What does Henry Lawson’s story “Drifted Back” tell us about the experience of the Australians in 19th century? What two themes we can identify in the story?

In this essay I will present my view on Henry Lawson’s perspective on the life and experience of white settlement pioneers in outback Australia described in a sketch story “Drifted Back”. Lawson (17 June 1867 – 2 September 1922) absolutely had no romantic illusions about a 'rural idyll'. His bitter view of the outback life was far removed from the romantic idyll of brave horsemen and beautiful scenery depicted in some other Australian novels and poetry of his time. He touched two themes in the story: loneliness and change.

From the story we learn that the stranger, perhaps a white old man, has come back after 15 years to the town he knew very well. He enquired about number of people he knew from this desolate town. He listed them surname by surname expecting to find a few of his old friends. He seemed very surprised to find that most of the people were no longer in the town. He did not expected so big a change. It seems like he did not realise that time is flowing. He came alone to his hometown after years of his swagman journey “(…)I've tramped and travelled long ways since then” expecting to reunite with his family - old friends, to find a home again and spend Christmas-time like everyone likes to spend – with family, among people where one feels safe and comfortable.


Lawson rejected the romantics and reinvented Australian realism. The sketch was written with a bit of a sense of humour and great sadness at the same time. Lawson started his story like a situation comedy we all know widely from some contemporary broadcasted TV channels nowadays. Paragraph by paragraph he developed an action of one seemingly simple situation: someone entered a grocery talked a bit to a grocer then bought something and got out. However, all Lawson’s mastery is shown here. He built all stages of change of his main hero’s emotions and attitudes. At first the stranger came onto the scene with a great hope “…someone who would be glad to see him”, with joy “…with the air of one who had come back after many years to see” and with a “…great deliberation”. The positive emotions are continuously developed further in the story “… [stranger] stroked his beard, and grinned quizzically at the shopman” and with funny narrative elements such “… who smiled back presently in a puzzled way”, and then this nice cheerful anecdote was getting close to the climax in the ninth verse with a first expressed embarrassment “…Old man? What old man?” and then Lawson exposed a climax with a first disappointment in 17th line “…Dead! Old Ben Hake?”. At this point in the story an atmosphere and emotions have turning point in the story and went towards sadness and negative feelings: “…The stranger seemed to have lost a great deal of his assurance. He turned his side to the counter, hooked his elbow on it, and gazed out through the door along Sunset Track”. The main hero of the story clearly is now dejected at the discovery that life changes so unexpectedly and unbelievably over the course of time. He is trying to find back his mental balance after the blow to his expectations he had just experienced. He discovered that he will never see his old friends again: Ben Hake who owned the grocery, lovely M’Lachlans, Jimmy Nowlett who was a bullock-driver, Duggans with good hearts, Wilds, Jim and so on. Then the action turns again to more positive feelings with colour of a love story in a back ground when the stranger asked “hesitatingly” about Mary Wild, probably his girlfriend from the past, and then unpleasant stroke hit him again when he was informed by the grocer that she is his wife at present. So it is embarrassment again, what was illustrated by “(…)She mightn't remember me! He reached hastily for his swag, and shouldered it”

Lawson created a style that defined Australians as dryly laconic, passionately egalitarian and deeply humane. In this one narration he focused on the Australian outback life of a small Australian desolate town. He depicted bleakness and loneliness in this short story: “(…)I came a long way out of my road a−purpose....I meant to have just one more Christmas with old Ben Hake an' the rest of the boys” and he expressed a bitter statement with memoirs “(…)Things is changed. The old houses is pretty much the same, an' the old signs want touchin' up and paintin' jest as had as ever; an' there's that old palin' fence that me an' Ben Hake an' Jimmy Nowlett put up twenty year ago”. Furthermore he exposed not the only loneliness but the lack of stability in life through the example of the stranger. This was illustrated by “There's nothing to keep me here. I'll push on and get into my track again (…) He drifted out and away along Sunset Track”. So, he drifted back just to realise that there is no place on Earth he would go back because time flew over and people lives were changed.

This sketch story contains a short plot which can be expanded by the reader limited only to his only imagination, empathy and his life experience. The sketch itself describes impressions of people, places and the effect of time flow. It is focused on individual moments, leaving the reader to imagine for themselves the events that led to this occasion, and to wonder what events will follow. This short sketch story aims at suggestiveness rather than explicitness. “Drifted Back” is thus a sentimental history of very lonely time in Australian vagabond life which seemed devoid of greater sense.

Editing support: assoc. prof. Michael Griffith