Some Other Bastard From The Bush?
The Age
Sunday September 4, 1994
from John Cotter.
``Beggin' yer pardon" with academia silent, but may Henry Lawson indeed ``have been part of the torching group" of the Darling River paddle steamer Rodney in 1894? (The Age, 22/8 by Sue Neales). Can her sources enlighten us? An opinion is he was here in 1892, same year the nuns started the convent. It's rumored he helped paint it.
The next year, 1893, was a big writing time for him in Sydney and he trod New Zealand for about six months later that year. He then continued writing for and editing the Australian Workers' Union's Worker, where his writing was prolific and, presumably, time- consuming.
In late 1894 - the Rodney's fire was 26 August - his Short Stories in Prose and Verse was printed. A very busy year in which to torch a ``scab steamboat" in the outback ``across eleven million acres of uninhabited mallee". (Not his words.) The common references: Ernestine Hill's Water Into Gold, Ian Mudie's Riverboats, locally The Mildura Cultivator (1-31/8/1894), and even the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature do not place him in the district at the time or allude to Lawson the neo-arsonist.
Given the pace of the times, could he have come again? Others have written of ``speeding steamboats" but Lawson, God bless him, wrote ``... after the first three months the passengers generally go ashore and walk".
Can Sue Neales's sources inform us more or is this a coming again of the folksy old ``Saint Henry" syndrome outlined by poet James McAuley's Quadrant over 30 years ago? I hope I'm wrong and as a sign of good faith ``... the rusty ribs of the Rodney now lay exposed on the Darling's murky, low waterline" (Sunraysia Daily, 23/8/1994). Better hurry, though, because the nuns are still praying for rain and this time ``Saint Henry", who knows all about ``Queenslan' rains" on ``the state of the river", might intercede.
``Beggin' yer pardon", must water them geraniums.
John Cotter, Wentworth, NSW.
© 1994 The Age
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