 329.
5 Lawson, Selected Stories 329.
6 Lawson, Selected Stories 332.
7 Lawson, Selected Stories 333.
8 Lawson, Selected Stories 327 and other pages of the stories of the

140
Joe Wilson's sequence.
9 T. Inglis Moore, Social Patterns in Australian Literature (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1971) 63.
10 Lawson, Selected Stories 330.
11 Henry Lawson, About the Author, Over the Sliprails, by Alan R.
Light, (McLean: IndyPublish) 121.
12 Lawson, Selected Stories 339-340.
13 Patricia Grimshaw, Chris McConville, and Ellen McEwen, ed.,
Families in Colom'al Australia (North Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985)
176-177.
14 Lawson,_Selected Stories 338.
15 Lawson,_Selected Stories 340.
16 Grimshaw, Families 178.
17 Grimshaw, Families 180.
18 Grimshaw, Famihes 180-181.
19 Kerreen M. Reiger, The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernizing
the Australian Family 1880-1940 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press,
1985) 118.
20 Reiger, Disenchantment 118.
21 Lawson,_Selected Stories 329.
22 Lawson, Selected Stories 285.
23 Kingston, Oxford History ofAustralia 128-130.
24 Lawson, Selected Stories 330.
25 Lawson,_Selected Stories 331.
26 Lawson, Selected Stories 332-333.
27 Grimshaw, Families 184.
28 Grimshaw, Families 183.
29 Grimshaw, Families 182-183.

141
 30 Grimshaw, Families 180.
31 Lawson, Selected Stories 331.
32 Grimshaw, Families 194.
33 Grimshaw, Families 194-195.
34 Grimshaw, Families 130.
35 Grimshaw, Families 131.
36 Grimshaw, Families 130.
37 Grimshaw, Families 131.
38 Barnes, HL. Short Stories 32.
39 Barnes, HL. Short Stories 33.
40 Colin Roderick, ed., Henry Lawson Letters 1890-1922 (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1970) 248.
41 Barnes, HL. Short Stories 33.
42 "Ned Kelly" New Concise Australian & New Zealand
Enghsh -Japanese Dictionary, 2001 ed.
43 Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, 2nd ed. (1958; South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2005) 145-146.
44 Ward, Legend 145.
45 Ohama Eri, "Shiturakuen kara Amerikan Adamu to shite no
Hakkuruberii Fin e: Uchinaru Jiyuu 0 Shirube to shite (From Paradise Lost
to Huckleberry Finn as an American Adam: Guided by Internal Freedom)"
Setsuri 0 Shirube to shite (Guided by Providence) eds. Arai Akira and Noro
Yuko (Tokyo: Liber Press, 2003) 167.
46 Ohama, Setsuri 167.
47 Wilfred L. Guerin, Earle G. Labor, Lee Morgan, and John R.
Willingham, A Handbook of Cn'tical Approaches to Literature (New York:
Harper & Row Publishers, 1966) 145.

142
 Chapter VII
1 Babette Smith, Australia's Birthstain: the Startling Legacy of the
Convict Era (2008; Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2009) 2.
2 Smith, Birthstain 9.
3 Smith, Birthstain 33.
4 Peter Kirkpatrik, Personal interview. 20 July 2011.
5 Brian Kiernan, ed. Henry Lawson, Portable Australian Authors (St.
Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1976) 19.
6 Colin Roderick, ed. Henry Lawson Collected Thrse, Vol. 2, (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1968) 366.
7 Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson: A Life (North Ryde: Angus &
Robertson, 1991) 7.
8 T. A. Coghlan and T. T. Ewing, The Progress of Australia in the
Nineteenth Century (1903; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011)
11.
9 Manning Clark, A Short History of Australia, 3rd Rev. ed. (New
York: Nal Penguin Inc., 1987) 124.
10 Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, 2nd ed. (1958; South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2005) 15-16.
11 Nagai Hideo and Oba Yukio, Hokkaido no Hyakunen (One Hundred
Years of Hokkaido) , Kenmin Hyakunenshi (The One-Hundred-Year History
of Prefectures) 1. (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shupp an, 1999) 58.
12 Tabata Hiroshi, et al. Hokkaido no Rekishi (The History of
Hokkaido) , Ken Shi (The History of Prefectures) 1. (Tokyo: Yamakawa
Shupan, 2000) 198-202.
13 Nagai, Hokkaido no Hvakunen 95.
14 Takakura Shinichiro, gen.ed. Hokkaido no Kenkyu (The Study of
Hokkaido), vol. 5 (Osaka: Seibundo, 1983) 291-292.

143
 15 Takakura, Hokkaido 297.
16 Takakura, Hokkaido 313.
17 Nagai, Hokkaido no Hyakunen 95.
18 Shigematsu Kazuyoshi, Hokkaido Kangoku no Rekishi (The
History of Prisons in Hokkaido) (Tokyo: Shinzansha, 2004) 32.
19 Shigematsu, Kangoku 37.
20 Shigematsu, Kangoku 38.
21 World Atlasl. figure (Edinburgh: John Bartholomew & Son)
22 For details of "Tondenhei", see Takakura and Seki, Hokkaido no
Fudo to Rekishi (The Climate and the History of Hokkaido), Fudo to Rekishi
(Climate and History) 1 ppI41-145.
23 Smith, Birthstain 2.
24 Colin Roderick, The Real Henry Lawson (Adelade: Rigby, 1982)
140.
25 Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson Commentaries on his Prose
Writings (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1985) 295-296.
26 Brian Jinks, comp., Yours Truly Henry Lawson (2004; Gulgong:
2005) 24.
27 Roderick, Collected verse, Vol 2, 392.
28 Deborah Beck, Hope in Hell: A History of Darhnghurst Gaol and
the NationalArt School 2nd ed. (Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2010) 20.
29 Roderick, Collected versel. Vol 2, 400.
30 Jinks,_Yours Truly9.
31 Meg Tasker and Lucy Sussex, '''That Wild Run to London': Henry
and Bertha Lawson in England" Australian Literary Studies, vol. 23 (2007)
168.
32 Tasker, Wild Run to London 182-183.
33 Shigematsu Kazuyoshi, Zusetsu Sekai Kangokushi Jiten (The

144
Pictorial Dictionary of History of Prisons in the World) (Tokyo: Kashiwa
Shobo, 2005.) 219 and 257.
34 Beck, Hope in Hell 20.
35 Colin Roderick, Henry Lawson: A Life (North Ryde: Angus &
Robertson, 1991) 291-292.
36 Roderick, A Life 292,
37 Geoffrey Sherington, Austrah'a's Immigrants 2nd ed. (North
Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1990) 10.
38 Sherington, Immigrants 10-11.
39 Con Costello, Botany Bay: The Story of the Convicts 1}ansported
from Ireland toAustralia, 1791-1853(Dublin: The Mercier Press, 1987) 10.
40 Sherington, Immigrants 55.
41 Ward, Legend 49.
42 Costello, Botany Bay 133.
43 Costello, Botany Bay 133.
44 Ward, Legend 50.
45 Patricia Grimshaw, Chris McConville, and Ellen McEwen, ed.,
Families in Colonial Australia (North Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985)
2.
46 Roderick, Commentaries 78.
47 Henry Lawson, Selected Stories (Sydney: A & R Classics, 2001)
186.
48 Henry Lawson, "A Fragment of Autobiography," Portable Australian
Authors: Henry Lawson ed. Brian Kiernan (St. Lucia: University of
Queensland Press, 1976) 29.
49 Lawson, Autobiography29-30.
50 Lawson, Selected Stories 402.
51 Lawson, Selected Stories 404.

145
 52 Lawson, Autobiography 30.
53 Lawson, Autobiography 30-3l.
54 Kirkpatrick, Interview.
55 T. Inglis Moore, Social Patterns in Australian Literature (Sydney:
Angus & Robertson, 1971) 51.
56 Lawson, Autobiography 32.

Conclusion
1 Manning Clark, Henry Lawson: The Men and the Legend (Carlton:
Melbourne University Press, 1985) Ill.
2 Beverley Kingston, The Oxford History of Australia (South
Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2001) 108.
3 Dr Peter Kirkpatrick represented Henry Lawson as "the renovator
of Australia" in the personal interview conducted on July 20,2011.

146
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