For those of you who have not read Bruce Simpson's latest book, Where the Outback Drovers Ride I urge you get a copy and read what it contains. It really is compulsory reading for all Australians who want to know how the pioneering drovers of Australia operated. It is one of those books that once you start you do not want to put down.
While there have been many drovers who had first hand experience of what was involved in droving there is no one like Bruce Simpson who can capture so vividly in both prose and verse the lifestyle of these Australians. Bruce lived the life and his empathy with the life style is tangible. For most of us city dwellers this life of the drover is an aspect of our heritage that we would have no perception of if it were not for the writings of Bruce Simpson.
He shares the smell of dust that the cattle raise, the mournful sounds of bellowing when they lack water, the adrenalin rush the night-watch has when a rush occurs and the courage and skill that are required to quell the rush and settle the cattle We see the drover in the outback, we see the drover in the city. The characters and stories that Bruce shares with us are uniquely Australian.
His poems flow like casual conversations the writer might have with his reader. The metre and rhyme he uses are great examples to aspiring writers of consistent, accurate bush poetry where the reader is unconscious of the structure and focuses only on the action and emotion being expressed. It is no surprise that Bruce has won, on two occasions, the most prestigious and coverted Bush Poetry Award, namely The Bronze Swagman.
Born in 1923 and raised on a small sugar property west of Mackay Bruce Simpson would ride to and from school bareback and double-bank with his brother. Bruce had a basic education but the depression put paid to his mother's plans of secondary schooling at a boarding school. When he went for a job as a stockman on Alexandria it started a career that he would stay with for the rest of his working life. But no one tells his story like he does so get a copy of, Where the Outback Drovers Ride and learn as I did of the harsh, exciting and rewarding life of a packhorse drover.
Noel Stallard
President
Australian Bush Poetry Association Inc.
Bruce Simpson's poem Rocky Creek
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