Labour Day

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Trivia and Facts about Labour Day in Oz 

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Today, Monday 7 October 2019, is a public holiday in Oz, being Labour Day. 

Is it still meaningful or is it JAH . . just another holiday? 

I think that as far as the public is concerned, it is the latter. 

Here are some facts of what it is about. 

Drop me a line with comments as to whether it remains of any significance.

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Labour Day is an annual holiday to celebrate the achievements of workers. 

Labour Day in Australia is a public holiday on dates which vary between states and territories. It is the first Monday in October in the Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales and South Australia. In Victoria and Tasmania, it is the second Monday in March (though the latter calls it Eight Hours Day). In Western Australia, Labour Day is the first Monday in March. In Queensland and the Northern Territory, Labour Day occurs on the first Monday in May. 

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Labour Day has its origins in the labour union movement, specifically the eight-hour day movement, which advocated eight hours for work, eight hours for recreation, and eight hours for rest. 

The Eight Hour Day Movement started in Australia in early March 1856. 

The movement, also known as the 40 Hour Week Movement, had originated in Britain, deriving from the Industrial Revolution, a period from the 18th to the 19th century. 

In Australia, negotiations took place between tradesmen and contractors in Melbourne, Victoria. The Victorian gold rush had enticed numerous accomplished tradespeople from Britain to Australia. The Colonial Government approved of this movement, and The Eight Hour Day was introduced into the building trades in Melbourne. Stonemasons led The Eight Hour Day Movement who contended that working for eight hours a day in the Australian heat and weather conditions was appropriate. 

The first march for an eight-hour day by the labour movement occurred in Melbourne on 21 April 1856. On this day stonemasons and building workers on building sites around Melbourne stopped work and marched from the University of Melbourne to Parliament House to achieve an eight-hour day. Their direct action protest was a success, and they are noted as being among the first organised workers in the world to achieve an 8-hour day, with no loss of pay 

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The Eight Hour Day Movement was widely celebrated as a world first and cultivated a reputation of Australia as being a 'workingman's paradise'. 

The agreement made between the workers and the The Melbourne Building Trades was that the working day would begin at 7am and finish at 5pm. And meals would account for 2 full hours. 

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A well known rhyme of the time for the movement was; 

Eight hours work, 

Eight hours play, 

Eight hours sleep, and 

Eight bob a day. 

A bob was the slang term for a shilling. 

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The numbers 888, a symbol of intertwined numbers, embellished the base of many union buildings around Australia. 

The Eight Hour March, commencing April 21, 1856, continued each year until 1951 in Melbourne. 

The Eight Hour Day Movement March is now celebrated as Labour Day, an annual holiday, still celebrated across Australia. 

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Initially only a minority of workers, mainly in the building trades, won the eight-hour day. Most workers, including women and children, generally worked longer hours for less pay. 

The fight for working conditions continued throughout the 19th century. It was not until 1916 that the Eight Hours Act was passed in Victoria and New South Wales. 

It would not be until January 1948 that the Commonwealth Arbitration Court approved a 40-hour, five-day working week for all Australians. 

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Gallery: 

The Eight Hour Day Memorial, Cnr Russell and Victoria Streets, Melbourne, Victoria 

This publicly funded monument was designed to commemorate the eight-hour working day, introduced on 21 April 1856. In February 1856, stonemasons working at the University of Melbourne marched on Parliament House, pressing claims for a regulated eight-hour working day. The skilled workers were in a good position to have their claims met; Melbourne was experiencing a building boom and some of the city’s great public buildings, such as the Public Library (now known as the State Library of Victoria), were under construction. After weeks of protest, the workers became the first in the world to achieve a 48-hour working week. The ‘888’ on the top of obelisk refers to the workers’ popular slogan: eight hours’ work, eight hours’ rest and eight hours’ recreation. Around the monument’s globe the inscription reads: ‘Labour, Recreation, Peace’. While the eight-hour day was an important achievement for the building workers, conditions for women and child labourers in particular remained unchanged and unreasonable for decades. 

The monument was unveiled in 1903 and 14 surviving pioneers of the eight-hour-day movement attended the ceremony. Mr Ward, MLA, claimed in his keynote address that the ‘pioneers had led the way, not only for Victoria, but for the rest of the world’. 

Originally located in Gordon Reserve, Spring Street, the monument was moved to the corner of Russell and Victoria Streets in 1923. Its site near Parliament House was perhaps a spur to reform, although the present site opposite Trades Hall is wholly appropriate. Its presence near Parliament House was said to offend the conservative members, hence its relocation. 

 Eight-hour day march circa 1900, outside Parliament House in Spring Street, Melbourne. 

Eight-hour day banner, Melbourne, 1856 

‍‍Eight Hour Day procession in Wickham Street, Fortitude Valley, ca. 1908. 

‍‍Butchers-posing-in-front-of-their-Labor-Day-float-Brisbane-1920. 

Operative Stonemasons’ Society float, Labour Day, Sydney c 1918 

Operative Stonemasons’ Society banner, Labour Day, Sydney c 1918

Quote(s) for the Day

Byter Steve M sent me an email commenting on the limericks that spoke of a young man from Devizes in England, and mentioned Devizes being near Swindon, from whence he fails.  It reminded me that I had once posted an item about Brit sex symbol Diana Dors and that Steve had written about the time when obtaining her autograph, he asked her for a kiss and she obliged.  Read about it at:

https://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/2017/05/readers-write-and-monday-miscellany_29.html

My reason in mentioning this is that I also happened to see a reference to Swindon that same day when looking up something, what I saw being a quote by Diana Dors.  A sign, I thought, a message that I had to post that as the Quote for the Day, so here it is . . .

Diana Dors was born Diana Mary Fluck, When signing her first film contract, she changed her contractual surname to Dors, the maiden name of her maternal grandmother; this being at the suggestion of her mother Mary.  Dors later commented:

“They asked me to change my name. I suppose they were afraid that if my real name Diana Fluck was in lights and one of the lights blew ...”

Bonus quote (a repost) #1:

From QI . . .

There is also a story, recounted in her autobiography, where she was asked to open a fete in her home town of Swindon. Before proceedings began, she had lunch with the local Vicar who was due to introduce her. During the course of the conversation she revealed her birth name. The Vicar became worried that he would mispronounce her name and cause embarrassment so spent an hour or so fretting and rehearsing what he would say. He then marched out onto the stage and introduced Dors with the immortal words:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I introduce to you our star guest. We all love her, especially as she is our local girl. I therefore feel it right to introduce her by her real name; Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome the very lovely Miss Diana Clunt.’

Bonus quote #2:

In 1968 she married English actor Alan Lake. He was nine years her junior but the marriage lasted until her untimely death at the age of fifty two. As she grew older, she once asked Alan:

“Will you still love me when I’m old and fat?”

He replied:

“ I do”.

(When Diana died of cancer, five months later Alan took his own life.)

Sydney Suburbs continued: Castlecrag, Castlereagh, Casula

CASTLECRAG:

Location: 

Castlecrag is a suburb on the lower North Shore of Sydney, New South Wales, 8 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Willoughby. It shares its postcode, 2068, with the surrounding suburbs of Willoughby, Middle Cove and North Willoughby. 

Name origin: 

Castlecrag was originally planned by the husband and wife team, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin who named the suburb after a towering crag of rock overlooking Middle Harbour, known locally as Edinburgh Castle. The Griffins came to Castlecrag in 1925 after tiring of the politics surrounding implementation of their designs for Australia's capital city, Canberra. 

Griffin (November (1876 – 1937), an American architect and landscape architect, is not only known known for designing Canberra, Australia's capital city. He has also been credited with the development of the L-shaped floor plan, the carport and an innovative use of reinforced concrete. He worked in partnership with his wife Marion Mahony Griffin (1871-1961). In 28 years they designed over 350 buildings, landscape and urban-design projects as well as designing construction materials, interiors, furniture and other household items. 

Comments: 

Griffin was captivated by Sydney Harbour and its natural beauty when he arrived in Australia in 1913. He was, however, dismayed at the mediocre standard and style of most Sydney suburbs with their red roofs and grid [pattern streets. When he finished in Canberra in 1920 he and his wife put their energies into developing a residential development that was sympathetic to beautiful natural harbor environment. He formed a company, the Greater Sydney Development Association (GSDA) with some investors and secured an option to purchase 263 hectares (650 acres) of land with 6.44 kilometres (4 miles) of water frontage which included large portions of the areas now known as Castlecrag, Castle Cove and Middle Cove. 

The Griffins believed that better suburban environments could be created by careful planning that respected the landscape character of an area itself together with the provision of community open spaces within an increased number of allotments. These theories were to be tested and proven in his work at Castlecrag. 

The Griffins sought to keep the existing bushland canopy of Castlecrag’s sandstone peninsula as intact as possible. Their aim of conserving the significant landscape resources was original. No other development company in the history of Sydney has ever given such a fantastic gift to future residents: interlocked open spaces and over four miles of almost continuous open space along the foreshore. 

The subdivided lots were subject to covenants that required approval for the design of buildings, placed restrictions on roofing materials and required owners adjoining reserves to contribute to their management and upkeep. The controls were to ensure that buildings harmonised with the natural landscape. 

At first the houses so designed and built were unpopular, the design being too advanced for the period. When Griffin left for India in 1936 less than 20 had been built. Later attitudes changed and the elegance of the suburb made it renowned. Unfortunately subsequent development often has been unsympathetic to the Griffins’ vision to the detriment of the suburb and a loss to the community as a whole. 

There has since been development in Castlecrag that has not respected the Griffin ideals. However, the Willoughby City Council is aware of the importance of Castlecrag and has imposed controls over development in the area. The purpose of the controls is to preserve the character of Castlecrag, encouraging the construction of buildings, which respect the original houses designed by Griffin and Mahony Griffin, and the natural landscape.

The streets in the southern older, portion of the suburb were named after parts of a castle: The barbette, The Barbican, The Barricade, The Bartizan, The Bastion, The Battlement, The Bulwark, The Citadel, The High Tor, The Outpost, The Palisade, The Parapet, The Postern, The Rampart, The Redoubt, The Scarp, The Tor Walk and Sortie Port. There are also Tower, Casement, and Turrett Reserves, and the main street through the centre is Edinburgh Road. 

Gallery: 

Grant House, 8 The Parapet 

Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin moved to Castlecrag in 1924 and lived in this house until 1935. 

A Griffin house at Castlecrag

Some Castlecrag houses and scenes:

CASTLEREAGH:

Location: 

Castlereagh is a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, 67 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Penrith. It is part of the Greater Western Sydney region. 

Name origin: 

The suburb is one of the most historic sites in Australia's colonial history, being one of the five Macquarie towns officially proclaimed on 6 December 1810. Governor Lachlan Macquarie recorded the following in his journal "the Township for the Evan or Nepean District I have named Castlereagh in honor of Lord Viscount Castlereagh", Secretary of State for War and the Colonies 1805–1806. 

Comments: 

The earliest known European development was the building of Hadley Park, between what is now Castlereagh Road and the Nepean River. Charles Hadley was given a grant in 1803, and his house, Hadley Park, was built c.1806. It still stands, largely intact. 

Circa 1822, Nepean Park, also situated on Castlereagh Road, was built by convict labour for John Single. A notable two-storey farmhouse in the Georgian style, it was acquired by the Dixon family in 1934. 

Gallery: 

Hadley Park 

Nepean Park 

CASULA:

Location: 

Casula is located 4 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Liverpool. 

Name origin: 

Casula is named for a land grant to Richard Guise, a member of an ancient French family. He called his grant Casula after the place where he had lived in England. 

Comments: 

The area became dominated by poultry farming, market gardening and fruit growing. Another notable farm was Glenfield Farm, which dates from circa 1817. Situated in Leacocks Lane, it originally belonged to Charles Throsby, a member of the Legislative Council and an explorer. The farm is the oldest continuously worked farm in Australia and is listed on the Register of the National Estate. 

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During World War I, a large Australian Imperial Forces recruitment and training reserve was located in Casula - a fact reflected by the name of one of its major residential streets, "Reserve Road". This camp became briefly notorious in 1916 when a large mob of soldiers rebelled against the strict training regimen, marched on nearby Liverpool, ransacked and looted several pubs, hijacked several trains to Central station in Sydney and continued their drunken rioting, resulting in the Military Police shooting dead one rioter.

Soldiers strike, 14 February 1916, which turned into a r,iot,

As each train from Liverpool arrived in Sydney, more drunken troops swarmed into different parts of the city causing havoc and damage in every direction. Train services from Liverpool were eventually suspended but not before the area from Central Station to Circular Quay had been virtually taken over by the rioters. Hotels were raided and those that tried to close their doors soon found them smashed and their bars filled with drunken men taking what they wanted. One group marched on Tooth’s Brewery at Broadway and another invaded the Queen Victoria Markets and ransacked the stalls. Italian and Greek shops were a particular target. Regent Street Police Station was attacked in a vain attempt to rescue rioters who had been arrested. The German Club in Phillip Street was attacked, as was Kleisdorff’s tobacco shop at the corner of Hunter and Castlereagh Streets.

The crowds of sightseers who turned out to watch the fun hampered the efforts of police to control the rioters. In the early evening soldiers were hurriedly brought in from the camp at the Sydney Showgrounds. This force, plus the debilitating effects of drunkenness on the rioters, enabled the authorities to herd most of them back to Central Station for the return journey to Liverpool. Late in the evening, a still angry mob at the station threw missiles at the police and the military pickets. In the chaos, shots rang out and Ernest William Keefe, a 20-year-old trainee in the Light Horse, was killed, while seven in the crowd, including a civilian, were wounded. This incident had a sobering effect on the mob; some surrendered reasonably quietly to the police and many returned to their camp to recover from the excitement of the day and to sleep off their alcoholic excess.

In the weeks that followed, courts martial resulted in the discharge of 279 trainees. Civil courts convicted 36 on charges including riotous behaviour, assaulting police, malicious damage and indecent language. The majority were sentenced to one or more months of hard labour while the ring leaders' sentences were up to five years. Most of the rioters escaped further discipline because of the authorities’ urgent need to meet recruiting targets; instead they were sent to the war. At the coronial inquiry into Keefe’s death the acting city coroner said: 

It is to be hoped that the mutinous soldiers will, by their bravery on the battlefield, wipe out the stigma attaching to their name, owing to their participation in these calamitous proceedings. 

The riot had one unexpected result. The widespread drunkenness and the resulting destruction and damage not only alarmed the New South Wales Government but provided ammunition for the temperance movement to press its long-held case for restrictions on the availability of alcohol. Four months after the riot a referendum approved the 6pm closing of all hotels and pubs. The Bulletin denounced the link as hysterical, saying pub hours were no more to blame than the railway timetable, but six o’clock closing remained in force in New South Wales until 1955.

It became known as The Six O'Clock Swill, the binge drinking between finishing work at 5,00pm and the closing of the pubs at 6.00pm.

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In 1918, Walter Ingham Sr. bought 42 acres (170,000 m2) of bush land in Casula as a gift to 18-year-old son, Walter. On his death in 1953, his sons Jack and Bob took over the small chicken breeding operation and built it into the largest producer of chickens and turkeys in Australia. Inghams Enterprises is now headquartered in Liverpool.

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Being heavily farmed, the area did not become suburbanised until the late 1950s. Much of the acreage in the central and southern portions were subdivided and developed over the next few decades but even now there are pockets of undeveloped land.

Quote for the Day

From the Vault: The Bulletin Debate

The following post is a reprint from June 4, 2010.  It is worth another read, imho, and concerns two of Australia's greatest and popular poets.  A lengthy article but one of general and historical interest...

The Bulletin Debate

The myth of “the bush” and Australian identity:

Banjo Paterson

Henry Lawson

The image that the world has of Australia (which we also have of ourselves) is of open spaces, bush and wilderness, a resilient and resourceful people toiling under bright blue sunny skies. Each of us is either outwardly or inwardly Crocodile Dundee.

In reality Australia is the most urbanised country in the world, both as to the rate and level of urbanisation. Most of us live in the suburbs and work in the cities (although the level of city dwelling is increasing as State Government planning policies have encouraged residential dwelling in the city).

According to the 1861 census, more than 60% of the nation’s population were rural dwellers and lived outside the towns. By 1961, a century later, the proportion had fallen to 18%, with 82% of the population now living in the capital cities or other urban areas. Today, 89% of Australia’s population is urban.

This dualism of the cities and the areas outside the cities, generally referred to as “the bush”, and the effect on national identity, has persisted from the mid 19th century. The diggers on the goldfields were seen to be, and saw themselves, as stoic, enduring and resourceful, willing to endure hardship and struggle without complaint. In a hostile environment where the authorities were corrupt and the conditions were harsh, a digger could rely only on his mates. The legend of the bush and the Australian bushman was an extension of the goldfields digger. The same strength of character in difficult conditions was attributed to the bushman, the same mateship culture, resourcefulness and independence.

Australian nationalism and the search for identity promoted the Australian bushman image. The bush became a symbol for national life. By 1900 the bush was seen as the basis of Australian greatness and achievement, the Anzac soldier being a fusion of the bush characteristics and the military. The irony is that the much greater part of the population lived in the cities and urban areas and that the reality of bush life was often far removed from the romanticised images portrayed in art and writing.

Henry Lawson:

Henry Lawson had been born on the goldfields in 1867, the son of a Norwegian seaman, Niels Larsen, who later changed his name to Peter Lawson. The family was poor and lived on a selection in the Mudgee district. Lawson’s childhood was not happy. He suffered from deafness and was often teased as a result. His parents separated when he was 16, following which he moved to Sydney with his mother who commenced publication of a feminist newspaper. Suffering from manic depression, Lawson sought refuge from his mood swings in alcohol. A marriage in 1896 produced 2 children but that marriage was also not a happy one. He separated from his wife in 1903. Periods of time in gaol for failing to support his family alternated with periods of time spent in institutions for alcoholism. He died in 1922.

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson:

Paterson was born on a farm near Orange in 1864, the son of a Scottish father and Australian mother. At the age of 10 he was sent to a school in Sydney, becoming a solicitor in 1886. From 1885 he had been submitting material to The Bulletin under the name “The Banjo, the name of his favourite horse.

Paterson was a war correspondent during the Boer War and managed a property near Yass from 1908. He failed to become a war correspondent during WW1 and drove an ambulance instead. Returning to Australia in 1915, he was mobilised and saw active service, including being wounded. He died in 1941, aged 76.

The Bulletin:

The Bulletin was a weekly magazine published from 1880 to 2008, founded by journalists J F Archibald (founder of the Archibald Prize) and John Haynes. It was nationalist, anti-imperialist, republican and racist, its masthead bearing the words “Australia for the White Man” (the slogan remaining until the magazine was modernised upon its purchase by Sir Frank Packer in 1961). It was radical, xenophobic and blokey. From 1886 it published readers’ contributions, with the result that many later famous authors received their start by having poems and articles published in The Bulletin.

In its heyday The Bulletin was influential. It supported and promoted the bush legend self-image that Australians had of themselves Prior to Federation in 1900, Australia did not exist as a united entity, only as a collection of States. People gave their loyalties to their State and then to England and its monarch. The Bulletin promoted an Australian identity and character consistent with the bush myth, so much so that it became known as “the bushman’s Bible”.

Pictured: J F Archibald with Henry Lawson

The Bulletin Debate:

Both Lawson and Paterson were being regularly published in the Bulletin by 1892. They knew each other and were friends, despite different outlooks.

Each typified a different view of the bush: Paterson wrote its wildness, beauty, its characters and its instilling of strength and mateship; Lawson of its struggle and cruelty.

Between 1892 and 1893 they engaged in a literary debate on the virtues and merits, or otherwise, of the bush and the cities. The debate reinforced the significance of the bush as a significant part of an Australian national identity at a time but had the ultimate consequence of creating a rift between Paterson and Lawson as the debate became personal.

In 1939, 2 years before his death and 17 years after Lawson’s death, Paterson spoke of the debate:

"Henry Lawson was a man of remarkable insight in some things and of extraordinary simplicity in others. We were both looking for the same reef, if you get what I mean; but I had done my prospecting on horseback with my meals cooked for me, while Lawson has done his prospecting on foot and had had to cook for himself. Nobody realised this better than Lawson; and one day he suggested that we should write against each other, he putting the bush from his point of view, and I putting it from mine. "We ought to do pretty well out of it," he said. "We ought to be able to get in three or four sets of verses before they stop us." This suited me all right, for we were working on space, and the pay was very small ... so we slam-banged away at each other for weeks and weeks; not until they stopped us, but until we ran out of material ..."

The poems are too long to set out in their entirety in this article but I will provide links as to where they can be read. It is worth doing.

The initiating item in the debate was a poem by Lawson, Up the Country, in which he describes the bleak, barren and drought ridden countryside he experienced on a trip from the city, its struggling people and its cruel demands.

The first verse reads:

I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went --
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track,
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back.
Further out may be the pleasant scenes of which our poets boast,
But I think the country's rather more inviting round the coast.
Anyway, I'll stay at present at a boarding-house in town,
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes, taking baths and cooling down.
He concludes with the same verse with slightly changed lines that
“…the Southern poets' dream will not be realised
Till the plains are irrigated and the land is humanised.” 

http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/henry-lawson/up-the-country/

Paterson responded 2 weeks later with In Defence of the Bush, which opens with:

So you're back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went,
And you're cursing all the business in a bitter discontent;
Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear
That it wasn't cool and shady — and there wasn't whips of beer,
And the looney bullock snorted when you first came into view —
Well, you know it's not so often that he sees a swell like you;
And the roads were hot and dusty, and the plains were burnt and brown,
And no doubt you're better suited drinking lemon-squash in town.
Paterson then describes the bush in a romanticised manner: its lushness and beauty when the rains come in a month or two; the friendships in the shearers’ sheds; the mateship of the men of the bush and the jollity around the campfire at night, all to be compared with the squalid and hostile city and its inhabitants.

His final advice to Lawson is:

You had better stick to Sydney and make merry with the "push",
For the bush will never suit you, and you'll never suit the bush. 

http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/25342-A-B--Banjo-Paterson-In-Defence-of-the-Bush

Lawson’s reply was published 2 weeks later, The City Bushman, in which he accuses Paterson of travelling in the bush a a city person, with all the city comforts and conveniences:

It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went,
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent;

Lawson accuses Paterson of romanticising the bush at the expense of its harsh realities: the backbreaking toil, the interest rates of the banks, the working for absentee landlords; the droughts and floods that ruin the farmers and their families. He speaks of “the drover who is driven and the shearer who is shorn” and says that the camaraderie of the campfire means little when the rain soaks both you and your supplies, when you have to toil for the station owner for provisions instead of money and where the “the drovers and the shearers and the bushmen and the rest” are nowhere near as well off as the poets who write about their idealised existence.

He concludes:

But you'll find it very jolly with the cuff-and-collar push,
And the city seems to suit you, while you rave about the bush. 

http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Henry_Lawson/19134

Other writers joined in the debate, mostly on the side of Lawson, and were published in The Bulletin’s pages.

Two months later, in October 1982, Paterson replied to Lawson and his other critics in An Answer to Various Bards. His opening words are:

Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in,
Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin,
With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp,
How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp;
And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom --
But you know they're fond of writing about "corpses" and "the tomb".
According to Paterson, there is no denying that the bush has its hard realities, struggles and cruelties, but that the bushman meets those trials and overcomes. The bushman is not suited to the city:
And, of course, there's no denying that the bushman's life is rough,
But a man can easy stand it if he's built of sterling stuff;
Though it's seldom that the drover gets a bed of eiderdown,
Yet the man who's born a bushman, he gets mighty sick of town,
He concludes:
Let us herd into the cities, let us crush and crowd and push
Till we lose the love of roving, and we learn to hate the bush;
And we'll turn our aspirations to a city life and beer,
And we'll slip across to England -- it's a nicer place than here;
For there's not much risk of hardship where all comforts are in store,
And the theatres are in plenty, and the pubs are more and more.
But that ends it, Mr Lawson, and it's time to say good-bye,
So we must agree to differ in all friendship, you and I.
Yes, we'll work our own salvation with the stoutest hearts we may,
And if fortune only favours we will take the road some day,
And go droving down the river 'neath the sunshine and the stars,
And then return to Sydney and vermilionize the bars.

The references in the poem to beer, pubs and bars are part of Paterson’s personal jibes at Lawson and his alcoholism.

The debate had become caustic and personal, with Paterson early on attacking the man rather than the argument.

Paterson further criticised Lawson as being “fond of writing about ‘corpses’ and ‘the tomb’. Paterson is reputed to have written this because he had seen a poem by Lawson called The Poet of the Tomb on Lawson’s desk. In An Answer to Various Bards Paterson refers to various deaths that Lawson had written about in his poems and suggests that Lawson and his supporters “should take something for their livers, and be cheerful for a change”. Instead of being full of doom and gloom they should try to focus on other than the tomb.

According to Paterson:

…no doubt, the bush is wretched if you judge it by the groan
Of the sad and soulful poet with a graveyard of his own.

One week later Lawson responded with The Poets of the Tomb, the poem for which Paterson had seen the title on Lawson’s desk.

Lawson responded to Paterson:

The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead,
'Tis time the people passed a law to knock 'em on the head,
For 'twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave --
Those bards of `tears' and `vanished hopes', those poets of the grave.
They say that life's an awful thing, and full of care and gloom,
They talk of peace and restfulness connected with the tomb.

He continues that whereas some people help the world and try to improve the lot of themselves and others, the poets of the tomb and of the grave are concerned only with how they will be remembered and what monuments will be erected for them.

According to Lawson:

'Twixt mother's arms and coffin-gear a man has work to do!
And if he does his very best he mostly worries through,
And while there is a wrong to right, and while the world goes round,
An honest man alive is worth a million underground.
And yet, as long as sheoaks sigh and wattle-blossoms bloom,
The world shall hear the drivel of the poets of the tomb. 

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-answer-to-various-bards/

This poem marks the end of the verse debate and is said to have also marked the end of the friendship between Lawson and Paterson. Lawson is said to have become upset at the outcome of the debate and by it becoming personal. Using £5 and a rail ticket provided by Archibald, Lawson headed to Bourke where he “painted, picked up in a shearing shed and swagged it for six months...’ as he wrote to his aunt.

In an ultimate irony, it is believed that part of Lawson’s reason for going to Bourke was to see for himself life in “the bush” and to experience the countryside and the people he had been writing about.

http://www.waltzingmatilda.com.au/TheBanjo.html

According to Robyn Burrows, the author of Henry Lawson: A Stranger on the Darling, a book about Lawson’s Bourke period:

It is doubtful if, at that time [the time of the Bulletin Debate], he had been further west than Bathurst and he had no real concept, except what he had been told by others, of the real outback. 

http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Henry_Lawson/19157

Quote for the Day

“Give us this day our Daly Fred.”

-        Campaign slogan for Australian parliamentarian Fred Daly when he first stood for election in 1943.  In an upset, he won the seat.

Frederick Michael Daly (1912 – 1995), commonly known as Fred Daly, was an Australian politician who served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1943 to 1975, representing the Labor Party. In the Whitlam Government he was Leader of the House, Minister for Services and Property, and Minister for Administrative Services.

Fred Daly (right) with Gough Whitlam, 1973

Funny Friday

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The reason for the above Quote for the Day is that the theme for today’s Funny Friday is . . .  bread.  That came about because in a conversation with someone about having some toast, I was asked “Raisin?” and replied “No, just twitchin’ a little.”  The other person looked at me oddly, not knowing the joke.  So here is that joke, plus some more bread ones . . .

Caution: risque content ahead.

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A bakery owner hires a young female shop assistant who liked to wear very short skirts and thong panties.

One day a young man enters the store, glances at the shop assistant and at the loaves of bread behind the counter.

Noticing her short skirt and the location of the raisin bread, he has a brilliant idea. "I'd like some raisin bread please," the man says.

The shop assistant nods and climbs up a ladder to reach the raisin bread located on the very top shelf.

The man standing almost directly beneath her is provided with an excellent view, just as he thought.

When she descends the ladder, he decides that he had better get two loaves.

As the shop assistant retrieves the second loaf of bread, one of the other male customers notices what's going on and requests his own loaf of raisin bread.

After many trips she is tired and irritated and begins to wonder, "Why the unusual interest in the raisin bread?" Atop the ladder one more time, she looks down and glares at the men standing below. Then, she notices an elderly man standing amongst the crowd.

Thinking that she can save herself another trip, she yells at the elderly man, "Is  yours raisin too?"

"No," he stammers, "But it's twitchin’ a little."

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You order one pizza and you love it. Next time you order a pizza and a garlic bread. Before you know it, you're eating pizzas for every meal and you get withdrawal symptoms if you don't get one...

That's the domino effect...

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 “Back in my day,” my grandfather would say, “You could go into a grocery store with $2 in your pocket, and walk out with a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, and some butter as well....”

"But today, they got cameras everywhere!"

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A vampire bat came flapping in from the night covered in fresh blood and parked himself on the roof of the cave to get some sleep. Pretty soon all the other bats smelled the blood and began hassling him about where he got it. He told them to go away and let him get some sleep but they persisted until finally he gave in."OK, follow me" he said and flew out of the cave with hundreds of bats behind him. Down through the valley they went, across a river and into a forest full of trees. Finally he slowed down and all the other bats excitedly milled around him. "Now, do you see that tree over there?" he asked. "Yes, Yes, Yes!" the bats all screamed in a frenzy. "Good" said the bat, "Because I sure as hell didn't!"

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From the vault:

Two old guys, one 80 and one 87, were sitting on their usual park bench one morning. The 87 year old had just finished his morning jog and wasn't even short of breath. The 80 year old was amazed at his friend's stamina and asked him what he did to have so much energy.

The 87 year old said "Well, I eat Jewish rye bread every day. It keeps your energy level high and you'll have great stamina with the ladies."

So, on the way home, the 80 year old stops at the bakery. As he was looking around, the lady asked if he needed any help. He said, "Do you have any Jewish rye bread?"

She said, "Yes, there's a whole shelf of it . Would you like some?"

He said, "Yes, I want 5 loaves."

She said, "My goodness, 5 loaves...by the time you get to the 5th loaf, it'll be hard"

He replied, "I can't believe it, everybody in the world knows about this stuff but me."

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Limerick of the Week:

Watching the English TV program Escape to the Country with Kate, mention was made on the show of Devizes. This prompted me to bring some class to our conversation by telling her about the young man from Devizes, to which she responded (as she has done in the past) “Nice.”

Here it is . . .

There was a young man of Devizes,

Whose balls were of different sizes.

One was so small,

It was nothing at all;

The other so big it won prizes.

I never got to telling her an alternative version . . .

There was a young man of Devizes

Whose balls were of different sizes.

His tool when at ease,

Hung down to his knees,

Oh, what must it be when it rises!

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Gallery:

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 Corn Corner:

A piece of bread walks in to a bar, he asks for a sandwich, the bartender says “Sorry, we don’t serve food here.”

A storm blew away only 25 % of my roof last night.

Oof

My dad died when we couldn't remember his blood type. As he died, he kept insisting for us to "be positive," but it's hard without him.

eBay is so useless. I tried to look up lighters and all they had was 13,749 matches.

Thought for the Day

A similar thought . . .