The Shiralee by D’Arcy Niland - extract

      Everyone has their cross to bear – their swag, their shiralee – and for Macauley, walking across New South Wales in search of work, it is his young daughter who has to suffer his resentment at having her in tow. But then, he discovers that the ties that bind can be as much a comfort as a burden, and what he thought of as his Shiralee could be the one thing that will save him from himself.

This classic Australian novel perfectly captures the spirit of the bush and the tough, resilient people of the outback.

Extract

     There was a man who had a cross and his name was Macauley. He put Australia at his feet, he said, in the only way he knew how. His boots spun the dust from its roads and his body waded its streams. The black lines on the map, and the red, they knew him well. He built his fires in a thousand places and slept on the banks of rivers. The grass grew over his tracks, but he knew where they were when he came again.

He had two swags, one of them with legs and a cabbage-tree hat, and that one was the main difference between him and others who take to the road, following the sun for their bread and butter. Some have dogs. Some have horses. Some have women. And they have them as mates and companions, or for this reason and that, all of some use. But with Macauley it was this way: he had a child and the only reason he had it was because he was stuck with it.

     They'll tell you he took that child from the city when it was only three and a half and went into the backblocks and carried it on his shoulder, under his arm, and in a sugar-bag that swung as a balance to his bluey. And that's the truth. He still did it, for the kid was only six months older; though not so much – for it had been broken into walking and Macauley in desperate resignation had shaped his travelling time and means to suit it. They saw him coming into town with the child asleep in his arms, or thrown up with its head on his shoulder, bobbing with the rhythm of the walk, dead to the world. They saw it trudging beside him, the two of them such a contrast in size it made you laugh.

     Wherever Macauley went the child went with him. It was his real swag. The one he carried on his back was a mere nothing. That swag when he hoisted it and strapped it about his thick shoulders stayed put and gave him no trouble. He didn't have to cook a feed for it. He didn't have to make an extra shake-down. If he put it on the ground it didn't walk away. He didn't have to wash it and comb its hair. It never had to have its buttons done up. It was never the burden to slow him down.

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