Southerly Busters — Reading Notes

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In Category - Fantasy Juvenile Worlds

Authors: Gibson, George Herbert, 1846-1921, Clint, Alfred, 1807-1883 [Illustrator], Scott, Montagu [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2014 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Humorous poetry; Australia -- Poetry Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 26,380

Reading time 115 min

Text sections 7

Before opening Southerly Busters — Reading Notes, the edition data offers a quick orientation: 26,380 words, 1 hr 55 min estimated reading time, and 7 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 23.8 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Humorous poetry,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #45391

G.H. Gibson's 1878 collection of humorous verse, written under the pen name Ironbark, satirizes colonial Australian life through exaggerated characters, dialect notes, and comic misadventures, from a deluded constable to a fancy-goods man haunted by a swamp demon.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
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Edition quality

File: pg45391

Read the Text

And had a china one at home

`Upon the mantelpiece.=

I'd read about their loves and hates,

`As hot as Yankee stoves,

And how they broke each other's pates

`In fair Arcadian groves;=

But nothing in my ancient friend

`Was like Arcadian types:

No fleecy flocks had he to tend,

`No crook or shepherds' pipes.=

No shepherdess was near at hand,

`And, if there were, I guessed

She'd never suffer that old man

`To take her to his breast!=

No raven locks had he to fall,

`And didn't seem to me

To be the sort of thing at all

`A shepherd ought to be.=

I thought of all the history.

`I'd studied when a boy--

Of Paris and Ænone, and

`The siege of ancient Troy.=

I thought, could Helen contemplate

`This party on the log,

She would the race of shepherds' hate

`Like Brahmins hate a dog.=

It seemed a very certain thing

`That, since the world began,

No shepherd ever was like him,

`From Paris down to Pan.=

I said--"Old man, you've settled now

`Another dream of youth;

I always understood, I vow,

`Mythology was truth=

"Until I saw thy bandy legs

`And sorrow-laden brow,

But, sure as ever eggs is eggs,

`I cannot think so now.=

"For, an a shepherd thou should'st be,

The man who wrote mythology

`Was guilty of a lie.=

"But never mind, old man," I said,

`"To sorrow we are born,

So tell us why thine aged head

`Is bended and forlorn?"=

With face as hard as Silas Wegg's

`He said, "Young man, here goes."

He lit his pipe, and crossed his legs,

`And told me all his woes.=

He said he'd just been "lammin'-down"

`A flock of maiden-ewes,

And then he'd had a trip to town

`To gather up the news;=

But while in Bathurst's busy streets

`He got upon the spree,

And publicans was awful cheats

`For soon "lamm'd down" was he.=

He said he'd "busted up his cheque"

`(What's that, I'd like to know?)

And now his happiness was wrecked,

`To work he'd got to go.=

He'd known the time, not long ago,

`When half the year he'd spend

In idleness, and comfort too,

`A-camping in a "bend."=

No need to tread the weary track,

`Or work his strength away;

He lay extended on his back

`Each happy summer day.=

When sun-set comes and day-light flags,

`And dusky looms the scrub,

He'd bundle up his ration-bags

`And toddle for his grub,=

And to some station-store he'd go

`And get the traveller's dower--

"A pint o' dust"--that was his low

`Expression meaning flour;=

But now he couldn't cadge about,

`For squatters wasn't game

To give their tea and sugar out

`To every tramp that came.=

The country's strength, he thought, was gone,

And feeding tramps now ranked among

`The glories of the past.=

He'd seen the "Yanko" in its pride,

`When every night a host

Of hungry tramps at supper tried

`For who could eat the most.=

A squatter then had feelin's strong

`And tender in his breast,

And if a trav'ller came along

`He'd ask him in to rest.=

"But squatters now!"----he stamped the soil,

`And muttered in his beard,

He wished they'd got a whopping boil

`For every sheep they sheared!=

His language got so very bad--

`It couldn't well be worse,

For every second word he had

`Now seemed to be a curse.=

And shaking was his withered hand

`With passion, not with age--

I never thought so old a man

`Could get in such a rage.=

His eyes seemed starting from his head,

`They glared in such a way;

And half the wicked words he said

`I shouldn't like to say;=

But from his language I inferred

`There wasn't one in three,

Of squatters worth that little word

`Commencing with a "D."=

Alas! for my poetic lore,

`I fear it was astray,

It never said that shepherds swore,

`Or talked in such a way.=

The knotted cordage of his brow

`Was tightened in a frown--

He seemed the sort of party, now,

`To burn a wool-shed down.=

He told me, further, and his voice

`Grew very plaintive here,

That now he'd got to make the choice

`And _work_, or give up beer!=

From heavy toil he'd always found

`'Twas healthiest to keep,

And mostly stuck to cadgin' round,

`And lookin' after sheep.=

But shepherdin' was nearly "cooked"--

`I think he meant to say

That shepherds' prospects didn't look

`In quite a hopeful way.=

A new career he must begin,

`(And fresh it roused his ire)

For squatters they was fencin' in

`With that infernal wire;=

And sheep was paddocked everywhere--

`'Twas like them squatters' cheek!--

And shepherds now, for all they'd care,

`Might go to Cooper's Creek.=

Continue Reading →

G.H. Gibson, writing as “Ironbark,” opens Southerly Busters with a preface that apologizes with deliberate thinness for “inflicting this work on mankind.” The collection gathers pieces originally printed in Sydney newspapers, and the author’s self-deprecating tone—calling his excuse “somewhat ‘thin’”—sets the stage for a book that treats colonial ambitions and everyday mishaps with comic exaggeration. The first poem, “LINES BY A (PAWN)BROKEN-HEARTED YOUTH,” immediately signals a fondness for puns and parody, while the appended notes define terms like “billy” and “jackeroo,” grounding the humor in specific bush vocabulary.

A Constable’s Delusions of Grandeur

The poem “A PEELER’S APPEAL” (a “peeler” being a policeman) offers a sustained comic monologue. The speaker imagines himself as a heroic figure: “My look alone would petrify / A breaker of the peace.” He dreams of a beat in George’s Street, not “nasty slums,” and fantasizes about crushing a cabby’s overcharge with an “eagle glance.” The humor escalates as he threatens a pea-shooting boy with a truncheon blow that would leave him “mutilated past repair.” Yet the poem pivots sharply when a real policeman appears, raises a blister on his head, and the dream collapses. The refrain “I’m not a trap at all!” undercuts the entire fantasy, turning self-importance into self-mockery.

Supernatural Satire in the Swamp

“SUPERNATURAL REVELATIONS OF A FANCY-GOODS MAN” parodies Gothic horror by transplanting it to a Sydney drain. The hero, Joe, a fancy-goods shopman, is summoned by a ghost who commands him to “slay the demon dread / Of Wattle Swamp the Black.” The spirit’s instructions are absurdly practical: “Bring kerosene, and bring thy lamp, / And arm thee to the teeth.” Gibson’s verse mimics the rhythms of balladry while undercutting it with colloquial details—Joe “nightly sniffed its odours sweet” from Parramatta Street. The poem’s title alone signals a mock-heroic treatment of urban folklore, where the demon is less a monster than a punchline waiting to happen.

The Catalogue of Picnics and Professions

A cluster of poems titled after trades—the butcher’s picnic, the oystermen’s, the wheelwrights’, the undertaker’s, the hairdressers’—suggests a serial structure built on occupational stereotypes. These pieces likely extend the collection’s pattern of using a single premise (a picnic) to expose the pretensions or absurdities of each group. The undertaker’s picnic, for instance, promises dark humor, while the hairdressers’ may play on vanity. Gibson’s notes reveal that many of these “scraps” first appeared in The Town and Country Journal and Sydney Punch, indicating they were written for an audience familiar with local types and slang. The reader should expect each poem to follow a similar formula of escalating mishap.

Notes That Anchor the Humor

The author’s footnotes are integral to the reading experience. They define “billy” as “a tin pot for making tea in,” and explain that “jackeroos” are young gentlemen gaining “colonial experience.” One note describes the Yanko sheep-station as “the Paradise of loafers,” where travellers were “feasted … on a scale of great magnificence.” These glosses do more than clarify; they provide a satirical commentary on bush customs and the tension between squatters and tramps. Gibson even notes that the ration system “became frightfully abused by loafers,” a wry observation that colors the poems. Readers unfamiliar with 1870s Australia will find these notes essential for catching the jokes, while those in the know may appreciate the insider’s wink.

Reading Southerly Busters sequentially reveals a deliberate arc: the preface’s mock apology, the constable’s deflated ego, the fancy-goods man’s gothic parody, and the trade picnics’ repetitive structure. Gibson’s verse rewards attention to his footnotes and to the recurring pattern of self-important characters meeting comic comeuppance. Approach each poem as a self-contained sketch, but watch for the author’s consistent voice—colloquial, ironic, and fond of anticlimax.

I remember browsing Ironbark’s verses, that constable chasing phantoms through colonial dust, and how the humor wore thin to a fine, wry ache. It put me in mind of another bedside volume, The Scribleriad, and The Difference Between Verbal and Practical Virtue — A Closer Reading, which polishes the same old coin of pretense versus deed, though from a cooler, more deliberate mint. They whisper across a century, these two.