Larrikins, Bush Tales and Other Great Australian Stories

by Graham Seal

On another occasion, the same dry sense of humour was displayed by a one-time swaggie:

  Billy Seymour was another well-known swagman of the ‘Outback’ tracks, but he has since turned cane-farmer, and the bush roads know him no more. Travelling somewhere over Muttaburra way one time Billy called at a roadside humpy, and appealed to the woman who presented herself at the door, to fill his ration bags. The woman was sympathetic but said that she had very little food in the house. Her husband had been away droving for three months, and she had received no money from him during his absence. If he didn’t write soon she couldn’t imagine what she was going to do.

  Billy pulled his old battered tobacco-box from his pocket and opening it, drew from its interior a crinkled and worn one-pound note. ‘Here, Missus’ he said, ‘take this; I was saving it until I got to town, but spare me days I reckon you need it more than I do.’

  In this nugget from the 1930s, the swaggie is called a ‘tramp’ but his sense of humour and irreverence towards the archdeacon and his four white ponies is pure bush.

  Archdeacon Stretch, of Victoria, had been transferred to a big parish in New South Wales, where a kindly-disposed squatter, evidently somewhat partial to archdeacons, presented him with four handsome creamy ponies and a fine Abbott buggy. One day this Archdeacon was spinning along behind his creamies at a merry pace when he espied a tramp at the roadside whom he at once took aboard. Whether actuated by a purely generous impulse, or a wish to obtain the services of a gate-opener along the pastoral route, this article is little concerned. After a while, the tramp said: ‘My word, that is a fine team of creamies, sir; when’s the rest of the circus coming along?’

  Sniffling Jimmy

  Another colourful swagman ended up in the first AIF, where the skills of living off the land and often on one’s wits stood them in good stead.

  Nomads of the long and dusty track!! Yes, I’ve met them and studied their habits and characteristics, and many of them have been strange folk indeed. Most of them belonged to the past generation of ‘matilda-waltsers’ [sic] who have since disappeared from the roads, and their place has been taken by others who will never possess the rare humor or suffer the hardships of the men I am now going to tell about. Throw a log on the fire, draw closer to the cheering blaze and listen:

  Just before I left North Queensland in 1914 to enlist in the A.I.F. I met a well-known track character who was better known as ‘Sniffling Jimmy’. He was a short nuggety-built fellow with a freckled face and a mop of fiery red hair that would have turned a Papuan green with envy. i.e., if the natives of our vast Northern island have a liking for red hair. He was about 35 years of age and said that in his time he had walked through nearly every city and township between Melbourne and Townsville. He rarely did any work, and with a merry twinkle in his eye he said that when a boy his mother was much concerned about his constitution, so he promised her that he would never do a day’s work if he could help it.

  Jimmy was one of the very few teetotal swagmen I have met, and when he refused my offer to come in and have ‘one’ he said that he never touched anything stronger than water in his life. However, his specialty was soliciting free rations at some wayside squatters’ homestead or farmer’s home. Rarely has a swagman ever uttered such a pathetic oration. If his appeal to have his bag filled met with an abrupt refusal he would rattle off something like the following: ‘Oh, have a heart, lady. If it wasn’t for me weak constitution I wouldn’t be compelled to beg for food. You see, I was reared in poverty and besides me mother and an invalid father, there were 13 other children in our family. There wasn’t enough money coming into the house to provide sufficient nourishment for all of us, and as a result I did not get much to eat.’

  ‘But you appear healthy enough,’ said a Proserpine woman one day.

  ‘Ah yes, lady,’ replied Jimmy, ‘but you know that outside appearances are often deceptive; me constitution is injured in me interior.’

  One day in 1915 I was carrying a bag of bombs from Monash Gully to Courtney’s Post at Anzac, and about half way I came upon four men digging an eight-foot trench, through shaly ground, under snipers’ fire. I instantly recognised one of the men as ‘Sniffling Jimmy’.

  ‘Hullo! You are working at last,’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he replied, ‘army rations agree with me constitution.’

  Just then a sniper’s bullet lifted the dirt a few inches away from where he was working and he began to dig the pick frantically into the ground. I passed on and did not meet him again, but I hope he returned to Australia without loss of health or limb.

  The poetic swaggie

  Others less literary and more unknown also caught the swaggie’s lifestyle and ethos from another angle:

  Kind friends, pray give attention

  To this, my little song.

  Some rum things I will mention,

  And I’ll not detain you long.

  I’m a swagman on the wallaby,

  Oh! don’t you pity me.

  At first I started shearing,

  And I bought a pair of shears.

  On my first sheep appearing,

  Why, I cut off both its ears.

  Then I nearly skinned the brute,

  As clean as clean could be.

  So I was kicked out of the shed,

  Oh! don’t you pity me, &c.

  I started station loafing,

  Short stages and took my ease;

  So all day long till sundown

  I’d camp beneath the trees.

  Then I’d walk up to the station,

  The manager to see.

  ‘Boss, I’m hard up and I want a job,

  Oh! don’t you pity me,’ &c.

  Says the overseer: ‘Go to the hut.

  In the morning I’ll tell you

  If I’ve any work about

  I can find for you to do.’

  But at breakfast I cuts off enough

  For dinner, don’t you see.

  And then my name is Walker.

  Oh! don’t you pity me, &c.

  And now, my friends, I’ll say good-bye,

  For I must go and camp.

  For if the Sergeant sees me

  He may take me for a tramp;

  But if there’s any covey here

  What’s got a cheque, d’ye see,

  I’ll stop and help him smash it.

  Oh! don’t you pity me.

  I’m a swagman on the wallaby,

  Oh! don’t you pity me.

  Shopkeepers would often provide passing swaggies with the means to take them through to the next stage of their journey. Henry Lawson noted this during his trek to Hungerford in 1892:

  We saw one of the storekeepers give a dead-beat swagman five shillings’ worth of rations to take him on into Queensland. The storekeepers often do this, and put it down on the loss side of their books. I hope the recording angel listens, and puts it down on the right side of his book.

  This was not because Hungerford was a prosperous place: ‘Hungerford consists of two houses and a humpy in New South Wales, and five houses in Queensland. Characteristically enough, both the pubs are in Queensland.’ It was one of the unspoken obligations of bush life in which it was customary to provide assistance to travellers down on their luck. One day you might be one too.

  Swagmen were not necessarily poorly educated, and in some cases not even poor. There are many examples of swagmen who knew the classics, literature, art and philosophy, as well as some who were professors. Sometimes these were men who had fallen on hard times, frequently due to the grog, perhaps gambling or other problems. Some had the means to live a settled life but chose to carry their drums along the tracks of Australia. A well-known case is that of Joseph Jenkins (1818–98). After an early life as a successful farmer in Wales, Jenkins apparently suffered a breakdown of some sort aggravated by drinking and took passage to the colony of Victoria. Here he took to the road, taking whatever work he could get and writing award-winning poetry and campaigning in local newspa
pers to better the lot of bush workers. He kept a journal of his wanderings, later published as Diary of a Welsh Swagman (1975), in which he wrote about politics, social conditions and Aboriginal people, among many other topics.

  Many men spent parts of their lives as swaggies, sometimes as a necessity, sometimes as a way of seeking their fortunes as in the classic fairy tales about ne’er-do-wells eventually doing well. Well-known examples include the bush entrepreneur R.M. Williams and the novelist Donald Stuart. Even aristocrats were known to shoulder their swags from time to time.

  ‘There you have the Australian swag’

  So, what was a swag? Obligingly, Henry Lawson has left us a detailed description of the typical swag of the late nineteenth century. He also gives an insight into the actual carrying of the swag.

  The swag is usually composed of a tent ‘fly’ or strip of calico (a cover for the swag and a shelter in bad weather—in New Zealand it is oilcloth or waterproof twill), a couple of blankets, blue by custom and preference, as that colour shows the dirt less than any other (hence the name ‘bluey’ for swag), and the core is composed of spare clothing and small personal effects.

  To make or ‘roll up’ your swag: lay the fly or strip of calico on the ground, blueys on top of it; across one end, with eighteen inches or so to spare, lay your spare trousers and shirt, folded, light boots tied together by the laces toe to heel, books, bundle of old letters, portraits, or whatever little knick-knacks you have or care to carry, bag of needles, thread, pen and ink, spare patches for your pants, and bootlaces. Lay or arrange the pile so that it will roll evenly with the swag (some pack the lot in an old pillowslip or canvas bag), take a fold over of blanket and calico the whole length on each side, so as to reduce the width of the swag to, say, three feet, throw the spare end, with an inward fold, over the little pile of belongings, and then roll the whole to the other end, using your knees and judgment to make the swag tight, compact and artistic; when within eighteen inches of the loose end take an inward fold in that, and bring it up against the body of the swag.

  There is a strong suggestion of a roley-poley in a rag about the business, only the ends of the swag are folded in, in rings, and not tied. Fasten the swag with three or four straps, according to judgment and the supply of straps. To the top strap, for the swag is carried (and eased down in shanty bars and against walls or veranda-posts when not on the track) in a more or less vertical position—to the top strap, and lowest, or lowest but one, fasten the ends of the shoulder strap (usually a towel is preferred as being softer to the shoulder), your coat being carried outside the swag at the back, under the straps. To the top strap fasten the string of the nose-bag, a calico bag about the size of a pillowslip, containing the tea, sugar and flour bags, bread, meat, baking-powder and salt, and brought, when the swag is carried from the left shoulder, over the right on to the chest, and so balancing the swag behind. But a swagman can throw a heavy swag in a nearly vertical position against his spine, slung from one shoulder only and without any balance, and carry it as easily as you might wear your overcoat.

  Some bushmen arrange their belongings so neatly and conveniently, with swag straps in a sort of harness, that they can roll up the swag in about a minute, and unbuckle it and throw it out as easily as a roll of wall-paper, and there’s the bed ready on the ground with the wardrobe for a pillow. The swag is always used for a seat on the track; it is a soft seat, so trousers last a long time. And, the dust being mostly soft and silky on the long tracks out back, boots last marvellously.

  Fifteen miles a day is the average with the swag, but you must travel according to the water: if the next bore or tank is five miles on, and the next twenty beyond, you camp at the five-mile water to-night and do the twenty next day. But if it’s thirty miles you have to do it. Travelling with the swag in Australia is variously and picturesquely described as ‘humping bluey,’ ‘walking Matilda,’ ‘humping Matilda,’ ‘humping your drum,’ ‘being on the wallaby,’ ‘jabbing trotters,’ and ‘tea and sugar burglaring,’ but most travelling shearers now call themselves trav’lers, and say simply ‘on the track,’ or ‘carrying swag.’

  Swags are still carried today, though they have been updated and redesigned for modern comfort and convenience. An exception is the swag of Cameron the Swaggie; Cameron lives the life of the traditional swagman, humping his blanket and billy from town to town and reciting bush poetry from his extensive repertoire to anyone who will listen. Billed by the occasional press article as ‘the last swaggie’, Cameron is but one of quite a few who still follow the Wallaby Track.

  A swagman’s death

  One of the tensions between the swagman population and the people they worked for involved authority. The ‘bloke’ or ‘cove’ was the boss of the woolshed or station where those swaggies who were in work laboured for their wages. When times were good, which was often, relations were reasonably agreeable. But in hard times conflict was bound to arise. In the early 1890s much of the eastern Australian workforce was gripped by strikes and lockouts as depression strangled the economy. In the pastoral industries there was serious violence brought on by the graziers’ refusal to pay the rate the shearers demanded due to the rapid fall in the market price of wool.

  It was during this period that rural workers, most of whom were swagmen by necessity, established the labour movement in the form of organised trade unionism and the origins of the Australian Labor Party. Eventually, in early 1891, there was a serious possibility of insurrection as armed shearers gathered at Barcaldine and elsewhere in Queensland. There were riots, destruction of property including telegraph wires, and arson attacks. Armed troops were deployed and in May, thousands of striking shearers raised the Southern Cross flag and assembled beneath the famed ghost gum known as ‘The Tree of Knowledge’ at Barcaldine, giving birth to the Australian Labor Party. Significant as these events were, they are the subject of extensive romanticisation. The strike was called off in June in favour of direct political action through the ballot box, although fourteen shearers had been found guilty of conspiracy and imprisoned. The pastoralists had employed ‘scab’ labour from New South Wales but as tensions eased began to hire back the rebel shearers.

  But all was not yet calm. In 1894, there were more strikes over an attempt to reduce wages. One of the most violent confrontations in this period had an influence on the creation of the best-known swaggie of all, the ‘jolly swagman’ of the famous song. On the night of 2 September 1894, a group of armed shearers attacked Dagworth Station, northwest of Winton on the Upper Diamantina River. The police magistrate at Winton wired the Colonial Secretary.

  Dagworth woolshed was burned down by sixteen armed men. The wire stated that at about half-past twelve on Sunday morning the constable and a station hand named Tomlin were on duty/guarding the shed. The first intimation they had of any attack was the firing of about a dozen shots through the shed. This woke the Messrs. Macpherson, and the others. The firing was continued, both sides engaging in it, for about twenty minutes. While this was going on, one of the unionists was seen to sneak up under cover of the fire of his comrades and set fire to the shed. The constables and the station hands kept firing at the party, and when this ceased it was not known whether anyone was wounded. About forty shots were exchanged. Three bullets were fired through the cottage where the Macphersons were sleeping. The unionists had taken up position in the bed of the creek, at the rear of the shed, where they were almost wholly protected from the fire of the defending party. Rain fell shortly after the men left. There is hardly any doubt but that this is the same gang that has been burning all the sheds.

  A number of bullet-wounded unionists were later arrested in the shearers’ strike camp and:

  … a man named Haffmeister [sic], a prominent unionist, was found dead about two miles from Kynuna. The local impression is that he was one of the attacking mob at Dagworth, and was wounded there. There were seven unionists with Hoffmeister when he died, and these assert that he committed suicide. In consequence
of the seriousness of this last event the Government are taking active steps to deal with persons who are found to be armed.

  The story of swaggie ‘Frenchy’ Hoffmeister’s death was the inspiration for Paterson to pen the verses that became ‘Waltzing Matilda’. He was visiting the area the following year when the events were still on everyone’s minds and tongues. Apparently hoping to impress Christina Macpherson, sister of the station manager, he wrote the poem for a tune she played on her autoharp. The rest is history, if of a kind complicated by folklore.

  Where the angel tarboys fly

  In 1908, a swaggie calling himself ‘Vagrant’ gave a blow-by-blow account of the great tallies of some legendary blade men. He managed to include a little verse, a yarn or two and a wonderful story made up of many stories about the competitive and boastful life of the shearer.

  The shearing figures quoted in the ‘Western Champion’ of the 12th of September as to shearing tallies, are not quite correct. Andy Brown did not shear at Evesham in 1886. In 1887 Jimmy Fisher shore fifty lambs in one run before breakfast there. I do not know the time; but they used to ring the bell mighty early those days. I have seen spectral-like forms creeping across the silent space between the galley and the shed long before the kookaburra woke the bush with his laughing song, and he is a pretty early bird.

  The same year Black Tom Johnson got bushed in the gloom of that space, and lost half a run before breakfast. Fisher shore 288 at Kynuna the following year: he was a wonderful man for his 8 stone of humanity. The same year Alf Bligh shore 254 at Isis Downs; he and Charlie Byers were the first two men to cut 200 sheep on the Barcoo. The same year Bill Hamilton, now M.L.A., shore 200 sheep at Manfred Downs, and to him belongs the credit of shearing the first 200 on the Flinders.

  The next year Bill died at Cambridge Gulf; but as he is alive and all right now, the account was exaggerated. Bill says: ‘That 200 at Manfred Downs was no “cake walk”.’ He used twelve gallons of water cooling down. Alick Miller shore 4163 sheep in three weeks and three days at Charlotte Plains, in 1885, and Sid (‘Combo’) Ross shore nine lambs in nine minutes at Belalie, on the Warrego, the year before.