Henry Lawson Visual Techniques

The distinctively visual provides a means of which a composer can connect with his or her audience in order to create a clear, distinct visual image of other people and their worlds - conveyed through the use of visual or literary techniques in their media. Composers such as Henry Lawson and Dorothea Mackellar are able to effectively depict an image through an exceptional use of language and techniques that help shape our understanding of the Australian people and their world. In particular, Henry Lawson’s short stories ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and ‘The Loaded Dog’ and the Dorothea Mackellar Poem ‘My Country’ are able to effectively depict the unique environment of the Australian bush landscape.
Both ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and ‘The Loaded Dog’ depict life as an Australian during the Colonial period. ‘The Drover’s Wife’ depicts the everyday life of a bush woman and her

children in the middle of the bush, while ‘The Loaded Dog’ provides a realistic description of people and places in the gold fields. These texts provide as insight into two different lifestyles within a similar environment.
Lawson uses an omniscient third person narration to further convey the hardships and struggles as well as the lifestyle and personality of the characters in his texts.

‘The Drover’s Wife’ opens with a vivid visual image of the house which becomes a character in itself, the lexical word chain “round timber, slabs, and stringy bark, and floored with split slabs” shows us the poor, rough materials used to build only what is necessary to survive. Thus, we can visualise the simplistic nature of the lives the drover’s wife and her children live in their environment. Strong visual imagery is employed to depict the landscape; “Bush all round – bush with no horizon, for the country is flat. No ranges in the distance… No undergrowth”. The repetition of “no” emphasises the lack of distinguishing features, the land is monotonous and contains “nothing to relieve the eye”. The environment is isolated; they are alone “There is nothing to see, however, and not a soul to meet”. This helps the audience to develop an understanding of the isolation and loneliness of Australians living in the bush during the Colonial

period.
Similarly, in ‘The Loaded Dog’ the landscape is depicted harshly through the line “the creek was low, just a chain of muddy waterholes” the metaphor “a chain of…” inspires the audience to visualise a line of waterholes occurring like a chain along the landscape. Lawson uses jargon relating to mining “sinking a shaft”, “gold quartz reef” and “rich reef” which gives the story an authentic voice which makes it seem more ‘real’ and allows us to visualise the scene as it plays out. The satirical tone in “There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the vicinity” describes the hopeful attitude of the men, yet also acknowledging the probable futility of finding any gold. While ‘The Drover’s Wife’ gives us the impression of isolation, ‘The Loaded Dog’ implies a sense of society based on the common goal of finding gold and the use of Australian vernacular. “Don’t foller us! Don’t foller us, you coloured fool!” This leads the audience to read the dialogue more naturally and creates humour through the adjective “coloured”. We are able to see and hear what is happening and what is being said.