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The Australian Yarn: The Definitive Collection
This collection of Australian folklore is rare in its authenticity. All the yarns were told to the author first-hand so the voice of the storyteller is strong and clear. These yarns spinners are authentic outback characters - cattlemen and stockmen, farmers and drovers, labourers - and the stories touch on every aspect of their lives to create a remarkable picture of Australian bush society. Ron Edwards has travelled the outback collecting yarns for many years, and adds to the collection a perceptive essay analysing the structure of the yarn.
291 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1996
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February 3, 2020
Entertaining and thought provoking. Each story is very short and immediate which is basically what a yarn is. You can see the teller leaning over a bar surrounded by men, always men - women only when they had some exceptional quality that would be admirable in a man eg the 'big' Estonian woman who picked up the rear end of a deeply bogged truck telling one of the men who had spent days failing to free it to drive it forward on the front wheels and the other, when he asked what he should do, to "just encourage the other fellow" - and then proceeded on her miles long walk back to the family home carrying a wood stove on her head that she had picked up cheap in town (p53).
Most yarns are by white men with a good dose of Aboriginal stockmen and boundary riders thrown in. There are deeply disturbing attitudes - eg an enraged property owner shouting at one of his men who have given a bicycle to one of his Aboriginal workers as a thank you for assistance he had given never to do that as being a 'new chum' he was obviously unaware that you never give the 'blacks' anything '....because they might wake up that they are slaves.' (p 134) the general tone of interaction between white and Aboriginal workers however is easy and comfortable making stories like the above somehow worse. Each story is a fascinating and instructive snapshot of a particular section of society in early Australian history. It is very alive and reading them is like being there, elbows leaned in a puddle of beer on a bar or out in the bush or around a campfire at night with the jingle of horses moving in the background or on a remote propety or in a lonely boundary rider's hut. The book finishes with an interesting analysis of the place of yarns in literature generally and the role they play. It is dry reading after the yarns themselves but because I am interested in that sort of thing I found it an excellent conclusion to a series of stories told in gravelly tones by men whose voices I could almost hear.
Most yarns are by white men with a good dose of Aboriginal stockmen and boundary riders thrown in. There are deeply disturbing attitudes - eg an enraged property owner shouting at one of his men who have given a bicycle to one of his Aboriginal workers as a thank you for assistance he had given never to do that as being a 'new chum' he was obviously unaware that you never give the 'blacks' anything '....because they might wake up that they are slaves.' (p 134) the general tone of interaction between white and Aboriginal workers however is easy and comfortable making stories like the above somehow worse. Each story is a fascinating and instructive snapshot of a particular section of society in early Australian history. It is very alive and reading them is like being there, elbows leaned in a puddle of beer on a bar or out in the bush or around a campfire at night with the jingle of horses moving in the background or on a remote propety or in a lonely boundary rider's hut. The book finishes with an interesting analysis of the place of yarns in literature generally and the role they play. It is dry reading after the yarns themselves but because I am interested in that sort of thing I found it an excellent conclusion to a series of stories told in gravelly tones by men whose voices I could almost hear.
Displaying 1 of 1 review