Back in the mid 1990s I bought The Oxford literary guide to Australia. Having not looked at it for a few years, I decided to take it on our current little road trip. Two days ago, for example, we drove through Gundagai and Tarcutta, both of which appear in the guide.

Gundagai, NSW

Most Australians will have heard of Gundagai – there is the famous Dog on the Tuckerbox (which features in many songs and poems) and the well-known song, “Along the road to Gundagai”, by Jack O’Hagan. Its lines include:

where the blue gums are growing and the Murrumbidgee flowing.

The funny thing is that Jack O’Hagan apparently never visited Gundagai! This didn’t stop him writing other songs about the town too including “When a boy from Alabama meets a girl from Gundagai”.

There are several other songs and poems featuring the town – including by Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson –  but the Guide says it is a mystery as to why this particular town “was such a popular inspiration for songs”. If they don’t know, I don’t know either … but it is a pretty town with a famous old bridge.

Tarcutta, NSW

Not all that far down the road from Gundagai is Tarcutta. According to the Guide it is a popular truckies stop. It also features in the poem “Under way” by Bruce Dawe:

…there would be days
banging open and shut like the wire door of the cafe in Tarcutta
where the flies sang at the windows…

Ah, the flies! Apparently in 1961 Les Murray wrote his poem “The burning truck” in the same cafe. Unfortunately, having already had coffee at Bullocky Bill’s near the Dog on the Tuckerbox, we did not test our muse in Tarcutta.

And yesterday we drove through other towns, including…

Emerald, Vic

Down in the Dandenongs east of Melbourne is the pretty little town of Emerald – quite different from the somewhat drier and dustier Tarcutta and Gundagai. It was a gold town – hmm, wonder then why it was called Emerald! Apparently Katharine Susannah Prichard spent her honeymoon here with Hugh Throssel in a cottage owned by her mother. She wrote her novel Black Opal (1921) while staying in the town in another cottage.

Vance and Nettie Palmer lived there in the early 1920s. Nettie wrote:

You could easily imagine yourself taking root there, developing a local patriotism, bringing up your children to know its history and become attached to its soul.

Having passed through, I can think of worse places to live. Vance Palmer’s novel, Daybreak (1932) is set here and in the Dandenongs in general.

Peter Pierce (ed)
The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983 (rev ed)
501pp.
ISBN: 0195536223