While The Billy BoilsSearchStart here
Hard country, human lives
Compassion, hardship and social conscience
Bush poetry never dealt only in romance. These poems look directly at distance, drought, dangerous work, separation and lives lived close to the margin. Lawson, Boake and their fellow writers found drama in droving, mining, city poverty and the long wait for rain. Read together, they show both the demands of the country and the resilience—sometimes brave, sometimes weary—of the people within it.
A curated reading path
Nine poems to explore
Begin anywhere. Each selection opens a different view of this part of the bush-poetry tradition.
For weather, distance and loss
The Ballad of the Drover
Henry Lawson1889 · Road, weather & loss→For the sharp edge of city life
Faces in the Street
Henry Lawson1888 · City & hardship→For separation and endurance
Andy's Gone with Cattle
Henry Lawson1888 · Absence & hope→For lonely and necessary work
The Boundary Rider
Thomas William Heney1918 · Work, hardship & endurance→For labour remembered with tenderness
The Old Whim Horse
Edward Dyson1896 · War & public life→For the energy of work and trade
Wool, Ho!
E. J. Brady1899 · Work, sea & wool→For hardship beyond the settled country
From the Far West
Barcroft Boake1897 · War & public life→For lives measured against the weather
In Time of Drought
Mary Hannay Foott1885 · Landscape & nation→For the human cost of losing everything