FullReads

Presently the two men drag themselves away from the fence, fill their pipes, and go to have a look at some rows of forked sticks, apparently stuck in the ground for some purpose. The selector calls these sticks fruit-trees, and he calls the place “the orchard.” They fool round these wretched sticks until dinnertime, when the neighbour says he must be getting home. “Stay and have some dinner! Man alive! Stay and have some dinner!” says the selector; and so the friend stays.

It is a broiling hot day in summer, and the dinner consists of hot roast meat, hot baked potatoes, hot cabbage, hot pumpkin, hot peas, and burning-hot plum-pudding. The family drinks on an average four cups of tea each per meal. The wife takes her place at the head of the table with a broom to keep the fowls out, and at short intervals she interrupts the conversation with such exclamations as “Shoo! shoo!” “Tommy, can’t you see that fowl? Drive it out!” The fowls evidently pass a lot of their time in the house. They mark the circle described by the broom, and take care to keep two or three inches beyond it. Every now and then you see a fowl on the dresser amongst the crockery, and there is great concern to get it out before it breaks something. While dinner is in progress two steers get into the wheat through a broken rail which has been spliced with stringy-bark, and a calf or two break into the vineyard. And yet this careless Australian selector, who is too shiftless to put up a decent fence, or build a decent house and who knows little or nothing about farming, would seem by his conversation to have read up all the great social and political questions of the day. Here are some fragments of conversation caught at the dinner-table. Present–the selector, the missus, the neighbour, Corney George–nicknamed “Henry George”–Tommy, Jacky, and the younger children. The spaces represent interruptions by the fowls and children:

Corney George (continuing conversation): “But Henry George says, in ‘Progress and Poverty,’ he says–“

Missus (to the fowls): “Shoo! Shoo!”

Corney: “He says–“

Tom: “Marther, jist speak to this Jack.”

Missus (to Jack): “If you can’t behave yourself, leave the table.”

Tom [Corney, probably]: “He says in Progress and–“

Missus: “Shoo!”

Neighbour: “I think ‘Lookin’ Backwards’ is more–“

Missus: “Shoo! Shoo! Tom, can’t you see that fowl?”

Selector: “Now I think ‘Caesar’s Column’ is more likely–Just look at–“

Missus: “Shoo! Shoo!”

Selector: “Just look at the French Revolution.”

Corney: “Now, Henry George-“

Tom: “Marther! I seen a old-man kangaroo up on–“

Missus: “Shut up! Eat your dinner an’ hold your tongue. Carn’t you see someone’s speakin’?”

Selector: “Just look at the French–“

Missus (to the fowls): “Shoo! Shoo!” (turning suddenly and unexpectedly on Jacky): “Take your fingers out of the sugar!–Blast yer! that I should say such a thing.”

Neighbour: “But ‘Lookin’ Backwards”‘

Missus: “There you go, Tom! Didn’t I say you’d spill that tea? Go away from the table!”

Selector: “I think ‘Caesar’s Column’ is the only natural–“

Missus: “Shoo! Shoo!” She loses patience, gets up and fetches a young rooster with the flat of the broom, sending him flying into the yard; he falls with his head towards the door and starts in again. Later on the conversation is about Deeming.

Selector: “There’s no doubt the man’s mad–“

Missus: “Deeming! That Windsor wretch! Why, if I was in the law I’d have him boiled alive! Don’t tell me he didn’t know what he was doing! Why, I’d have him–“

Corney: “But, missus, you–“

Missus (to the fowls): “Shoo! Shoo!”

[THE END]

Notes on Australianisms

Based on my own speech over the years, with some checking in the dictionaries. Not all of these are peculiar to Australian slang, but are important in Lawson’s stories, and carry overtones.

bagman: commercial traveller

Bananaland: Queensland

billabong. Based on an aboriginal word. Sometimes used for an anabranch (a bend in a river cut off by a new channel, but more often used for one that, in dry season or droughts especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main stream. It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely.