tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/henry-lawson-14355/articlesHenry Lawson – The Conversation2023-07-03T01:17:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2083652023-07-03T01:17:08Z2023-07-03T01:17:08ZHenry Lawson and Judith Wright were deaf – but they’re rarely acknowledged as disabled writers. Why does that matter?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533983/original/file-20230626-19-nn2wrh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C11%2C3988%2C1982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Henry Lawson (left) and Judith Wright</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Most of us know Henry Lawson and Judith Wright are icons of Australian literature. But it’s less well known that they were both disabled. </p>
<p>Lawson began to lose his hearing when he was nine. Wright started to lose hers in her early twenties. Neither identified as <a href="https://www.handtalk.me/en/blog/deaf-culture/">culturally Deaf</a>, but both named deafness as a significant influence on how and why they wrote. </p>
<p>Lawson said deafness was “in a great measure responsible for my writing”. Wright said her deafness “really reached into all the interstices of my life, it’s been part of the conditions I live under”. </p>
<p>However, their deafness is rarely acknowledged in discussions of their work. </p>
<p>On <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/">AustLit</a>, the Australian literature database, only ten of the 788 items on Lawson mention his deafness. And only 4 of the 595 items on Wright refer to hers. </p>
<p>If we recognise rather than ignore the influence of their deafness, its creative possibilities become obvious. We develop a more accurate picture of these writers – and of Australian literature.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/les-murray-said-his-autism-shaped-his-poetry-his-late-poems-offer-insights-into-his-creative-process-188212">Les Murray said his autism shaped his poetry – his late poems offer insights into his creative process</a>
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<h2>Henry Lawson: deafness inherent to his writing</h2>
<p>Henry Lawson was born in 1867 in Grenfell, New South Wales. The hearing loss that began when he was nine continued until he was 14. </p>
<p>It is difficult to precisely describe his level of deafness from then on, but he needed anyone speaking to him to be close by and to face him. Of attending plays, he wrote: </p>
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<p>I say [I] “see” [them] because I never heard a play throughout and had to enquire before-hand – or after – and read the notices, or guess the plot and dialogue. </p>
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<span class="caption">Henry Lawson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library Australia</span></span>
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<p>Hearing aids were not generally available and few accommodations were made for deaf people. This meant Lawson was frequently disadvantaged. He attempted university matriculation twice, but failed because he could not hear the dictation test. Yet, from the age of 13 he was determined to be a writer, and his first poems were published in the Bulletin when he was 20.</p>
<p>His deafness remained a key influence on his content and style throughout his 35-year writing career. He wrote about his own deafness in essays such as <a href="https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks22/2200461h.html">A Fragment of Autobiography</a>, and poems such as <a href="http://www.ironbarkresources.com/henrylawson/SoulOfAPoet.html">The Soul of a Poet</a>. </p>
<p>Deaf characters featured in his short stories and he wrote about them differently. Hearing people often make deafness a constant focus when they write deaf characters – but in his stories, he would often only mention a character’s deafness once. He wrote deafness from the inside.</p>
<p>Deafness was also part of his writing style. He very rarely included descriptions of sound in his writing, even at dramatically loud moments. Instead, he wrote intricate visual detail. </p>
<p>His account of the explosion in his short story <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Loaded_Dog">The Loaded Dog</a> reads:</p>
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<p>Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.</p>
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<p>Lawson had a particular interest in how visual information influenced communication. As a deaf person, he was always keenly alert to any visual signs that might help him decipher the words he struggled to hear. He experimented with this dynamic in his writing. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533643/original/file-20230623-17-edqzu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Book cover: Henry Lawson's Short Stories - a painting of an outback town with a man and a dog" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533643/original/file-20230623-17-edqzu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533643/original/file-20230623-17-edqzu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533643/original/file-20230623-17-edqzu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533643/original/file-20230623-17-edqzu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=929&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533643/original/file-20230623-17-edqzu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533643/original/file-20230623-17-edqzu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533643/original/file-20230623-17-edqzu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1167&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>In his story <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Union_Buries_Its_Dead">The Union Buries its Dead</a>, about a town that holds a funeral for an unknown man, the reader understands more about the people involved and their relationships through what they do with their hats than the words they speak. <a href="https://www.australianculture.org/hungerford-henry-lawson/">Hungerford</a> is mostly spoken words: it makes the same point in a different way. The absence of visual information means the reader cannot determine who is telling the truth.</p>
<p>As the number of people involved in communication increases in Lawson’s short stories, stability decreases. This is true to his experience as a deaf person. When a story has only two or three characters, the atmosphere stays calm and events proceed predictably. Even in a story such as Hungerford, where it is unclear who is lying and who is telling the truth, calm continues. </p>
<p>However, in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill,_the_Ventriloquial_Rooster">Bill, the Ventriloquial Rooster</a>, where a whole neighbourhood is drawn into one man’s determination to see his neighbour’s rooster defeated in a fight, events become chaotic and unpredictable – because four or more characters are involved.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-story-99-versions-of-the-same-tale-in-the-drovers-wives-112407">Inside the story: 99 versions of the same tale in The Drover's Wives</a>
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<h2>Judith Wright’s deafness: ‘creatively generative’</h2>
<p>Judith Wright was born in Armidale, NSW, in 1915. She began to lose her hearing at age 22. Three years later, she was diagnosed with <a href="https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/ears-otosclerosis">otosclerosis</a>, a form of atypical bone growth within the middle ear that causes progressive hearing loss. Her deafness meant she was denied entry into the women’s forces during World War II. </p>
<p>Instead, she found a role as a statistician at the University of Queensland. When the servicemen returned and her role became insecure, she made a critical decision, one directly informed by her deafness. She writes in her autobiography, <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/half-a-lifetime">Half a Lifetime</a>:</p>
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<p>I could no longer hope to earn a living by doing anything in the commercial or academic world. My deafness would increase and the hostility to women holding well-paid jobs would do also. I could perhaps hope to live by writing.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533648/original/file-20230623-27-zqyynk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An elderly woman in a broad-brimmed hat and glasses, chin in hand" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533648/original/file-20230623-27-zqyynk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533648/original/file-20230623-27-zqyynk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533648/original/file-20230623-27-zqyynk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533648/original/file-20230623-27-zqyynk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533648/original/file-20230623-27-zqyynk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533648/original/file-20230623-27-zqyynk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533648/original/file-20230623-27-zqyynk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Judith Wright’s decision to become a writer was directly informed by her deafness.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
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<p>Wright retained the memory of sound. Until she became completely deaf in her last decade, she was able to hear with a hearing aid (though these were initially bulky and socially embarrassing contraptions). Lip-reading and communicating remained exhausting, however. </p>
<p>Walks with her husband, Jack McKinney, meant Jack running ahead and walking backwards so she could <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-lip-reading-technology-promises-to-make-hearing-aids-more-human-45166">lip-read</a> him. The fatigue and fragility of communication is revealed through prominent themes in Wright’s poetry: the prevalence of silence, her representations of the limits of language, and her careful attention to the nonhuman world, particularly birds.</p>
<p>Without deafness, too, we would not have Wright’s prolific correspondence: as she could not hear on the telephone, she turned to <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-a-lament-for-the-lost-art-of-letter-writing-a-radical-art-form-reflecting-the-full-catastrophe-of-life-197420">letter writing</a>. She conducted an epistolary friendship with fellow artist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Blackman">Barbara Blackman</a> (who was blind) for 50 years. Deafness, far from being a drawback in Wright’s life, was a creatively generative and generous condition.</p>
<p>Her letters are captured in volumes such as <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/668988">The Equal Heart and Mind</a> (2004), <a href="https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2007/295-july-august-2007-no-293/7411-lisa-gorton-reviews-with-love-and-fury-selected-letters-of-judith-wright-edited-by-patricia-clarke-and-meredith-mckinney-and-portrait-of-a-friendship-the-letters-of-barbara-blackman-and-judith-wright-edited-by-bryony-cosgrove">With Love and Fury</a> (2006), and <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/portrait-of-a-friendship-paperback-softback">Portrait of a Friendship</a> (2007).</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-judith-wright-in-a-new-light-67222">Friday essay: Judith Wright in a new light</a>
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<h2>Ignoring disability has consequences</h2>
<p>Deafness inherently shaped Wright and Lawson’s writing. It impacted their style and content, and inspired some of their most well-known poems and stories. Omitting deafness from their biographies, or referring to deafness as an insignificant detail, presents an incomplete and misleading picture. </p>
<p>Too often, Wright and Lawson are represented as two more non-disabled authors. This contributes to the tradition of Australian literature as being overwhelmingly non-disabled. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533650/original/file-20230623-29-nhvoac.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Cover: I Can Jump Puddles - a boy on crutches, smiling" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533650/original/file-20230623-29-nhvoac.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533650/original/file-20230623-29-nhvoac.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533650/original/file-20230623-29-nhvoac.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533650/original/file-20230623-29-nhvoac.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=924&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533650/original/file-20230623-29-nhvoac.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533650/original/file-20230623-29-nhvoac.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533650/original/file-20230623-29-nhvoac.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1161&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>And often the exceptions, like <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/i-can-jump-puddles-australian-childrens-classics-9781742535845">I Can Jump Puddles</a> (1955) by Alan Marshall, who was partially paralysed as a result of childhood polio, are interpreted as narratives of overcoming disability – rather than the narrative of disability pride that they are.</p>
<p>This creates the impression writing is something disabled people can’t do. </p>
<p>Non-disabled readers – particularly young readers – absorb this false understanding. When they grow up to be publishers, teachers, librarians, editors, and booksellers, they unthinkingly pass this message on to the next generation by continuing to omit disability from Australian writing.</p>
<p>Some might say things are getting better, pointing to works such as the recent anthology, <a href="https://www.blackincbooks.com.au/books/growing-disabled-australia">Growing Up Disabled in Australia</a>, edited by disabled writer <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460755037/say-hello/">Carly Findlay</a>. But Growing Up Disabled, welcome as it is, is more about featuring disabled people than disabled writers. While there is nothing wrong with this, the contributions don’t represent the experience of being a disabled writer. </p>
<p>The consequences of erasing disability from Australian literature are worse for disabled readers and writers. We are deprived of our history and lineage. </p>
<p>Many disabled Australians grow up having never read a book by an Australian with the same impairment as our own. We can read books featuring characters with our particular impairment, but they are usually written by non-disabled writers who often have nothing in common with our experience of the world. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533651/original/file-20230623-19-fky9rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Les Murray: a large man dressed in black, sitting in a chair, smiling" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533651/original/file-20230623-19-fky9rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533651/original/file-20230623-19-fky9rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533651/original/file-20230623-19-fky9rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533651/original/file-20230623-19-fky9rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533651/original/file-20230623-19-fky9rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533651/original/file-20230623-19-fky9rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533651/original/file-20230623-19-fky9rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Les Murray’s autism is rarely acknowledged.</span>
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<p>And when we do read books by disabled writers, we often don’t know it. Like Lawson and Wright, renowned Australian poet <a href="https://theconversation.com/les-murray-said-his-autism-shaped-his-poetry-his-late-poems-offer-insights-into-his-creative-process-188212">Les Murray</a> acknowledged his disability (<a href="https://theconversation.com/autism-advocacy-and-research-misses-the-mark-if-autistic-people-are-left-out-94404">autism</a>) for decades before his death, starting in 1974. But it’s rarely acknowledged, even now.</p>
<p>From this, we learn that there is nobody like us. We are cast adrift, without role models. Aspiring disabled writers have to continually reinvent the wheel when we write about our particular experience of the world. We then have to convince a world used to reading inauthentic representations of our experience that our real stories are important.</p>
<p>But disabled authors have always been part of Australian culture. When we understand impairment as a complex condition rather than simply a deficit, we realise disability engenders creativity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Henry Lawson said deafness was ‘in a great measure responsible for my writing’. Wright said hers was ‘part of the conditions I live under’. Their disability was inherent to their creativity.Amanda Tink, PhD Graduate, Western Sydney UniversityJessica White, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and Literature, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1707822021-11-09T23:37:06Z2021-11-09T23:37:06ZThe Drover’s Wife: the Legend of Molly Johnson brings a Black woman’s perspective to Australian frontier films<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430928/original/file-20211108-17-5vsx8m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=181%2C0%2C2701%2C1087&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bunya Productions, Oombarra Productions</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Drover’s Wife: the Legend of Molly Johnson, written and directed by Leah Purcell, Sydney Film Festival</em></p>
<p>Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife: the Legend of Molly Johnson is an inspired and compelling re-imagining of Henry Lawson’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9363188-the-drover-s-wife">The Drover’s Wife</a>, a short story originally published in The Bulletin in 1892.</p>
<p>Purcell’s debut feature film as writer and director, filmed in late 2019, has emerged out of a lifelong connection with this story. Citing three generations of drovers in her own family, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82A3wzwKWOI">Purcell explained in a recent interview</a> how, as a five-year-old girl, she would implore her mother to read Lawson’s story to her. For Purcell, it was, “the first time I used my imagination and saw myself in a story”.</p>
<p>As her mother recited, Purcell would imagine a “little film in my head”. In it, she was the little boy in the story and her mother the drover’s wife.</p>
<p>Purcell has been repeatedly drawn to The Drover’s Wife as a way of placing her Indigenous family’s story before a broad Australian audience. The film expands on the acclaimed stage play she wrote and starred in, <a href="https://belvoir.com.au/productions/the-drovers-wife/">which premiered at Belvoir Street Theatre in 2016</a> and won the Victorian prize for literature, two NSW premier’s literary awards and four Helpmann awards. She also adapted the play into a <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-drovers-wife-9780143791478">novel, released in 2019</a>.</p>
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<p>In all three versions of the story, set in 1893 in the Snowy Mountains in NSW, Purcell gives voice to Indigenous experiences of the frontier that were maligned and marginalised in Lawson’s version. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-historically-accurate-is-the-film-high-ground-the-violence-it-depicts-is-uncomfortably-close-to-the-truth-154475">How historically accurate is the film High Ground? The violence it depicts is uncomfortably close to the truth</a>
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<p>As in the play, the film is carried by its Indigenous co-stars. Purcell plays the drover’s wife, Molly Johnson, unearthing an Indigenous heritage for the character. Johnson is burdened by a dark secret and Purcell imbues the role with a determined strength, her posture and gaze expressing fortitude, grit and constant vigilance, whether she is carrying her broom or her rifle.</p>
<p>Rob Collins plays Yadaka, a character inspired by Purcell’s great-grandfather, Tippo Charlie Chambers, a caring and gentle man who spent time as a travelling circus performer in the 1890s while yearning for his Country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430929/original/file-20211108-19-11q4cdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430929/original/file-20211108-19-11q4cdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430929/original/file-20211108-19-11q4cdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430929/original/file-20211108-19-11q4cdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430929/original/file-20211108-19-11q4cdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430929/original/file-20211108-19-11q4cdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430929/original/file-20211108-19-11q4cdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430929/original/file-20211108-19-11q4cdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yadaka (Rob Collins), left, is central to this reworked story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bunya Productions, Oombarra Productions</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yadaka is central to Purcell’s reworking of the original story, fleshed out from the brief mention of a “stray blackfellow” who chops some wood for the drover’s wife in Lawson’s version.</p>
<p>In the film, the fugitive Yadaka arrives at the heavily pregnant Molly’s isolated property and ultimately saves her life when her labour goes wrong, helping her to bury her stillborn child. But Yadaka is a wanted man, blamed for the murder of a white family in town. This sets off an unfortunate chain of events.</p>
<p>Yadaka also unlocks Molly’s understanding of her Indigenous family, paving the way for her children to escape from becoming wards of the state. The strong bond the drover’s wife has with her children in Lawson’s original story is deepened in Purcell’s film. Molly is driven to protect her children from the authorities and to overcome violence and hardship. </p>
<p>Molly’s eldest son Danny – played by Malachi Dower-Roberts, who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82A3wzwKWOI">Purcell joyfully describes</a> as a “red-haired freckled Blackfella from Glebe” – functions as a figure of hope in the film.</p>
<p>He forms a bond with Yadaka, taking responsibility for guiding his siblings to safety. The absence of the drover himself, Jo Johnson, meanwhile, is attributed to his being a violent drunk and an abuser, rather than the heroic, pioneering figure imagined by Lawson.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430931/original/file-20211108-17-wm8elz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430931/original/file-20211108-17-wm8elz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/430931/original/file-20211108-17-wm8elz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430931/original/file-20211108-17-wm8elz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430931/original/file-20211108-17-wm8elz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430931/original/file-20211108-17-wm8elz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430931/original/file-20211108-17-wm8elz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/430931/original/file-20211108-17-wm8elz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Molly Johnson is driven to protect her children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bunya Productions, Oombarra Productions</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film was shot in and around Adaminaby. Cinematographer Mark Wareham captures the beauty and harshness of the rolling hills and valleys of this vast, alpine landscape, from dusty clearings to lush greenery and stark, white snow.</p>
<p>Foreboding, enveloping mists are rendered by the time-lapse photography of Murray Fredericks. The beauty and menace of this landscape frame the film’s harrowing violence. The final closeup shots are especially chilling.</p>
<h2>Violent realities</h2>
<p>Purcell’s is not, of course, the first re-imagining of Lawson’s story. In 2017, Frank Moorhouse brought together a collection of its numerous literary reworkings in <a href="https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/the-drovers-wife-wives-frank-moorhouse-ryan-oneill/">The Drover’s Wife: A Celebration of a Great Love Affair</a>, including the writer and director’s notes from Purcell’s original play. </p>
<p>But Purcell’s cinematic version of the story exemplifies what Felicity Collins and Therese Davis describe in their book <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/arts-theatre-culture/media-mass-communication/australian-cinema-after-mabo?format=HB&isbn=9780521834803">Australian Cinema After Mabo</a> as a process of “cinematic backtracking”. Familiar figures and archetypes are revived and reworked, opening up new meanings and interpretations.</p>
<p>In recent years, we have witnessed a surge of interest in the archetypes, themes and aesthetics of the Western in Australian cinema with films like The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005), Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton, 2017), The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent, 2018) and High Ground (Stephen Johnson, 2020). All suggest a growing reckoning with the violent realities of our frontier history.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-nightingale-much-ado-about-nothing-118683">The Nightingale - much ado about nothing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Purcell’s film is part of this turn.</p>
<p>By bringing her personal history and identity as a Black woman to bear on the Australian Western, Purcell has enriched this burgeoning film cycle.</p>
<p>The way that Purcell’s Molly Johnson endures in this film is both inspiring and heartbreaking. This is a subversive survival story that brings an unflinching new perspective to Australian cinema’s ongoing engagement with the frontier.</p>
<p><em>The Drover’s Wife will be in cinemas May 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/170782/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan Carrigy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A reworking of the 1892 Henry Lawson short story, this film is a subversive survival story.Megan Carrigy, Associate Director, Academic Programs, New York UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1512012020-12-24T21:25:20Z2020-12-24T21:25:20ZA festive feast of fish and fruit: the creation of the Australian Christmas dinner<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373001/original/file-20201204-13-cnpef1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=42%2C0%2C4752%2C3151&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maddi Bazzocco/Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In this new series, our writers explore how food shaped Australian history – and who we are today.</em></p>
<p>A traditional British meal of roast turkey and plum pudding may have once dominated Australia’s Christmas tables. But as our population has become more diverse, so has our menu. </p>
<p>While some may mark the day with a <a href="https://www.nordickitchenstories.co.uk/2017/11/30/pepparkakor-swedish-ginger-thins-recipe/">pepparkakor</a> and others a <a href="https://www.thespruceeats.com/panettone-italian-christmas-cake-from-milan-4052603">panettone</a>, it would now be a rare house where prawns and a bowl of cherries did not make an appearance. </p>
<p>But how did this distinctively Australian Christmas spread get its start?</p>
<p>The peculiarity of preparing a roast and pudding in high summer was amusing to colonials. In many ways its <a href="https://www.monash.edu/arts/philosophical-historical-international-studies/eras/past-editions/edition-six-2004-november/eras-journal-donaldson-r-abstract">absurdity was celebrated</a>, representing the ambiguity of emergent Antipodean identity. But there were soon calls for innovation. </p>
<p>In 1907, Henry Lawson described a “sensible Christmas dinner” in one of his short stories, celebrating a festive feast where all the food was cold. </p>
<p>His narrator <a href="https://www.telelib.com/authors/L/LawsonHenry/prose/sendroundthehat/prettygirlarmy.html">observed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Billy’s wife and her sister [were] fresh and cool-looking and jolly, instead of being hot and brown and cross like most Australian women who roast themselves over a blazing fire in a hot kitchen on a broiling day, all the morning, to cook scalding plum pudding and red-hot roasts, for no other reason than that their grandmothers used to cook hot Christmas dinners in England.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372181/original/file-20201201-22-p3u0hh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two maids stand by a table laden with meat." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372181/original/file-20201201-22-p3u0hh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372181/original/file-20201201-22-p3u0hh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372181/original/file-20201201-22-p3u0hh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372181/original/file-20201201-22-p3u0hh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372181/original/file-20201201-22-p3u0hh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372181/original/file-20201201-22-p3u0hh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372181/original/file-20201201-22-p3u0hh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=583&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Christmas dinners – like this one in 1910 – were once very British affairs.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Coffs Harbour City Council</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cornucopias of festive fruits</h2>
<p>From the late 19th century, new traditions developed celebrating summer. Tropical and stone fruits became <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442276987">increasingly popular</a> as a seasonal addition to the festive spread.</p>
<p>While the heady scent of mangoes and piles of ruby-red cherries must have seemed extraordinary to migrants used to a winter Yuletide, the emphasis on fruit was far from novel — fruit had long played a role in British Christmases. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/decking-the-halls-of-history-the-origins-of-christmas-decorations-129037">Decking the halls of history: the origins of Christmas decorations</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The heavy use of dried fruits — luxury goods imported from the east — underpinned the celebratory status of traditional favourites like <a href="https://library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections/view/811">plum pudding</a> and <a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9781861894250">mince pies</a>. Oranges and apples appeared in the <a href="https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/A-Victorian-Christmas/">stockings</a> of Victorian children and as decorations on the tree.</p>
<p>In Australia, the bounty of colour was perfect for the Victorian tradition of festive window displays, and grocers competed to wow crowds with cornucopias of fruit and flowers. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373801/original/file-20201209-23-29gf7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A busy market filled with people, fruits and plants." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373801/original/file-20201209-23-29gf7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373801/original/file-20201209-23-29gf7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373801/original/file-20201209-23-29gf7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373801/original/file-20201209-23-29gf7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373801/original/file-20201209-23-29gf7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373801/original/file-20201209-23-29gf7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373801/original/file-20201209-23-29gf7f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victoria Markets at Christmas, as printed in the Illustrated Australian News, 1893.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1890, The Daily Telegraph <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/235792341">reported</a> on the Christmas Eve spectacle in Sydney’s King Street Arcade:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>great masses of beautiful flowers at the florists and the magnificent spread of fruit near by — the piles of oranges, lemons, mangoes, pineapples, apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums, cherries, red and white currants, grapes, gooseberries and other fruits — decked with Christmas bush making a picture worth travelling to see.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Boxes of mangoes became popular gifts, so common that, in 1945, a columnist for the Rockhampton Morning Bulletin <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/56441320">decried</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>if we get another Christmas box that includes mangoes, pineapples or a watermelon I’ll scream.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the 20th century, the popularity of tropical fruits at Christmas was bolstered the development of another modern festive classic: the pavlova. </p>
<p>Rising in popularity in the decades following its fabled “<a href="https://www.otago.ac.nz/press/books/otago071803.html">invention</a>” on one side of the Tasman or the other (a debate for another time), by the 1940s it was promoted by women’s magazines, newspapers and cookbooks as an <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/22390104">alternative to pudding</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373002/original/file-20201204-15-1vw7lab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Pavlova with mango" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373002/original/file-20201204-15-1vw7lab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/373002/original/file-20201204-15-1vw7lab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373002/original/file-20201204-15-1vw7lab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373002/original/file-20201204-15-1vw7lab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373002/original/file-20201204-15-1vw7lab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373002/original/file-20201204-15-1vw7lab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/373002/original/file-20201204-15-1vw7lab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">We are more likely to cook a pavlova than a pudding for Christmas dinner.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If the traditional pud was to be ousted, its rival needed a mythology of its own. The pav was a more than worthy opponent, and by December 2017, Australia’s recipe searches for pavlova <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-24/google-christmas-trends-pudding-pavlova/9255722">far outstripped</a> searches for pudding.</p>
<h2>Out with the meat and in with the fish</h2>
<p>The seafood feast is a decidedly more recent phenomenon. </p>
<p>In contrast to other parts of Europe, after Britain’s 16th century Reformation the seafood meal associated with Christmas Eve as a traditional Catholic fast day declined, and the festival became a decidedly <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442276987">meat-oriented affair</a>. </p>
<p>Fish had no defined role in the menu the British brought with them to Australia, where roast fowl, beef and ham dominated Christmas tables for <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/51907">almost 200 years</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tofu-turkey-paleo-feast-christmas-culinary-traditions-are-ever-changing-68748">Tofu turkey? Paleo feast? Christmas culinary traditions are ever changing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Real change did not begin until the 1980s, gathering pace in the 1990s, as Australian culinary identity developed increasing confidence and embraced new flavours. Post-war migrants, especially from the Mediterranean, shaped change, too: bringing not just their seafood traditions, but also lessons in the art of cooking and eating <em><a href="http://coasit.com.au/IHS/journals/Individual%20Journal%20Extracts/Italian%20Migrant%20Food%20Australia%20from%20IHS%20Journal0032.pdf">al fresco</a></em>. </p>
<p>In 1994, the Sydney Fish Market began their 36-hour seafood marathon. </p>
<p>From 5am on 23 December until 5pm on Christmas Eve the market sells fish, squid, prawns and oysters to approximately 100,000 shoppers.</p>
<p>Last year, <a href="https://www.sydneyfishmarket.com.au/Portals/0/adam/Content/yS4yblh5t0u5e4H3AwF42Q/ButtonLink/Media%20Release_1.4%20Million%20Auction%20Trade.pdf">A$1.4 million</a> was spent over the 36 hours — an estimated 700 tonnes of seafood, including 130 tonnes of prawns.</p>
<p>Just over a century ago, Henry Lawson marvelled at the innovation of a cold seasonal spread. Today, it is fair to say the prawn and mango have well and truly found their place on the festive table as hallmarks of a uniquely Australian Christmas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151201/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeline Shanahan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When British colonials came to Australia, they stuck to their winter Christmas traditions of roast meats and plum puddings. But over the centuries, Australians found their own ways to celebrate.Madeline Shanahan, Honorary Adjunct Lecturer, University of New EnglandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1124072019-07-05T03:03:29Z2019-07-05T03:03:29ZInside the story: 99 versions of the same tale in The Drover’s Wives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278014/original/file-20190605-40727-tjxkqq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Walter Withers, 'The Drover', 1912, oil on canvas. A recent book reinterprets Henry Lawson's The Drover's Wife in 99 ways, offering new perspectives on the classic short story.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Walter_Withers_-_The_Drover%2C_1912.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Why do we tell stories, and how are they crafted? In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/inside-the-story-69863">this series</a>, we unpick the work of the writer on both page and screen.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Ryan O'Neill’s recent book <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40910479-the-drover-s-wives">The Drover’s Wives</a> joins a rich corpus of Australian literary works inspired by Henry Lawson’s short story, <a href="http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/DrovWife.shtml">The Drover’s Wife</a> (first published in The Bulletin in 1892).</p>
<p>But O’Neill’s approach differs from that of other authors, by offering not one reinterpretation – as in Frank Moorhouse’s <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C203158">satirical take</a> and Barbara Jefferis’ <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C62079">feminist retelling</a>, for example – but 99 different versions of the story.</p>
<p>His book envisages the Lawson story in various forms, including: as a tweet, a school English essay, an Amazon book review, a limerick, a computer game, a gossip column, and even a sporting commentary.</p>
<p>O’Neill’s book is dedicated to both Henry Lawson and French novelist Raymond Queneau. The latter was a founding member of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oulipo">Oulipo</a> (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle), a mostly French assortment of experimental writers, mathematicians and scientists, founded in 1960. </p>
<p>O’Neill attempts Queneau’s method of literary variations on a theme in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/319790.Exercises_in_Style">Exercises In Style</a> (first published in French in 1947), but with an Australian context.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278007/original/file-20190605-40758-rq2xsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278007/original/file-20190605-40758-rq2xsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278007/original/file-20190605-40758-rq2xsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278007/original/file-20190605-40758-rq2xsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278007/original/file-20190605-40758-rq2xsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=919&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278007/original/file-20190605-40758-rq2xsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278007/original/file-20190605-40758-rq2xsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278007/original/file-20190605-40758-rq2xsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1155&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Goodreads</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife provides the central narrative of O’Neill’s test. In the story, the titular wife of the absent drover spends a sleepless night keeping watch for a snake that had earlier alarmed her children. She passes the time reminiscing on hardships she has faced in the bush before. As daylight nears, the snake appears, and she clubs it to death.</p>
<p>As with Exercises In Style, the original narrative in O'Neill’s book is of secondary importance to the telling and the myriad ways these tellings transform the tale.</p>
<p>O’Neill’s experiment highlights the fact all writing is constrained by certain rules. It’s easier to play the game when you know these rules (and bend them, too). </p>
<p>By taking a text so familiar as its starting point, O'Neill’s tweaks show the conventions of 99 different forms of writing, while shining new light on Lawson’s classic in the process.</p>
<h2>Narrative techniques</h2>
<p>The fourth reinterpretation in The Drover’s Wives – a “Year 8 English Essay” – begins with the prompt: “What narrative techniques does Lawson use to shape the reader’s perception of the drover’s wife?” With some substitution, we might re-render the question: “What narrative techniques does O’Neill use to shape the reader’s perception of The Drover’s Wife?” Let me count the ways …</p>
<p>Among the most interesting rewrites is a version of the poem where the story is reduced to only onomatopoeia (words that <a href="https://study.com/academy/lesson/onomatopoeia-in-literature-definition-examples-quiz.html">look like the sound they make</a>): the snake is represented by “slithers, sizzles and snaps”.</p>
<p>In another version, he experiments with “spoonerisms” – a display of shining wit where the initial syllables of two or more words are transposed. Instead of a “small herd of grass eaters”, O’Neill renders the drover’s flock as a “small herd of ass greeters”. </p>
<p>He even includes a tanka, a Japanese poetic form similar to haiku:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A snake approaches.<br>
The woman and children run<br>
And hide in the house.<br>
Through the long night she watches –<br>
Shedding memories like scales<br>
And the snake burns with the dawn.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>O’Neill departs from the methods originally proposed by Queneau’s book by progressing into more contemporary territory (using PowerPoint lecture slides; a 1980s computer game; emojis; tweets; an Amazon book review; a reality TV show; a meme; a spam e-mail; and internet comments).</p>
<p>He also uses forms specific to an Australian cultural context (an RSCPA report; a letter to the Daily Telegraph; Ocker; and Bush Ballad). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278018/original/file-20190605-40715-cmaw6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278018/original/file-20190605-40715-cmaw6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/278018/original/file-20190605-40715-cmaw6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278018/original/file-20190605-40715-cmaw6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278018/original/file-20190605-40715-cmaw6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=435&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278018/original/file-20190605-40715-cmaw6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278018/original/file-20190605-40715-cmaw6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/278018/original/file-20190605-40715-cmaw6e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Portraits of Australian author Henry Lawson. Ryan O'Neill joins a long line of writers who have put their own spin on Lawson’s classic short story.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110326516">Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Techniques of transformation</h2>
<p>A useful way to illustrate the impact of each technique employed by O’Neill is to examine its effect on the opening paragraph in Lawson’s original, used to establish the scene: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The two-roomed house is built of round timber, slabs, and stringy-bark, and floored with slit slabs. A big bark kitchen standing at one end is larger than the house itself, veranda included.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In O’Neill’s text:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>the Monosyllabic chapter re-renders the opening with single syllable words: “They lived in the bush in a shack with two rooms, miles and miles from the main road […] ”</p></li>
<li><p>the Yoked Sentence chapter, requiring each sentence to begin with the last word of the previous sentence, opens: “The drover’s wife and her four children lived in an isolated house deep in the bush. Bush was all around, and the nearest neighbour was miles away. Away to the north somewhere, the drover […]”</p></li>
<li><p>in the Lipogram chapter, which requires the conscious omission of one or more letters, the omission of the letter E renders the exposition differently: “A bush cabin in an outlying part of Australia marks a distant location for our story”.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The opening paragraph is likewise transformed by the use of rhyme in various other chapters. </p>
<p>One that takes the form of a 1950s Children’s Book begins: “There was once a bush farm that the sun rose over, and on that little farm lived the wife of a drover.”</p>
<p>In the Elizabethan Drama chapter, the chorus does the expositional work, beginning their prologue: “A household, poor but rich in dignity / In fair Australia where we lay our scene / Bush all around in stretches to infinity / No indoor plumbing, just an old latrine.”</p>
<p>As is common, the opening lines of the limerick chapter introduce not the house, but the central character of the poem: “There once was the wife of a drover, Who met with a snake, and moreover …”.</p>
<p>In the 1980s Computer Game chapter, the new level of interactivity is made apparent with a shift to second person narration: “You are in a large kitchen by a two-room house”.</p>
<p>A similar technique is used to achieve the tone in the Cosmo Quiz chapter, which parodies the conventions of a glossy magazine quiz: ten multiple choice questions to show you whether you’re a time traveller’s wife, a Stepford wife or a drover’s wife.</p>
<p>How do these various narrative techniques shape perception of Lawson’s original story? On their own, each may heighten or enhance a latent quality that lies in waiting. For instance, the Cosmo Quiz reveals the gender dynamics, satirising the protagonist’s apparent absent agency.</p>
<p>Taken as a whole, the book functions equally as a playful and experimental collection of brief narratives, and an illustrative compendium of writing techniques.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112407/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dave Drayton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ryan O'Neill’s book reimagines a classic Australian short story. He retells The Drover’s Wife 99 times in various forms, including a poem, an Amazon review, and even as a Cosmo quiz.Dave Drayton, Lecturer in Creative Writing, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/734402017-07-20T01:36:22Z2017-07-20T01:36:22ZRefuge in a harsh landscape – Australian novels and our changing relationship to the bush<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167636/original/file-20170503-4135-gufh31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Summer afternoon, Templestowe by Louis Buvelot, 1866. The bush was commonly seen by 19th-century writers as a place of despair.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_Buvelot_-_Summer_afternoon,_Templestowe_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1790, Watkin Tench, the first officer with the First Fleet and a member of the fledgling British colony, stood on what we now know to be “The Heads” of Sydney, hungry and <a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00044.pdf">pining for news of England</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Here on the summit of the hill, every morning from daylight until sun sunk, did we sweep the horizon in hope of seeing a sail. At every fleeting speck which arose from the bosom of the sea, the heart pounded and a telescope lifted to the eye…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Tench’s palpable yearning for the mother country is an early account of British despair upon first settlement in Australia. One hundred years later, the sentiment remained. Many settlers were still unhappy with their surrounds, as evidenced in Edward Dyson’s musings in his 1898 short story <a href="http://www.telelib.com/authors/D/DysonEdward/prose/belowontop/belowontop24.html">The Conquering Bush</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The bush is sad, heavy, desparing; delightful for a month, perhaps, but terrible for a year.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In Barbara Baynton’s works, meanwhile, tales of harsh female experiences were set against even harsher Australian landscapes, devoid of respite or pleasure. In her 1896 short story <a href="http://resources.mhs.vic.edu.au/creating/downloads/ChosenVessel.pdf">The Chosen Vessel</a>, a young wife and mother left alone in her bush home is stalked, raped and murdered by a swagman:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>More than once she thought of taking her baby and going to her husband.
But in the past, when she had dared to speak of the dangers to which
her loneliness exposed her, he had taunted and sneered at her.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For over 200 years, the white sentiment of desolation and anxiety about this “untamed” land has pervaded much of Australian literature. Children went missing, men went mad, and women suffered what writer Henry Lawson called the “maddening sameness” in <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4338844-the-drover-s-wife-and-other-stories">The Drover’s Wife and Others Stories</a>. “Oh, if only I could go away from the bush!” wails Lawson’s central character in <a href="http://www.telelib.com/authors/L/LawsonHenry/prose/overthesliprail/selectorsdaughter1.html">The Selector’s Daughter</a>. </p>
<h2>Desolate refuge</h2>
<p>The works of these early writers did much to reveal the challenging realities of the bush. Those eking out an existence in a land where soil and weather disagreed with European sensibilities and practices were met with hard work. And what a place to work! There was little room for bucolic tranquillity in a land of drought, flood and searing heat.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164986/original/image-20170412-26736-bqloqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164986/original/image-20170412-26736-bqloqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164986/original/image-20170412-26736-bqloqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164986/original/image-20170412-26736-bqloqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164986/original/image-20170412-26736-bqloqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164986/original/image-20170412-26736-bqloqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164986/original/image-20170412-26736-bqloqc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tim Winton’s Dirt Music.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Picador</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But, in the 21st century, there has been a change in how Australians read and write about the bush. Author and ecologist Tim Flannery, for one, <a href="http://www.aawp.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Hickey-2.pdf">urged</a> his fellow country men and women to “develop deep, sustaining roots in the land” in his address as Australian of the Year in 2002 – which is what many of our contemporary writers seek to do. Unlike their predecessors, they’re increasingly likely to write about the bush as a destination for escape, rather than a place from which to flee. </p>
<p>Author Tim Winton’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35306.Dirt_Music">Dirt Music</a> does exactly that, as told through the tribulations of protagonist Luther Fox. After being forced out of his small south-west Australian town White Point for the crime of theft, he does not flee to the city; instead he journeys to a more remote region: the Kimberley.</p>
<p>Lost, injured and starving, Fox does not curse the land for his fate. Rather, he accepts his minor place in the universe and begins to come to terms with his family history through listening to and appreciating the powerful land:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He knows he lives and that the world lives in him. And for him and because of him. Because and despite and regardless of him. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Others, like Peter Temple in the <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1134743.The_Broken_Shore">The Broken Shore</a>, highlight the beauteous potential of working with the land, as opposed to fighting it.</p>
<p>When the novel’s protagonist, Joe Cashin, leaves the city to return to his home town on the cold, south-west coast of Victoria, he does so a shattered man. With only the battering winds, shrieking cold and his dogs as company, Joe attempts to rebuild the home of his ancestors. He does not curse the sea for the death of his father or bemoan the land or its conditions. Rather, he finds a way to live in it alongside the people he grew up with:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Cashin walked around the hill, into the wind from the sea. It was cold, late autumn, last glowing leaves clinging to the liquid ambers and maples his great-grandfather’s brother had planted, their surrender close. He loved this time, the morning stillness…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Other authors such as Robert Drewe, Kate Grenville, Cate Kennedy, Murray Bail and Jenny Spence also create plots that entail leaving the city and finding refuge and peace in the Australian bush. This is a markedly different trajectory from that of Lawson’s The Drover’s Wife or even the doomed schoolgirls in Joan Lindsay’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/791345.Picnic_at_Hanging_Rock">Picnic at Hanging Rock</a>, who journey through the scrub and rock to never return. </p>
<h2>For the love of farmland</h2>
<p>This sentiment toward the land does not aim to romanticise one’s “return” to nature. Rather, it’s as much concerned with exploring the cultural practices intrinsic to Australian land.</p>
<p>This is most apparent in literary interpretations of farming, or “pastoral” literature (writing that idealises country life). <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-cambridge-companion-to-literature-and-the-environment/pastoral-anti-pastoral-and-post-pastoral/EA68A85A554C253E74DD70CBE9893EB5">UK scholar Terry Gifford</a> has coined a key term to consider here: “post-pastoral”, which is a “discourse that can both celebrate and take responsibility for nature without false consciousness”. </p>
<p>Gifford’s view is that post-pastoral is provisional and can be adapted to different regions. It does not idealise rural life. Nor does it exist only to highlight the harsh realities of life on the land. Rather, it seeks new ways of looking at the pastoral in all its forms.</p>
<p>In Australian writing, we appear to have an emerging “co-pastoral” discourse – a place where humans and the land co-exist. Humans do not, after all, always have to be the agents of disaster, and the land does not always have to be mundane and unforgiving.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164984/original/image-20170412-26748-1bgoyki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/164984/original/image-20170412-26748-1bgoyki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164984/original/image-20170412-26748-1bgoyki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164984/original/image-20170412-26748-1bgoyki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=920&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164984/original/image-20170412-26748-1bgoyki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164984/original/image-20170412-26748-1bgoyki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/164984/original/image-20170412-26748-1bgoyki.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1156&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Christie Nieman’s 2014 novel As Stars Fall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pan Macmillan Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the case for Winton’s follow-up play to Dirt Music, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18162572-signs-of-life">Signs of Life</a>, where we learn that Luther Fox and his partner Georgie return from the Kimberley to live and work on the Fox family farm. At the end of the play, Georgie resolves to harvest olives on the land.</p>
<p>Christie Nieman’s 2014 novel, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21920439-as-stars-fall">As Stars Fall</a>, follows the story of a family stricken with grief after the death of a mother in a bushfire. The children and their new friend, a daughter of farmers, begin to heal by uniting to save an endangered bush stone-curlew – an injured bird whose chicks also perished in the flames. The farming father is an avid birdwatcher who, in the end, suggests building a native refuge for the stone-curlew on his property.</p>
<p>“Farmers aren’t what a lot of people think they are,” writes the mother who dies in the fire.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They care a lot about their land and the wild animals that live there. They really do want to know the best things to do, and how to help the natural environment in a way that doesn’t hurt their own livelihoods.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here, Nieman attempts to cast new light on farm culture, as one deserved of respect rather than contempt. </p>
<p>Another key figure is Australian bush romance writer Rachael Treasure, whose work fits firmly in the co-pastoral lens. The bestselling author of five books and <a href="http://www.rachaeltreasure.com/">self-confessed</a> “bushland babe” supports sustainable farming and partly uses her work for advocacy. Treasure says she “consciously writes for a wide audience, because storytelling is the most powerful vehicle to convey your message”.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165011/original/image-20170412-25888-4hn7r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/165011/original/image-20170412-25888-4hn7r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165011/original/image-20170412-25888-4hn7r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165011/original/image-20170412-25888-4hn7r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165011/original/image-20170412-25888-4hn7r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165011/original/image-20170412-25888-4hn7r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/165011/original/image-20170412-25888-4hn7r6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Farmer’s Wife by Rachael Treasure.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HarperCollins</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Her message is that regenerative agricultural practices, such as pasture cropping, are the only way forward – not only to feed the country, but to heal a damaged land. If this needs to be told with a healthy mix of humour, tragedy and passion under the gum trees, then so be it.</p>
<p>“For the first time in her life, she saw the land with clear vision,” Treasure writes of her main character, Bec Saunders, in <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17187499-the-farmer-s-wife">The Farmer’s Wife</a> – who against the wishes of her husband and father, begins to farm without fertiliser, pasture crop, and build ground cover. Bec hopes that her children will “never see a sod turned again in their lifetime” and vows to “celebrate the seasons, not fight them”.</p>
<p>In this sense, Treasure’s work in The Farmer’s Wife is not environmentalist “green” literature. Farms mean clearing, crops, machinery, pesticides and animals whose hooves destroy the fragile landscape and whose <a href="http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1839995,00.html">methane contributes to greenhouse gases</a>. </p>
<p>Co-pastoral literature does not dismiss the manufactured gardens, the introduced plants or the people who admit to wanting to work the land for profit. Nor does it forget the original Aboriginal landowners whose agricultural practices we now value. It does, however, seek to establish harmony between humans and the land.</p>
<p>Australian literature has long straddled this line between interpretations of bush life as harsh and incompatible, or of mutual benefit and interconnectedness.</p>
<p>But in fleeing to it, seeking refuge from it and working with it, our authors allow us, unlike the homesick Tench, to turn the telescope inward, toward the land and to ourselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73440/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Margaret Hickey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>White settlers and authors once saw the bush as an alien, despairing place. But writers from Tim Winton to Rachael Treasure now portray the land in complex and optimistic ways.Margaret Hickey, Lecturer in Academic Communication, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/764562017-04-20T06:01:38Z2017-04-20T06:01:38ZFrom the heart: why writers are putting themselves in nonfiction<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166010/original/file-20170420-2414-13s7n49.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Waverley Cemetery in Sydney where Henry and Bertha Lawson rest. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Winston Yang</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>History is a story about the past told by people who didn’t live there. Historical fiction and scholarly histories and biographies dominate the field, but a fresh approach, the literary nonfiction narrative of reflection, is making its presence felt.</p>
<p>As a writing genre, history is no spring chicken. Livy (59 BC – 17 AD) gave us the history of ancient Rome, while Australian histories have an even longer provenance, from the First Peoples’ Dreamtime narratives to Grace Karskens’ excellent scholarly account of European settlement in <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/general-books/history/The-Colony-Grace-Karskens-9781741756371">The Colony: A History of Early Sydney</a> (2009). Historical novels are nothing new either, from Walter Scott’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/539025.Waverley">Waverley</a> (1814) to Hilary Mantel’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6101138-wolf-hall">Wolf Hall</a> (2009). </p>
<p>A relative newcomer to the field is the literary nonfiction historical narrative, in which the archive serves as a springboard into a pool of reflection for a contemporary writer. The latest example, published this month, is <a href="http://www.uqp.uq.edu.au/Book.aspx/1424/A%20Wife%27s%20Heart">Kerrie Davies’ A Wife’s Heart</a>, published by University of Queensland Press, a book that retells the life of poet and short story writer Henry Lawson, from multiple viewpoints. Central to Davies’ narrative is a sadly damning affidavit filed by Lawson’s wife Bertha when she sued for divorce in 1903 alleging domestic violence. </p>
<p>When journalist and academic Davies emerged blinking from the archives and into the glare of publication and media interviews, she was greeted by <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/henry-lawsons-marriage-a-dark-tale-of-drink-and-domestic-violence/news-story/9231066f3db506de4c230d215fb9038d">headlines</a> like “Henry Lawson, voice of a nation, larrikin, likely wife beater”. </p>
<p>My excitement reading that headline was due not just to the fact that Davies is a colleague and friend. I was simply happy to see that unorthodox approaches to history are welcomed, and can ignite and enrich our readings of our past.
History, as we know, is a political football. We struggle over the meaning of the past in order to control the game of present and future. A marriage like Henry Lawson’s that began in 1896 and ended seven years later can be hijacked by anyone with an agenda. Davies adopts a light touch. She moves among the many contemporaneous perspectives on Henry from friends and foes as a man who struggled with poverty, ambition, deafness, a failed marriage and alcoholism. </p>
<p>Bertha, who struggled to raise two children while coping with Henry’s ups and down, had her critics as well. She ended up doing a long stint in a mental institution for what today might be called bipolar disorder. Their fraught marriage and messy divorce provides Davies with a ball of historical wool to untangle. She chases it through the archives and across the landscapes through which her subjects drifted, including a grinding stint in London. The affective impact of this pursuit turns the pond of reflection into a whirlpool, inexorably drawing the reader in.</p>
<p>Not everyone sees it that way. Though he has not commented on Davies’ book specifically, Sydney journalist and author David Marr recently disclosed his distaste for biographies in which authors share the personal reflections and experiences they have had while researching and writing their books. </p>
<p>For evidence of the correctness of his position, Marr conveniently points to his own writing, quoting from a scene in Patrick White: A Life in which he reports a medical emergency he witnessed at White’s home not long before the Nobel Laureate’s death in 1990. Marr was witnessing what could have been (but wasn’t) his venerable subject’s demise. Yet his own voice is detached. He expresses no personal emotion or reaction, acting instead as a fly on the wall observer. </p>
<p>As he <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2016/december/1480514400/david-marr/art-biography">wrote recently in The Monthly</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m on the side of invisible biographers. I don’t give a damn about their happy thoughts as they tread in the footsteps of their subjects. Spare me their personal reflections on the Straits of Gibraltar or the old House of Reps. I’m not interested in their research triumphs. I want the life, not the homework.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In A Wife’s Heart, Kerrie Davies transgresses Marr’s “law”, sharing generously of her own life story while telling Henry and Bertha’s. Readers learn that, like Bertha, Davies is a single parent whose marriage has ended in divorce. The pressures are financial as well as emotional, just as they were for the Lawsons.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166011/original/file-20170420-2398-1md7az7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166011/original/file-20170420-2398-1md7az7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166011/original/file-20170420-2398-1md7az7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166011/original/file-20170420-2398-1md7az7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166011/original/file-20170420-2398-1md7az7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166011/original/file-20170420-2398-1md7az7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166011/original/file-20170420-2398-1md7az7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166011/original/file-20170420-2398-1md7az7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lawson’s grave lies next to his wife’s in Waverley Cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sardaka</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At first I found these personal references, which begin on page three of the book, jarring. I simply wasn’t ready to have the focus shifted so early in the story. However, as the book progresses the personal reflections merge with her subjects’ narratives. Conflicting accounts by the Lawsons’ friends and colleagues give the book the feel of a detective novel, a texture well suited to a story of marital failure in which there seems plenty of blame to go round. </p>
<p>Some readers no doubt share Marr’s views about biography, but there are good reasons why younger authors working in a less journalistic genre might profitably venture where Marr warns them not to go. </p>
<p>The distant voice of the “invisible” biographer – like the voice of God booming from above Mount Sinai – has a slightly anachronistic feel these days. To depart from this voice challenges readers who like being reassured by an authoritative tone, or perhaps, put less kindly, enjoy being told what to think. But others prefer more open, less conclusive arguments and reflections. </p>
<p>For some, Marr’s preference for invisibility is out of synch in a world in which readers routinely write back at authors, questioning their logic and exposing mistakes in the “comments section” that now follows most online articles. The invisible narrator’s biases are more implicit, or opaque. That may seem subversive in an era when transparency is valued. </p>
<p>Marr’s argument is that the reader is not well served by an introspective or performative narrator, and that is often true. Some of the worst nonfiction I’ve read in recent years was penned by authors who lost focus on their subject by sharing too much of themselves.</p>
<p>The changing economics of publishing are contributing to our evolving literary landscape. The ranks of subeditors patrolling the borders of mainstream media publications, beating the literary crap out of upstarts who dare to use the personal pronoun “I” are being depleted. </p>
<p>On the bright side, literary rules exist to be broken in the more diffuse structure of contemporary publishing. There never was a golden age.</p>
<p>The subjects of Marr’s early biographies, like White and former Attorney General Sir Garfield Barwick, were alive and highly influential when he started writing about them, good reasons for being careful and adopting an orthodox style. But for Davies, archival sources were all she had. No living witnesses of the trouble between Henry and Bertha survive. The author was left to curate documents. Personalising the narrative breathes life into documentary sources.</p>
<p>There are dangers in interpreting the facts of history. Historians grapple constantly with the problem, while historical novelists can choose whether to stick with the facts or alter them, sometimes radically. Literary nonfiction’s third path allows the juxtaposition of an author’s experience and perspective alongside the archival evidence. This might just reduce the temptation to invent or over egg.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in the world outside the book, the world in which we live, marital violence is at epidemic levels, commanding our society and governments’ attentions. In that context, Davies’ personal story as a single parent acts as a footbridge connecting contemporary readers to the world of her subjects. </p>
<p>Beyond questions of literary technique, Davies’ academic writing on the Lawson story reveals that her literary reflection was catalysed by previous accounts by respected historians that favour Henry over Bertha. </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.aawp.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Davies-1.pdf">conference paper</a> delivered in 2015 she noted:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The biographers of the iconic bush poet and writer – most notably Denton Prout (1963) Manning Clark (1978) and Colin Roderick (1982, 1991) – have all constructed a victim as hero narrative around Lawson’s life, blaming Bertha Lawson (nee Bredt) for his personal and creative decline. In their biographies, Lawson’s marriage breakdown and judicial separation from Bertha Lawson is narrated as a destructive turning point, with Bertha portrayed as a callous persecutor who “spun the wheel of retribution” … against her husband. The unanimous interpretation in these works is that Bertha Lawson in her legal claims disregarded Henry’s evident inability to pay child support, resulting in his imprisonment at Darlinghurst Gaol sporadically from 1905 to 1910. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Was Lawson a wife beater? Davies thinks so, but some who knew Bertha believed otherwise. We may never know, but it’s a worthwhile conversation in which all voices and literary styles are welcome.</p>
<p>Marr’s argument for invisibility is undermined somewhat by the fact – which he acknowledges – that he has previously put himself into his stories about others, including the White biography (in a note near the end of the book), and in <a href="http://insidestory.org.au/the-biographer-and-the-biographee">essays on Kevin Rudd</a> and the Bill Henson case. In all of these his narratives were better for it. </p>
<p><em>Kerrie Davies and David Marr will be speaking at separate events at next month’s Sydney Writers Festival.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Kerrie Davies’ A Wife’s Heart places her own story alongside that of Henry Lawson’s wife.Christopher Kremmer, Senior Lecturer in Literary & Narrative Journalism, School of the Arts & Media, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/756142017-04-03T19:30:59Z2017-04-03T19:30:59ZSeparation and single parenting: the tribulations of Henry Lawson’s wife<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163568/original/image-20170403-19452-d5qf1n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Henry Lawson in 1915. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of New South Wales</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Henry Lawson is one of Australia’s best-known poets. His married life, documented in Kerrie Davies’ newly published A Wife’s Heart: the untold story of Bertha and Henry Lawson, was tumultuous. Bertha and Henry were married in 1896 and had two children, Bartha and Jim. In an April 1903 affidavit, discussed in the following edited extract, Bertha alleged that Henry was habitually drunk and cruel. They received judicial separation on June 4 of the same year.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Written from Bertha’s lodging, 397½ Dowling Street, Moore Park, dated Monday, 15 June 1903:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Harry,</p>
<p>Your letter has just come.</p>
<p>Your papers are not here. I looked for them before. There are also a good many of my private letters and papers missing, and I thought they may be amongst your things. Re the children. I will not consent to let them go. Not through any paltry feelings of revenge, but as a matter of duty. You see, you left me, with these two little children. I was turned into the world, with 1/6 and not a shelter or food for them. I had to pawn my wedding ring to pay for a room. And then had to leave the little children shut up in the room, while I sought for work. And when I got work to do I had to leave them all day, rush home to give them their meals. And back to work again. And mind you, I was suffering torture all the time with toothache, and had to tramp the cold wet streets all day, knowing unless I earnt some money that day the children would go hungry to bed. (I was a fortnight working before Robertson gave Miss [Rose] Scott that money.) I had no money to pay a dentist. (I wrote to you at P.A. Hospital telling you, you were forcing me to place the children in the Benevolent Asylum and you took no notice of the letter.) I went to the Dental Hospital and had a tooth extracted. They have broken part of the jaw bone. And I go into hospital on Wednesday and go under an operation to have the dead bone removed. The children will be well looked after. While I am away I have to pay a pound where they are going. So I trust you will endeavour to send Mr Henderson some more again this week. You know my condition and I am certainly not fit at the present moment to struggle for a living.</p>
<p>As far as the case goes, the sooner it is over the better. You alone have forced this step. God alone knows how often I have forgiven you and how hard I struggled for you. And how have you treated me. Harry there is no power on the earth will ever reunite us. You are dead to me as far as affection goes. The suffering I have been through lately has killed any thought of feeling I may have had for you.</p>
<p>When you have proved yourself a better man and not a low drunkard you shall see your children as often as you like. Until then, I will not let you see them. They have nearly forgotten the home scenes when you were drinking – and I will not let them see you drinking again. I train them to have the same love for you as they have for me. And if baby’s prayers are heard in heaven, you should surely be different, to what you have been. They will have to decide the right and wrong between us, when they are old enough to understand. I think you are very cruel to make the statements you do about me. You know Harry as well I do they are absolutely false. Why don’t you be a man. And if you want to talk to people of your troubles, tell them drink is the sole cause. Do not shield yourself behind a woman. Mr Henderson cannot influence me one way or another, nor any one else. You had your chance to sign a mutual separation and you would not do it. I dread the court case and publicity more than you do. Still I will not draw back again. And I only wish it was settled and over today. I am so weary of struggling against pain and sorrow that I do not give a tinker’s curse for anything – or anybody.</p>
<p>Bertha.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163565/original/image-20170403-19466-1p0mprr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163565/original/image-20170403-19466-1p0mprr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163565/original/image-20170403-19466-1p0mprr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163565/original/image-20170403-19466-1p0mprr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163565/original/image-20170403-19466-1p0mprr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163565/original/image-20170403-19466-1p0mprr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163565/original/image-20170403-19466-1p0mprr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163565/original/image-20170403-19466-1p0mprr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">UQP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>*</p>
<p>Facts drift like the pollen on Dowling Street the day I visit. The terraces are rusted and dusted by the constant traffic driving past. One of them is undergoing renovation; through an open door you can see new floorboards, a glossy fireplace and rickety steps to the second floor.</p>
<p>Outside number 397, two plane trees have grown as tall as the terrace, and the balcony has been walled in with glass. Next door, the crucial fraction – 397½ – is written on the window above the door.</p>
<p>The terrace Bertha brought the children to is now painted an undercoat pink, with a green corrugated-iron balcony, windowed-in like its neighbour. Plants entwine the security bars, and large council garbage bins blight the entrance. Upstairs the tree branches are reflected in the windowpanes. It was from inside here, beyond today’s sky-blue front door, that Bertha wrote an angry letter to Henry about having to pawn her wedding ring and leave the children shut up in her room while she looked for work. She warned of more proceedings, perhaps to continue to full dissolution of marriage.</p>
<p>Their daughter, Barta, later wrote that her mother was sometimes overly dramatic. Bertha’s own mother lived in Sydney – surely that was an alternative to leaving them alone, or threatening to place them in the asylum? And what about her sister, Hilda?</p>
<p>But then conjecturing comes up against solid fact: <em>You know my condition.</em> Perhaps Bertha wasn’t thinking at all about anything except survival.</p>
<p><em>I will not draw back again.</em></p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Still the facts keep drifting. In April 1903, the same month she filed her affidavit alleging cruelty and drunkenness, Bertha had written to Henry on the 23rd, saying that unless he sent money she would be forced to place the children “in the Benevolent Asylum … I don’t care about myself, but I cannot see my children starve … I think it is most dreadfully cruel for any Mother, to have to part with her children let alone be placed in the position that I am in.” Initially it reads solely as financial but, having had two children, she must surely have suspected the significance of the missed periods, the swollen breasts, the heightened sense of smell that transforms the slightest scent into a stench. Or, perhaps, she tried to ignore them. There is no clear mention of a new baby in the letters until June.</p>
<p>The Benevolent Asylum’s admissions and discharge ledger is an album of life stories, like this one on Wednesday, April 5 1903: “Father Frederick sent to Gaol for four months for neglecting to support. Mother dead. Children committed by Newtown Police Court.” It’s fearful to look, then a relief to find that young Barta and Jim Lawson weren’t there then.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163569/original/image-20170403-19462-kdwvks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163569/original/image-20170403-19462-kdwvks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163569/original/image-20170403-19462-kdwvks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163569/original/image-20170403-19462-kdwvks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163569/original/image-20170403-19462-kdwvks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=790&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163569/original/image-20170403-19462-kdwvks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163569/original/image-20170403-19462-kdwvks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163569/original/image-20170403-19462-kdwvks.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=993&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Statue of Lawson by George Lambert in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, dedicated in 1931.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In July, Bertha was clearer still: “I am forced to write to you. I do not think you realize my position. I will be laid up either the end of October or first week in November … There is the nurse to engage, and all my sewing to do, you know I have not any baby clothes.”</p>
<p>Counting nine months back to summer from her due date – it was February, and they were still living in Manly when the Critic article gossiped that Mrs Lawson and Henry were sighted holding hands as they strolled around the beach cliffs. She must have conceived during this brief reunion. Now she warned Henry: “I have to solely depend on you for an existance [sic]…I cannot walk far or stand long … You promised I should have every comfort. I am not asking you for that but for bare necessary’s”.</p>
<p>Bertha might have blanched at food, but put her upset tummy down to stress. Realising that she was with child could have finally driven her to the lawyers, to pin down an agreement for continual support. But there was no mention of pregnancy enhancing her vulnerability in the April affidavit.</p>
<p>The baby is coming. The father is not. What do you do? Do you to try to reconcile again for the baby’s sake? Or is it too late?</p>
<p>Too late.</p>
<p>*</p>
<p>Each word Bertha wrote feels like a clue: “I think considering what Dr Brennand told you and after all your promises, it is most cruel that I should suffer all that agony again. If it were not for the sake of Jim and Bertha, I should not go through with it.”</p>
<p>Did she mean that she would not go through with having the baby? Abortion was an open but illegal secret, especially in the bohemian world that Henry and Bertha inhabited. In a leather-bound report, Royal Commission on the Decline of the Birth-Rate and the Mortality of Infants in New South Wales, published in 1904, a witness told the commission he had treated 150 women suffering from “the effects of abortion” at his hospital. Hannah Thornburn had died only the previous year, three days after she had collapsed from a feverish infection.</p>
<p>Despite his prominent Macquarie Street practice, Bertha’s doctor, Henry Wolverine Brennand, was not one of the doctors, midwives, pharmacists, undertakers or religious witnesses who gave evidence to the royal commission that investigated the prevalence of abortion and contraceptive practices among women in New South Wales. These women and their midwives were, predictably, being blamed for the declining birth rate despite many being in Bertha’s position, where they were reluctantly increasing it.</p>
<p>Bertha wrote to Henry of her pregnancy: “it is not a very cheerful prospect to look forward to, knowing as you know well, I will very likely die.” She sounds like she is being dramatic again, but pregnancy complications were dramatic in 1903.</p>
<p>Bertha may have given birth with a midwife at home, or at Crown Street Women’s Hospital. Or she may have been helped by the Benevolent Society of New South Wales, which took in not only children but also destitute and single mothers at their “lying in” wards. On today’s flickering microfilm, those emotional lives are again compressed into crisp factlets, such as: “Single. Pregnant. Alleged father. Emergency. Married. Deserted.’”</p>
<p>The only thing certain is that Bertha and Henry’s last baby was stillborn sometime in late 1903. A nurse would have certified the stillbirth, and no other notification was required. This lack of birth or death registration was raised at the Royal Commission on the Decline of the Birth-Rate and the Mortality of Infants in New South Wales, because of its potential to conceal infanticide and midwifery negligence.</p>
<p>Bertha confirmed: “the little one that we lost was born and the sad time came of our parting. For sorrow had come to us, and difficulties.”</p>
<p>The sorrow.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>A Wife’s Heart: The Untold Story of Bertha and Henry Lawson by Kerrie Davies is published by UQP. It will be launched in Sydney by Jane Caro at <a href="http://berkelouw.com.au/stores">Berkelouw Books</a>, Paddington, on Wednesday, April 5. Kerrie will also be appearing at the <a href="http://folkfestival.org.au/">National Folk Festival</a> on Friday, April 14.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerrie Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bertha Lawson alleged that her husband, celebrated poet Henry Lawson, was habitually cruel and drunk.Kerrie Davies, Lecturer, School of the Arts & Media, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/359552015-01-13T19:29:32Z2015-01-13T19:29:32ZAustralian bush ballads keep galloping on<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68642/original/image-20150112-23782-pne690.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bush balladeers celebrate the district, its identities and their adventures.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/setaysha/5342061162/in/photolist-994sEN-395bV9-h1Mzm5-5Dc8eh-CYBr9-3zPT9p-ctRktL-b5WGkH-CYBa6-4qPzcv-h6sLx-paX7iN-3zPSPD-46uZse-2vVkpu-5vfQh4-ihTyXy-8JXojA-yPSir-8eVmCe-2tEs2S-bstbYx-61nYmB-a5KseU-eyDXD-a5GARg-89sEgA-64YZJB-cnfagb-9B9R8d-ctVcxs-btArdS-4CDnMV-5Fobms-4CHC8G-4CHDVh-6qgoob-5YKE49-finiaE-9imtFp-hZ7qHj-8eN3ni-jAL9P3-oMitYt-48VmBM-sfjNc-5oRMnU-6g63uv-6g62ki-6gadcw/">Oceana/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When Brian the farmer finished his poem the crowd went wild. </p>
<p>Small wonder he earned the People’s Choice Award on the night. We were at a so-called poetry “slam” at a country hall in a place so tiny it registers only as a “locality” rather than a town.</p>
<p>The poets came from among the audience: farmers and tree-changers, plus a couple of blow-ins like my partner (related to a local) and myself. A few read poems in free verse, but the majority – including Brian – read bush ballads that celebrated the district, its identities and their adventures. </p>
<p>That’s more or less what bush ballads have always done.</p>
<h2>The origins of bush balladry</h2>
<p>The term derives from Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5951938-bush-ballads-and-galloping-rhymes">Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes</a> (1870), which established a model in classic poems like From the Wreck and The Sick Stockrider. </p>
<p>From the 1880s, poets associated with the Sydney Bulletin developed the form as a means of telling national stories, most famously <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/35096.Henry_Lawson">Henry Lawson</a> and <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3081104.A_B_Paterson">A.B. “Banjo” Paterson</a> – although there were many others, including <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ogilvie-william-henry-will-7890">Will Ogilvie</a>, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/morant-harry-harbord-breaker-7649">“Breaker” Morant</a> and the melancholy <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/boake-barcroft-henry-3018">Barcroft Boake</a>, who hanged himself with his stockwhip.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68643/original/image-20150112-23804-6hp3yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68643/original/image-20150112-23804-6hp3yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68643/original/image-20150112-23804-6hp3yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68643/original/image-20150112-23804-6hp3yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=783&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68643/original/image-20150112-23804-6hp3yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68643/original/image-20150112-23804-6hp3yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68643/original/image-20150112-23804-6hp3yq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=984&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Banjo Patterson.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Banjo_Patterson.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Such balladry was by no means unique to Australia. Ballad poetry was widely popular in all English-speaking countries and among all classes, many of whom learnt it at school or for elocutionary training.</p>
<p>The fashion for literary ballads came in the wake of Romanticism’s love affair with all things natural and down-to-earth, including folk poetry and proletarian song. From the creative anachronism of Coleridge’s <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/732562.The_Rime_of_the_Ancient_Mariner">Rime of the Ancient Mariner</a> (1798) to the music hall rhythms of <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6989.Rudyard_Kipling">Kipling</a> and <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dennis-clarence-michael-james-5957">C.J. Dennis</a>, 19th- and early-20th-century poets adapted the ballad form to a multitude of purposes.</p>
<h2>Ballads at The Bulletin</h2>
<p>Bush ballads may look folky, and certainly they’ve been sung over the years by folkies, but they’re a modern, literate poetic form, and not the organic creations of a pre-industrial peasantry – although many country people have written and continue to write them.</p>
<p>Their popularity was a function of rapid advances in newspaper production and distribution. Most of The Bulletin’s bush bards were city-based writers and, in the years leading up to Federation, their version of rural life consecrated the bush as an ideological marker of Australian difference. If they celebrated the male bush worker as the national type, such as Paterson’s pastoral vision in <a href="http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/paterson-a-b-banjo/clancy-of-the-overflow-0001006">Clancy of the Overflow</a>, Lawson struck darker notes in <a href="http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/lawson-henry/the-ballad-of-the-drover-0002020">The Ballad of the Drover</a> and <a href="http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/lawson-henry/past-carin-0002014">Past Carin’</a>, the latter depicting a woman’s despair.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68645/original/image-20150112-23801-j6ifxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/68645/original/image-20150112-23801-j6ifxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68645/original/image-20150112-23801-j6ifxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68645/original/image-20150112-23801-j6ifxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68645/original/image-20150112-23801-j6ifxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68645/original/image-20150112-23801-j6ifxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/68645/original/image-20150112-23801-j6ifxh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=981&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Henry Lawson by John Longstaff.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AJohn_Longstaff_-_Henry_Lawson%2C_1900.jpg">John Longstaff/Wikimedia</a></span>
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<p>Political scientist Benedict Anderson has argued that newspapers and literary texts can offer a nation the textual basis for an “<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/399136.Imagined_Communities">imagined community</a>”. </p>
<p>But Australia wasn’t the only country where balladry about heroic frontiersmen helped construct national identity. New Zealand had its balladeers, one of whom, <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wright-david-mckee-9200">David McKee Wright</a>, went on to become literary editor of The Bulletin. </p>
<p>Canada’s version of Banjo Paterson was <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/65528.Robert_W_Service">Robert Service</a>, best-remembered for The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1907), a melodramatic favourite of parlour reciters.</p>
<p>The USA has a tradition of frontier balladry that bears comparison with our own. The Californian Gold Rush poet <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/10889.Bret_Harte">Bret Harte</a> was a major influence on Lawson, and it’s worth noting that the <a href="http://www.cowboypoetry.com/sincenews.htm#sp">Bar-D Ranch</a> cowboy poetry website includes a number of Australian bush ballads as “classics” of the American genre. </p>
<p>Indeed, it’s just possible that The Man from Snowy River was <a href="http://meanjin.com.au/articles/post/hellbound-for-snowy-river/">inspired by</a> a Wild West entertainer, Texas Jack Jr, who premiered in Sydney a little over a month before Paterson’s poem appeared in The Bulletin on April 26 1890.</p>
<p>The ranks of bush balladists rapidly thinned after the first world war as Australia’s self-image shifted, although genuine bushies like Edward Harrington and Harold “Duke” Tritton took the form to the middle of the 20th century. More literary poets such as Mary Gilmore, John Shaw Neilson, Douglas Stewart, David Campbell and, especially, John Manifold adapted ballads to their own uses; others, such as <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/slessor-kenneth-adolf-11712">Kenneth Slessor</a>, detested them for their narrowly parochial appeal. </p>
<h2>Bush ballads in the modern era</h2>
<p>These days almost no professional poets write ballads. </p>
<p>Les Murray, who sometimes does, <a href="http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/murray-les/sydney-and-the-bush-0560078">reckons</a> “When Sydney and the Bush meet now/there is no common ground”.</p>
<p>Even so, most bookshops, if they have a poetry section at all, will at least stock selections of Lawson and Paterson. Until <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090555/">Crocodile Dundee</a> trumped it four years later, the film of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084296/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The Man from Snowy River</a> (1982) was the highest-grossing Australian movie of all time. The Man has since appeared at the 2000 Olympics and at a travelling “Arena Spectacular”. </p>
<p>Still, it’s fair to say that the ballad tradition – or bush poetry, as the Australian Bush Poets Association (ABPA) prefers – has mostly retreated to the bush. There, bush ballads have been quietly folded into the country music scene, where they’ve become as much a performance art as a literary one. If you think it’s just a hokey pastime for ageing rustics and self-styled “characters”, you might be surprised by the ABPA <a href="http://www.abpa.org.au/">website</a>, which claims “an amazing resurgence of Performance Bush Poetry”.</p>
<p>Which brings me back to that poetry slam in the bush – in which a small, increasingly diverse local community let its hair down and re-imagined itself through words. After the locals had shared their poems with each other, it ended in good country style with a bring-a-plate supper. It was such a hoot I feel like writing a ballad in celebration.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35955/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Kirkpatrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Brian the farmer finished his poem the crowd went wild. Small wonder he earned the People’s Choice Award on the night. We were at a so-called poetry “slam” at a country hall in a place so tiny it…Peter Kirkpatrick, Senior Lecturer in Australian Literature, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.