Romance of the Swag

The Australian swag fashion is the easiest way in the world of carrying a
load. I ought to know something about carrying loads: I've carried
babies, which are the heaviest and most awkward and heartbreaking loads
in this world for a boy or man to carry, I fancy. God remember mothers
who slave about the housework (and do sometimes a man's work in addition
in the bush) with a heavy, squalling kid on one arm! I've humped logs on
the selection, "burning-off," with loads of fencing-posts and rails and
palings out of steep, rugged gullies (and was happier then, perhaps);
I've carried a shovel, crowbar, heavy "rammer," a dozen insulators on an
average (strung round my shoulders with raw flax)--to say nothing of
soldiering kit, tucker-bag, billy and climbing spurs--all day on a
telegraph line in rough country in New Zealand, and in places where a man
had to manage his load with one hand and help himself climb with the
other; and I've helped hump and drag telegraph-poles up cliffs and
sidings where the horses couldn't go. I've carried a portmanteau on the
hot dusty roads in green old jackeroo days. Ask any actor who's been
stranded and had to count railway sleepers from one town to another!
he'll tell you what sort of an awkward load a portmanteau is, especially
if there's a broken-hearted man underneath it. I've tried knapsack
fashion--one of the least healthy and most likely to give a man sores;
I've carried my belongings in a three-bushel sack slung over my
shoulder--blankets, tucker, spare boots and poetry all lumped together. I
tried carrying a load on my head, and got a crick in my neck and spine
for days. I've carried a load on my mind that should have been shared by
editors and publishers. I've helped hump luggage and furniture up to, and
down from, a top flat in London. And I've carried swag for months out
back in Australia--and it was life, in spite of its "squalidness" and
meanness and wretchedness and hardship, and in spite of the fact that the
world would have regarded us as "tramps"--and a free life amongst men
from all the world

The Australian swag was born of Australia and no other land--of the Great
Lone Land of magnificent distances and bright heat; the land of
self-reliance, and never-give-in, and help-your-mate. The grave of many
of the world's tragedies and comedies--royal and otherwise. The land
where a man out of employment might shoulder his swag in Adelaide and
take the track, and years later walk into a hut on the Gulf, or never be
heard of any more, or a body be found in the bush and buried by the
mounted police, or never found and never buried--what does it matter?

The land I love above all others--not because it was kind to me, but
because I was born on Australian soil, and because of the foreign father
who died at his work in the ranks of Australian pioneers, and because of
many things. Australia! My country! Her very name is music to me. God
bless Australia! for the sake of the great hearts of the heart of her!