FOLKLORE OF THE AUSTRALIAN RAILWAYMEN
The railways were quick to capture people's imagination, and a folklore grew up around them which was typically Australian.
Corning as they did in the early days of settlement, the railways not only linked the isolated communities with each other and with the sea ports, but also brought an order and unity to the country which it had lacked hitherto.
The huge distances and the differences of terrain and climate throughout the continent developed a rugged individuality, a courage and fertile ingenuity in the men who worked them; and the railwaymen became the main-stay of many local communities.
They all had one thing in common, an ability to express themselves on paper, as the written report was their one medium of communication with Head Office.
Some developed into poets and masters of doggerel. Folklore of the Australian Railwaymen is a rich storehouse of legends, lore, tradition, tall tales and poems of the railway track which conveys to the reader, as no earlier book has, the full flavour of life in the 'great family of railway workers'.
Reading this fascinating book makes one realize that the character, ethos and history of Australia would be much the poorer without these railwaymen and their wives.
To use the author's own words, When ten days old I was taken from Melbourne to a railway siding at Nowingi in the Mallee and spent childhood at various sidings where Mother was station mistress and Father, fettler; often our house beside the station was the only house to be seen.
Got lifts to bush schools along the railway line in guards van or on the footplate of the engine. Matriculation by correspondence.' Thus started Patsy Adam Smith's remarkable association with railways which led to her writing Hear the Train Blow, called 'a minor classic' by the Age critic; and now to Folklore of the Australian Railwaymen, to be followed by The Rails go Westward, a history of Australian railways for young people.
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