Here are some ‘love stories’ from the bush. They range in style from Henry Handel Richardson’s insightful examination of adolescent sexual awakening to the stereotypical Victorian melodrama of Marcus Clarke and Ethel Mills.
In between those two extremes are some delightfully well-observed stories which delve into various aspects of the relationships between men and women. Some are poignant, some are amusing, and some are both. What they have in common is a special ‘bush’ flavour—most of them explore the stoic nature of the outback characters whose tales they are.
Lawson once wrote, ‘they say that I never have written of love’. Of course he had, and quite successfully, too. It is, however, a common, ill-informed ‘furphy’ that our colonial authors did not write well about women and love. I hope this selection of stories proves that opinion to be a furphy, indeed.