Australian Legends: Representations of the Bush, 1813–1913∗

I would like to thank the ARC for research funds, and Tessa Milne and Tom Sear for research assistance. I am grateful also to Stephen Garton, Grace Karskens, Marian Quartly, two anonymous Australian Historical Studies readers, and members of the research seminars in the history departments at the Universities of Newcastle, New South Wales and Sydney, for their constructive criticisms of earlier versions of this paper.

Abstract

This paper explores the representation of Aborigines, squatters, swagmen, shepherds, shearers, selectors and rural women, constructed in travellers’ accounts, literature, melodrama and the press in nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century Australia. It argues that it was not only the members of the ‘nomad tribe’ who were valorised for their heroic achievements, their quintessentially Australian characteristics. Squatters, selectors and frontier women were all promoted as bush heroes. Finally, it suggests that metamorphosing images of the bush and its peoples were promoted by social and economic changes such as the introduction of modern machinery and technology transformed the nature of rural society, and its relationship to the city.

Notes

I would like to thank the ARC for research funds, and Tessa Milne and Tom Sear for research assistance. I am grateful also to Stephen Garton, Grace Karskens, Marian Quartly, two anonymous Australian Historical Studies readers, and members of the research seminars in the history departments at the Universities of Newcastle, New South Wales and Sydney, for their constructive criticisms of earlier versions of this paper.