Poem Summary
Up the Country- Henry Lawson
“I am back from up the country, very sorry that I went, seeking for the southern poets land
whereon to pitch my tent” Henry Lawson says he visited he bush and that he had a terrible
experience, some of the things he disliked were, the heat and the dust, he said that the women
worked like men, he argued that the land was dry and the animals were dangerous or dying and
that the flys were like a disease and that people get lost in the bush. “Desolation where the crow
is! Desert where the eagle flies, Paddocks where the luny bullock starts and stares with reddened
eyes; where in clouds of dust enveloped, roasted bullock-drivers creep, slowly past the sun-dried
shepherd dragged behind his crawling sheep.” He ended the Poem by saying he wouldn’t go
back to the bush unless it became civilised.
In Defence of the Bush- Banjo Patterson
In this poem Banjo Patterson defends his view on the bush against Lawson’s view, Patterson is
very fond of the bush where as Lawson hates it. In the poem, Patterson discusses the points that
Lawson made, Patterson writes, “So you're back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you
went, and you’re cursing all the business in a bitter discontent” this is his opening line in the
poem, this line says that Lawson was talking in a bitter manner about everything that he saw
whilst he was in the country. Patterson talks about how if Lawson stayed a few months longer and
waited out the drought he would have seen more beauty in the bush. Patterson also hints that he
thinks Lawson didn’t try to find the beauty in the bush “But you found the bush was dismal and a
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