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Overview
Across the shearing shed, the railway district and the open road, working voices speak in their own rhythms. Drovers, shearers, rouseabouts, stockmen and swagmen confront labour, drought, distance and poverty, while sailors and travellers carry memories of home through ports and waterways. Their songs, ballads and monologues turn Australian working life into verse shaped by practical endurance, social division and the uncertain pull between wandering and settlement. Colloquial diction and Australian slang give these poems an immediate spoken quality, strengthened by recurring refrains and forceful first-person voices. Humour sits beside grief, sentiment beside satire, as the collection contrasts privilege with lived experience and city assumptions with bush realities. Mateship and courage emerge not as abstract ideals but through the pressures faced by workers, migrants and people living at society's margins. From the Out Back to Sydney Harbour, the settings encompass stations, camps, ships and inland waterways without losing sight of the individuals who inhabit them. Narrative ballads, lyric poems, social commentary and war poetry explore homesickness, love, displacement, isolation and environmental hardship, preserving the language of occupations and ways of life rarely granted cultural authority. The collection's sympathy remains firmly with those whose knowledge comes from labour, travel and survival. This book was out of print for decades and is now republished by Alpha Editions. It has been restored for today's and future generations. This edition is not just a reprint - it's a collector's item and a cultural treasure.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9789377783587
- ISBN-10: 9377783585
- Publisher: Alpha Edition
- Publish Date: December 2026
- Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.16 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.23 pounds
- Page Count: 68
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