Why Swanny's Swaggy?         "Swanny" is an abbreviation or nickname for people with surnames starting with Swan and a "swaggy" is a rolled up blanket in which a swagman carried his possessions while travelling Australian country roads. This swaggy or swag or bluey is slung across the swagman's back and swagmen "humping the bluey" were a familiar feature of outback roads around the turn of the 20th century. They journeyed from place to place in search of seasonal or casual work. Many of Australia's folk songs are about these nomadic bush workers. In modern times the sight of a swagman on country roads has become rare, if not non-existent.         When I was a young fellow I had romantic notions about becoming a swagman, for it seemed such a carefree life. While driving or riding around western New South Wales we sometimes came across these weather worn bush travellers walking along the roads. Much to the relief of my relatives, I moved to Sydney and married a wonderful city lass. In "the big city", I worked in a customs laboratory, and qualified to be analytical chemist by graduating with a honors degree in Applied Chemistry from the University of New South Wales.        Living in Sydney was a far call from being a care free country wanderer. However I like to dream and imagine that travelling the Internet is something akin to the swagman's life of "travelling the track", moving where I will, seeing and learning different things every day and collecting all sorts of things. Weren't Swagmen Just Drifters?         This impression might be gained from one of Australia's best known folk songs, "Waltzing Matilda". The term does not have the same connotation of vagrancy as hobo or sundowner. They were nomadic bush workers intent on not being tied down by a strictly regulated life or routine. The comradeship between swagmen was strong with the traditions of mateship frequently becoming the subject of Australian short stories.         The concept of mateship is one of strong and loyal friendship given under even the most trying circumstances. In Australian history this has been displayed most vividly in World War 1, with the defeat by Turkish troops of an Australian and New Zealand invading force on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915. This noble but terrible defeat is still remembered on ANZAC Day on the 25th April each year.

My Country

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

-- Dorothea Mackellar

"My Country." --- Recited by the poem's author, Dorothea Mackellar.

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What is a Walkabout?         Walkabout is a white man's name for the Australian aboriginal custom of "going bush" at unpredictable intervals. Aborigines, employed by cattle stations or missions and ostensibly westernized, at certain times of the year gather families, leave behind possessions and other evidence of white culture and return to traditional meeting places, centres of their spiritual life.         Here disputes are settled according to tribal law, scattered kin groups hold reunions and the youth are educated by initiation and corroboree into ideals and heritage group. Walkabout is the aboriginal equivalent of religious retreat, renewing spiritual strength through return to ancient way of life in which every action is bound up with secret life, giving sense of tribal identity and continuity of life from earliest cultural heroes into the future. All this is said to be apparently only partially understood by Europeans and other non-aboriginals.         Quoted from an entry in "New National Australian Encyclopdaedia" of 1974.         The modern meaning of the word, when non-aboriginals use it in relation to themselves, is akin to taking a trip of re-discovery and self identification.

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Further Information For more background information the following Wikipedia links are helpful About Swagmen About Waltzing Matilda