clancy of the overflow

One such example of a text that can be identified as Australian due to its use of the stereotypical ideas of Australian identity is Clancy of the Overflow, a poem by AB Banjo Paterson. This text is written from the point of view of a city-dweller who once met the title character, a shearer and drover, and now envies the imagined pleasures of Clancy's lifestyle, which he compares favourably to life in "the dusty, dirty city" and "the round eternal of the cashbook and the journal". The title comes from the address of a letter the city-dweller sends, "The Overflow" being the name of the sheep station where Clancy was working when they met. The poem is based on a true story that was experienced by Banjo Paterson. He was working as a lawyer when someone asked him to send a letter to a man named Thomas Gerald Clancy, asking for a payment that was never received. Banjo sent the letter to "The Overflow" and soon received a reply that read "Clancy's gone to Queensland droving and we don't know where he are" The imagery that is used within the poem allows us to see the landscape that we now except to be Australian, the language used also allows us to appreciate the behaviour that we have come to adopt as our own 'Australian way'. For example "In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy, Gone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go; As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing, For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know." The real question is, without these so called 'Australian' images would we be able to recognise the text as an Australian one? The answer is no, Australian texts cannot afford to let their setting be ambiguous. Australia has few attributes that separate it from mediocrity and its setting is one of them.

As well as Australia's aesthetic attributes it also has its behavioural attributes that can be referred to as individual. Australian is renowned as being a masculine society, in which