Henry Lawson on the Australian "Bush"
Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2012 9:29 am
Henry Lawson on the Australian "Bush"
SOME POPULAR AUSTRALIAN MISTAKES {published in The Bulletin, 1893}
1. An Australian mirage does not look like water; it looks too dry and dusty.
2. A plain is not neessarily a wide, open space covered with waving grass or green sward, like a prairie (the prairie isn't necessarily that way either, but that's an American mistake, not an Australian one); it is either a desert or a stretch of level country covered withwretched scrub.
3. A river is not a broad, shining stream with green banks and tall, dense eucalypti walls; it is more often a string of muddy water-holes - "a chain of dry water-holes", someone said.
4. There are no "mountains" out West; only ridges on the floors of hell.
5. There are no forests; only mongrel scrubs.
6. Australian poetical writers invariably get the coastal scenery mixed up with that of "Out Back".
7. An Australian Western homestead is not an old-fashioned, gable-ended, brickand-shingle buildingwith avenues and parks; and the squatter doesn't live there, either. A Western station, at best, is a collection of slab and galvanised-iron sheds and humpies, and is the hottest, driest, dustiest, and most God-forsaken hole you could think of; the nanager lives there - when compelled to do so.
8. The manager is not called the "super"; he is called the "overseer" - which name fits him better.
9. Station-hands are not noble, romantic fellows; they are mostly crawlers to the boss - which they have to be. Shearers - the men of the West - despise station-hands.
10. Men tramping in search of a "shed" are not called "sundowners" or "swaggies"; they are "trav'lers".
11. A swag is not generally referred to as a "bluey" or "Matilda" - it is called a "swag".
12. No bushman thinks of "going on the wallaby" or "walking Matilda", or "padding the hoof"; he goes on the track - when forced to it.
13. You do not "hunp bluey" - you simply "carry your swag".
14. You do not stow grub - you "have some tucker, mate".
15. (Item for our Alstralian artists). A traveller rarely, if ever, carries a stick; it suggests a common suburban loafer, back-yards, clothes-lines, roosting fowls, watchdogs, blind men, sewer-pipes, and goats eating turnip-parings.
16. (For artists). No traveller out back carries a horse-collar swag - it's too hot; and the swag is not carried by a strap passed round the chest but round one shoulder. The nose (tucker) blg hangs over the other shoulder and balances the load nicely - when there's anythng in the bag.
17. It's not glorious and grand and free to be on the track. Try it.
18. A shearing-shed is not what city people picture it to be - if they imagine it at all; it is perhaps the most degrading hell on the face of this earth. Ask any better-class shearer.
19. An Australian lake is not a lake; it is either a sheet of brackish water or a patch of dry sand.
20. Least said about shanties the better.
{p. 25} 21. The poetical bushman does not exist; the majority of the men out back now are from the cities. The real native our-back bushman is narrow-minded, densely ignorant, invulnerarably thick-headed. How could he be otherwise?
22. The blackfellow is a fraud. A white man can learn to throw the boomerang as well as an aborigine - even better. A blackfellow is not to be depended on with regard to direction, distance, or weather. A blackfellow once offered to take us to better water than that at which we were camping. He said it was only half-a-mile. We rolled up our swags and followed him and his gin five miles through the scrub to a mud-hole with a dead bullock in it. Also, he said that it would rain that night; and it didn't rain there for six months. Moreover, he threw a boomerang at a rabbit and lamed one of his dogs - of which he had about 150.
23, etc. Half the bushmen are not called "Bill", nor the other half "Jim". We knew a shearer whose name was Reginald! Jim doesn't tell pathetic yarns in bad doggerel in a shearer's hut - if he did, the men would tap their foreheads and wink.
In conclusion. We wish to Heaven that Australian writers would leave off trying to make a paradise out of the Out Back Hell; if only out of consideration for the poor, hopeless, half-starved wretches who carry swags through it and look in vain for work - and ask in vain for tucker very often. What's the good of making a heaven of a hell when by describing it as it really is we might do some good for the lost souls there?
1893 Bulletin
SOME POPULAR AUSTRALIAN MISTAKES {published in The Bulletin, 1893}
1. An Australian mirage does not look like water; it looks too dry and dusty.
2. A plain is not neessarily a wide, open space covered with waving grass or green sward, like a prairie (the prairie isn't necessarily that way either, but that's an American mistake, not an Australian one); it is either a desert or a stretch of level country covered withwretched scrub.
3. A river is not a broad, shining stream with green banks and tall, dense eucalypti walls; it is more often a string of muddy water-holes - "a chain of dry water-holes", someone said.
4. There are no "mountains" out West; only ridges on the floors of hell.
5. There are no forests; only mongrel scrubs.
6. Australian poetical writers invariably get the coastal scenery mixed up with that of "Out Back".
7. An Australian Western homestead is not an old-fashioned, gable-ended, brickand-shingle buildingwith avenues and parks; and the squatter doesn't live there, either. A Western station, at best, is a collection of slab and galvanised-iron sheds and humpies, and is the hottest, driest, dustiest, and most God-forsaken hole you could think of; the nanager lives there - when compelled to do so.
8. The manager is not called the "super"; he is called the "overseer" - which name fits him better.
9. Station-hands are not noble, romantic fellows; they are mostly crawlers to the boss - which they have to be. Shearers - the men of the West - despise station-hands.
10. Men tramping in search of a "shed" are not called "sundowners" or "swaggies"; they are "trav'lers".
11. A swag is not generally referred to as a "bluey" or "Matilda" - it is called a "swag".
12. No bushman thinks of "going on the wallaby" or "walking Matilda", or "padding the hoof"; he goes on the track - when forced to it.
13. You do not "hunp bluey" - you simply "carry your swag".
14. You do not stow grub - you "have some tucker, mate".
15. (Item for our Alstralian artists). A traveller rarely, if ever, carries a stick; it suggests a common suburban loafer, back-yards, clothes-lines, roosting fowls, watchdogs, blind men, sewer-pipes, and goats eating turnip-parings.
16. (For artists). No traveller out back carries a horse-collar swag - it's too hot; and the swag is not carried by a strap passed round the chest but round one shoulder. The nose (tucker) blg hangs over the other shoulder and balances the load nicely - when there's anythng in the bag.
17. It's not glorious and grand and free to be on the track. Try it.
18. A shearing-shed is not what city people picture it to be - if they imagine it at all; it is perhaps the most degrading hell on the face of this earth. Ask any better-class shearer.
19. An Australian lake is not a lake; it is either a sheet of brackish water or a patch of dry sand.
20. Least said about shanties the better.
{p. 25} 21. The poetical bushman does not exist; the majority of the men out back now are from the cities. The real native our-back bushman is narrow-minded, densely ignorant, invulnerarably thick-headed. How could he be otherwise?
22. The blackfellow is a fraud. A white man can learn to throw the boomerang as well as an aborigine - even better. A blackfellow is not to be depended on with regard to direction, distance, or weather. A blackfellow once offered to take us to better water than that at which we were camping. He said it was only half-a-mile. We rolled up our swags and followed him and his gin five miles through the scrub to a mud-hole with a dead bullock in it. Also, he said that it would rain that night; and it didn't rain there for six months. Moreover, he threw a boomerang at a rabbit and lamed one of his dogs - of which he had about 150.
23, etc. Half the bushmen are not called "Bill", nor the other half "Jim". We knew a shearer whose name was Reginald! Jim doesn't tell pathetic yarns in bad doggerel in a shearer's hut - if he did, the men would tap their foreheads and wink.
In conclusion. We wish to Heaven that Australian writers would leave off trying to make a paradise out of the Out Back Hell; if only out of consideration for the poor, hopeless, half-starved wretches who carry swags through it and look in vain for work - and ask in vain for tucker very often. What's the good of making a heaven of a hell when by describing it as it really is we might do some good for the lost souls there?
1893 Bulletin
