Swagman
Encyclopedia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
term describing an underclass of transient temporary workers, who travelled by foot from farm to farm carrying the traditional swag (bedroll). Also characteristic of swagman attire was a hat strung with corks
Cork hat
A cork hat is a type of headgear with cork strung from the brim, to ward off insects.Traditionally worn by jackaroos and swagmen in the blow-fly infested Australian outback, the cork hat has become part of the stereotypical representation of the Australian ocker. The shape and material of cork hats...
to ward off flies.
Particularly during the Depression of the 1890s and the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
of the 1930s, unemployed men travelled the rural areas of Australia on foot, their few meagre possessions rolled up and carried in their swag. Typically, they would seek work in farms and towns they travelled through, and in many cases the farmers, if no permanent work was available, would provide food and shelter in return for some menial task.
Another form of the swagman was the "pack horse bagman" who rode a horse and led one or two pack horses in his travels, typically in the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
. The pack horse bagman called in at stations
Station (Australian agriculture)
Station is the term for a large Australian landholding used for livestock production. It corresponds to the North American term ranch or South American estancia...
where he would work shoeing horses, mustering, repairing bores, etc.
Etymology
In the early 1800s, the term swag was used by British thieves to describe any amount of stolen goods. One definition given in Francis GroseFrancis Grose
Francis Grose was an English antiquary, draughtsman, and lexicographer. He was born at his father's house in Broad Street, St-Peter-le-Poer, London, son of a Swiss immigrant and jeweller, Francis Jacob Grose , and his wife, Anne , daughter of Thomas Bennett of Greenford in Middlesex...
's 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is "any booty you have lately obtained,.... To carry the swag is to be the bearer of the stolen goods to a place of safety." James Hardy Vaux
James Hardy Vaux
James Hardy Vaux was an English-born convict transported to Australia on three separate occasions. He was the author of Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux including A Vocabulary of the Flash Language, first published in 1819, which is regarded as both the first full length autobiography and first...
, a convict in Australia, used the term for similar purposes in his memoirs written in 1812 and published in 1819. By the 1830s, the term in Australia had transferred from meaning goods acquired by a thief to the possessions and daily necessaries carried by a bushman. The compound swagman and colloquial variation swaggie first appeared in the 1850s during the Australian gold rushes, alongside less common terms such as bundleman. New Zealanders adopted the term in the 1880s, where swagmen were also known as swaggers. Swagger also originated in Australia, but became obsolete there by the 1890s.
History
Sheep shearing
Sheep shearing, shearing or clipping is the process by which the woollen fleece of a sheep is cut off. The person who removes the sheep's wool is called a shearer. Typically each adult sheep is shorn once each year...
who carried their swags from farm to farm (called properties or "station
Station (Australian agriculture)
Station is the term for a large Australian landholding used for livestock production. It corresponds to the North American term ranch or South American estancia...
s" in Australia), but would not in general have taken kindly to being called "swagmen". Outside of the shearing season their existence was frugal, and this possibly explains the tradition (of past years) of sheep station
Sheep station
A sheep station is a large property in Australia or New Zealand whose main activity is the raising of sheep for their wool and meat. In Australia, sheep stations are usually in the south-east or south-west of the country. In New Zealand the Merinos are usually in the high country of the South...
s in particular providing enough food to last until the next station even when no work was available. Some were especially noted for their hospitality, such as Canowie Station in South Australia which around 1903 provided over 2,000 sundowners each year with their customary two meals and a bed.
A romanticised figure, the swagman is famously referred to in the song "Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
", by Banjo Paterson
Banjo Paterson
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...
, which tells of a swagman who turns to stealing a sheep from the local squatter.
The economic depressions of the 1860s and 1890s saw an increase in these itinerant workers. During these periods it was seen as 'mobilising the workforce'. At one point it was rumoured that a "Matilda Waltzers' Union" had been formed to give representation to swagmen at the Federation of Australia
Federation of Australia
The Federation of Australia was the process by which the six separate British self-governing colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia formed one nation...
in 1901.
During the early years of the 1900s, the introduction of the pension and the dole reduced the numbers of swagmen to those who preferred the free lifestyle. During World War One
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
many were called up for duty and fought at Gallipoli
Battle of Gallipoli
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign or the Battle of Gallipoli, took place at the peninsula of Gallipoli in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916, during the First World War...
as ANZACs
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps was a First World War army corps of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force that was formed in Egypt in 1915 and operated during the Battle of Gallipoli. General William Birdwood commanded the corps, which comprised troops from the First Australian Imperial...
. The song "And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda
"And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda" is a song written by Scottish-born Australian singer-songwriter Eric Bogle in 1971. The song describes war as futile and gruesome, while criticising those who seek to glorify it...
" tells the story of a swagman who fought at Gallipoli.
The numbers of swagmen have declined over the 20th century, but still rising in times of economic depression. Swagmen remain a romantic icon of Australian history and folklore.
Swags are still heavily used, particularly in Australia, by overlanders. There are still a large number of manufacturers actively making both standard and custom-design swags.
Lifestyle
Swagmen were often victims of circumstance who had found themselves homeless. Others were rovers by choice, or else they were on the run from police (bushrangers). Many were EuropeEurope
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an or Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
n migrants seeking fortune on the goldfields
Goldfields region of Victoria
The Goldfields region of Victoria is a region commonly used but typically defined in both historical geography and tourism geography .-Description:...
. One such swagman was Welshman Joseph Jenkins
Joseph Jenkins
Joseph Jenkins , was an educated tenant farmer from Tregaron, Ceredigion, mid-Wales who, when aged over 50, suddenly deserted his home and large family to seek his fortune in Australia...
, who travelled throughout Victoria between 1869 and 1894, documenting his experiences in daily diary entries and through poetry. Swagmen ranged in age from teenagers to the elderly. Socialist leader John A. Lee
John A. Lee
John Alfred Alexander Lee DCM was a New Zealand politician and writer. He is one of the more prominent avowed socialists in New Zealand's political history.-Early life:...
's time as a swagman while a teenager informed his political writing, and also featured directly in some of his other books. Novelist Donald Stuart
Donald Stuart (novelist)
Donald Stuart was an Australian novelist whose works include stories with Aboriginal backgrounds, and a series recounting his experience as a POW in Burma in World War II.-Early career:...
also began his life as a swagman at age 14. Several of his novels follow the lives of swagmen and aborigines in the Kimbereley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia. Many swagmen interacted with aborigines along their travels; bushwear designer R.M. Williams spent his latter teen years as a swagman travelling across the Nullarbor Plain
Nullarbor Plain
The Nullarbor Plain is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north. It is the world's largest single piece of limestone, and occupies an area of about...
, picking up bushcraft and survival skills from local aboriginal tribes such as cutting mulga, tracking kangaroos and finding water.
At times they would have been seen in and around urban areas looking for work or a handout. Most eyewitness descriptions of swagmen were written during the period when the country was 'riding on the sheep's back'. At this time, rovers were offered rations at police stations as an early form of the dole payment. They roamed the countryside finding work as sheep shearers or as farm hands. Not all were hard workers. Some swagmen known as sundowner
Sundowner
Sundowner may refer to:* Sundowner , a model of Mazda truck* Sundowner , the solo acoustic project of Chris McCaughan* Sundowner , an alcoholic cocktail* Sundowner , a model of Beechcraft airplane...
s would arrive at homesteads or stations at sundown when it was too late to work, taking in a meal and disappearing before work started the next morning. The New Zealand equivalent of a sundowner was known as a tussocker.
Most existed with few possessions as they were limited by what they could carry. Generally they had a swag (canvas bedroll), a tucker bag (bag for carrying food) and some cooking implements which may have included a billy can (tea pot or stewing pot). They carried flour for making damper
Damper (food)
Damper is a traditional Australian soda bread prepared by swagmen, drovers, stockmen and other travelers. It consists of a wheat flour based bread, traditionally baked in the coals of a campfire. Damper is an iconic Australian dish...
and sometimes some meat for a stew. They traveled with fellow 'swaggies' for periods, walking where they had to go, hitch hiking or stowing aboard cargo trains to get around. They slept on the ground next to a campfire, in hollowed out trees or under bridges.
In popular culture
In the 19th century, Australian bush poetry grew in popularity alongside an emerging sense of Australian nationalism. The swagman was venerated in poetry and literature as symbolic of Australian nationalistic and egalitarian ideals. Popular poems about swagmen include Henry LawsonHenry Lawson
Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer"...
's Out Back (1893) and Shaw Neilson
Shaw Neilson
John Shaw Neilson , was an Australian poet. Slightlybuilt, for most of his life, John Shaw Neilson worked as a labourer, fruit-picking, clearing scrub, navvying and working in quarries, and, after 1928, working as a messenger with the Country Roads Board in Melbourne...
's The Sundowner (1908). In 1902, Barbara Baynton
Barbara Baynton
Barbara Janet Ainsleigh Baynton, Lady Headley was an Australian writer, made famous for Bush Studies which was written in retaliation to Henry Lawson's works.- Life :...
wrote a collection of short stories titled Bush Studies
Bush Studies
Bush Studies is a short story collection by Barbara Baynton.Bush Studies was published in London in 1902. Baynton's short stories and novel display a grim realism and depiction of female suffering which represents an alternative view to the romanticism of the bush.The book consists of several short...
. The final story, The Chosen Vessel, gave an account of a woman alone in a bush dwelling, where she is preyed upon and eventually raped and murdered by a passing swagman. This was in stark contrast to traditional bush lore, where swagmen are depicted in distinctly romantic terms. Swagmen were also prominent in the works of those associated with the Jindyworobak Movement
Jindyworobak Movement
The Jindyworobak Movement was a nationalistic Australian literary movement whose white members sought to promote indigenous Australian ideas and customs, particularly in poetry. They were active from the 1930s to around the 1950s...
, including poet Roland Robinson
Roland Robinson (poet)
Roland Edward Robinson OAM was an Australian poet and writer.Robinson was born in County Clare, Ireland in 1912. At the age of 9, in 1921 he was brought to Australia...
, who was a swagman for much of his life before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Coinciding with trends in 19th century Australian literature, swagmen were popular subjects of contemporary painters and illustrators. Drawings of swagmen, itinerant bush workers, rural nomads and other "men on the wallaby" had become common in newspapers and picturesque atlases. ST Gill and JA Turner
James Alfred Turner
James Alfred Turner was an Australian painter. Turner recorded in painstaking detail the life and daily pursuits of the small rural settler in the mountain ranges to the north and north east of Melbourne, the capital of the State of Victoria, Australia...
popularized the open-air life of the swagman. By the 1880s, swagmen featured in many exhibitions, including the works of Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts
Thomas William Roberts , usually known simply as Tom, was a prominent Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School.-Life:...
, Walter Withers
Walter Withers
Walter Herbert Withers was an Australian landscape artist and a member of the Heidelberg School of Australian impressionists.- Biography :...
, Arthur Streeton
Arthur Streeton
Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton was an Australian landscape painter.-Early life:Streeton was born in Mount Duneed, near Geelong, and his family moved to Richmond in 1874. In 1882, Streeton commenced art studies with G. F. Folingsby at the National Gallery School.Streeton was influenced by French...
, Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin was an Australian painter who was prominent in the Heidelberg School, one of the more important periods in Australia's visual arts history....
, and other artists associated with the Melbourne-based Heidelberg School
Heidelberg School
The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. The movement has latterly been described as Australian Impressionism....
, which is customarily held to be the first distinctly Australian movement in Western art and the "golden age of national idealism" in Australian painting.
Swagmen and other characters of the bush were popular subjects of the silent film era of Australian cinema. Raymond Longford
Raymond Longford
Raymond Longford was a prolific Australian film director, writer, producer and actor during the silent era. Longford was a major director of the silent film era of the Australian cinema. He formed a production team with Lottie Lyell...
's 1914 The Swagman's Story starred Lottie Lyell
Lottie Lyell
Lottie Lyell was an Australian actress, screenwriter, editor and filmmaker born in Balmain, Sydney in 1890. She is regarded as Australia’s first film star, and also contributed to the local industry during the silent era with her collaborations with Raymond Longford.-Career:Charlotte Cox pursued...
. 1936's The Flying Doctor
The Flying Doctor
The Flying Doctor is a 1936 Australian-British drama film directed by Miles Mander and starring Charles Farrell, Mary Maguire and James Raglan. The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia operate in the Australian Outback...
was directed by Miles Mander
Miles Mander
Miles Mander , born Lionel Henry Mander , was a well-known and versatile English character actor of the early Hollywood cinema, also a film director and producer, and a playwright and novelist.-Early life:Miles Mander was the second son of Theodore Mander, builder of Wightwick Manor, of the prominent...
and starred Charles Farrell
Charles Farrell
Charles Farrell was an American film actor of the 1920s silent era and into the 1930s, and later a television actor...
as a swagman travelling through the Blue Mountains towards Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
. Swagmen have been the subject of numerous books including the 1955 novel The Shiralee by D'Arcy Niland
D'Arcy Niland
D'Arcy Francis Niland was an Australian novelist and short story writer, best known for The Shiralee.-Life and writing career:...
, which was made into a 1957 film, starring Peter Finch
Peter Finch
Peter Finch was a British-born Australian actor. He is best remembered for his role as "crazed" television anchorman Howard Beale in the film Network, which earned him a posthumous Academy Award for Best Actor, his fifth Best Actor award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, and a...
(who himself lived as a swagman during early adulthood), and a 1987 TV mini-series
The Shiralee (1987 film)
The Shiralee is a 1987 Australian TV film directed by George Ogilvie, based on the novel of the same name by D'Arcy Niland.-External links:*...
, starring Bryan Brown
Bryan Brown
Bryan Neathway Brown, AM is an Australian actor.-Early life:Brown was born in Sydney, the son of John Brown and Molly Brown, a house cleaner who worked as a pianist in the early days of the Langshaw School of Ballet. He grew up in the south-western Sydney suburb of Bankstown and began working at...
. Norman Kaye
Norman Kaye
Norman James Kaye was an Australian actor and musician. He was best known for his roles in the films of director Paul Cox.Kaye was born in Melbourne and educated at Geelong Grammar School...
played the role of a swagman in the 1976 bushranger
Bushranger
Bushrangers, or bush rangers, originally referred to runaway convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australian bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities...
film Mad Dog Morgan
Mad Dog Morgan
Mad Dog Morgan is a 1976 Australian bushranger film directed by Philippe Mora and starring Dennis Hopper, Jack Thompson and David Gulpilil. It is based upon the life of Dan Morgan...
. Arthur Upfield
Arthur Upfield
Arthur William Upfield was an Australian writer, best known for his works of detective fiction featuring Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte of the Queensland Police Force, a half-caste Aborigine....
wrote a number a novels about swagmen including Death of a Swagman (1942), The Bushman Who Came Back (1957) and Madman's Bend (1963). In the 1981 film adaptation of Ethel Pedley
Ethel Pedley
Ethel Charlotte Pedley was an Australian author and musician.Pedley's most well-known book is Dot and the Kangaroo, which featured a little girl named Dot who becomes lost in the Australian outback, and is helped to find her way back home by a friendly kangaroo. The illustrations were drawn by...
's 1899 children's book Dot and the Kangaroo
Dot and the Kangaroo
-Film adaptations:The book was adapted into a film in 1977 which featured a combination of animation and live-action. The main character, Dot, was voiced by Barbara Frawley. The film also featured Spike Milligan as the voice of Platypus. The movie featured an original soundtrack including several...
, a magical swagman helps Dot find Mother Kangaroo's lost joey.
The Scottish singer-songwriter Alistair Hulett
Alistair Hulett
Alistair Hulett, was a Scottish acoustic folk singer and revolutionary socialist, best known as the singer of the folk punk band, Roaring Jack.-Early life:...
wrote a song about the 'swaggies' called "The Swaggies Have All Waltzed Matilda Away" (mp3 download from the Artist's website), which appeared on his album The Cold Grey Light Of Dawn.
List of swagman bush ballads
- "Australia's on the Wallaby"
- "Four Little Johnny Cakes"
- "Humping Old Bluey"
- "My Old Black Billy"
- "The Old Bark Hut"
- "The Ramble-eer"
- "The Reedy Lagoon"
- "Snake Gully Swagger"
- "Waltzing MatildaWaltzing Matilda"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
" - "With My Swag on My Shoulder"
Further reading
- Nixon, Allan M. The Swagmen: Survivors of the Great Depression. Five Mile Press, 1987. ISBN 0-8678-8135-6.
- Perkins, Leslie Howard. From a Swagman's Diary. Aussie Outback Publishing, 2008. ISBN 0-6464-9111-3.
- Wignell, Edel. A Bluey of Swaggies. Edward ArnoldEdward Arnold (publisher)Edward Arnold Publishers Ltd is a British publishing house with its head office in London. The firm has been publishing books for over 100 years. It is a member of the Hodder Education group. Edward Arnold publishes books and journals for students, academics and professionals.-Bibliography:*...
, 1985. ISBN 0-7131-8110-9. - Wignell, Edel. Swagmen and Sundowners: Carrying the Swag. ElsevierElsevierElsevier is a publishing company which publishes medical and scientific literature. It is a part of the Reed Elsevier group. Based in Amsterdam, the company has operations in the United Kingdom, USA and elsewhere....
, 1996. ISBN 0-7295-0416-6.