Henry Lawson pays tribute

Stony broke and addicted to alcohol, poet and writer Henry Lawson in 1892 was given a one-way rail ticket to the “back o’ Bourke” by the editor of the Bulletin, to “search for ‘copy’ in that Darling River town”.

One of the things that fired Lawson’s imagination during his outback stint was The Salvation Army band that played outside Bourke’s Carriers Arms Hotel, inspiring him to write “Booth’s Drum”. And it was a sweet, angelic, golden-haired “Army” girl who became the heroine of Lawson’s short story “That Pretty Girl in the Army”.

After Lawson’s poem “The Good Samaritan” was published in The War Cry of 13 September 1930, his publishers, Angus and Robertson, wrote to the editor, “The poet had a great respect for the Army, and nothing would have pleased him more than to see the verses in your paper.”