THE SHEARER'S WIFE

---------oOo---------

Thomas Louis Buvelot Esson (1878 – 1943) was an Australian poet, journalist, critic and playwright.

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, following his father’s death, he and his mother moved to Australia when he was three years old. Esson attended Melbourne University where he majored in English and French. Unhappy with Australian literary scene, he left and travelled to France, England and Ireland. While he was in Ireland, he was encouraged to return to Australia and start writing Australian material. He began by writing poetry. However, it was short stories and plays that he would later turn his keen writing ability. Today Louis Esson is considered the father of modern Australian drama.

---------oOo---------

The following poem is another illustration and reminder of the difficult lives of the Australian pioneering women, who not only had to raise and care for families but who also had to keep the homesteads running whilst their menfolk were off droving, shearing and working away from home.

How easy for us city folk in today’s age, in comparison.

Notes:

First published 1910.

dree = to endure

stook = a group of sheaves of grain which have been placed in a field standing upright so as to enable the heads to dry

---------oOo---------

THE SHEARERS WIFE

Before the glare o’ dawn I rise

To milk the sleepy cows, an’ shake

The droving dust from tired eyes,

Look round the rabbit traps, then bake

The children’s bread.

There’s hay to stook, an’ beans to hoe,

An’ ferns to cut in the scrub below,

Women must work, when men must go

Shearing from shed to shed.

I patch an’ darn, now evening comes,

An’ tired I am with labour sore,

Tired o’ the bush, the cows, the gums,

Tired, but we must dree for long months more

What no tongue tells.

The moon is lonely in the sky,

Lonely the bush, an’ lonely I

Stare down the track no horse draws nigh,

An’ start . . . at the cattle bells.

Louis Esson