Bullocky

"Bullocky" is one of the poems which celebrates the courage and endurance of the European
pioneers. This composition is based on an actual person, Jack Purkiss, a bullock-driver who had
worked for the Wrights. The poet evokes the past pioneering days and gives those arduous
expeditions a remoteness and a sense of adventure that transforms them into legendary events.
As the poem unfolds itself, we realize that it narrates the progressive insanity of a pioneer
brought about by years of suffering and deprivation. Grief purifies the vision of the bullockdriver to the point of a kind of religious delusion which makes him see himself as a Moses
leading the Children of Israel into the Promised Land:
Beside his heavy-shouldered team,

thirsty with drought and chilled with rain,

he weathered all the striding years

till they ran widdershins in his brain:

Till the long solitary tracks

etched deeper with each lurching load

were populous before his eyes,

and fiends and angels used his road.

All the long straining journey grew
a mad apocalyptic dream,

and the old Moses, and the slaves

his suffering and stubborn team.
1

By identifying the bullock-driver with the prophet Moses, Judith Wright endows this figure with
a mythical significance which renders him timeless and part of the Australian heritage. And, in
doing so, the whole poem becomes a tribute to those whose suffering helped to make Australia
fruitful:
O vine, grow closer upon that bone
And hold it with your rooted hand.

The prophet Moses feeds the grape,

and fruitful is the promised land.

In "Bullocky," Judith Wright raises an aspect of Australia's past to the level of myth thereby
contributing to a sense of tradition the poet feels is so important for the development of an
Australian identity, a task to which she is fully committed.

However, the European pioneers were not the only people whose sufferings helped to fertilize
the land for a future vintage. Significantly, Judith Wright incorporates the Aborigines into her
poetry as a very important part of Australia's cultural heritage. She believes that by simply
ignoring the fate of the natives, white Australians will never be able to rid themselves of an
uneasy sense of guilt for what they did to the former inhabitants of Australia. However
reprehensible the actions against them might have been, the very fact of recognising and
regretting these actions opens a door to a new understanding of and respect for Aboriginal
custom and ways of life. Besides, as Judith Wright is deeply concerned about environmental
issues, she sees the Aborigines' reverence for the natural world as an example to be followed.
Thus, Judith Wright's purpose in reintroducing the Aborigines into the mind of Australians is not
so much to recall the violence of the European takeover but to make white Australians realize
that the natives are human beings who deserve respect and humane treatment and who may help
us find new and more intimate ways of relating ourselves to the physical world. As has already
been suggested and as the poet herself confirms, Judith Wright also wants to alleviate a feeling
of guilt for what her people did to the former inhabitants of Australia:
I have, I suppose, been trying to expiate a deep sense of guilt over
what we have done to the country, to its first inhabitants of all

kinds, and are still and increasingly doing. (Wright 1975: 172)

This feeling of guilt underlies "Bora Ring" where the memory of the Aboriginal tribes forced out
of their lands pervades the verses. The poet recreates the setting, brings the local colour into
focus and draws our attention to the deserted tribal territories with ghostly dances and echoes of
ritual chants. The description of an empty landscape full of memories of the Aborigines increases
the sense of usurpation and the feeling of guilt is intensified by the Biblical allusion in the last
stanza:
The song is gone; the dance

is secret with dancers in the earth,

the ritual useless and the tribal story

lost in an alien tale

....

Only the rider's heart

halts at a sightless shadow, an unsaid word

that fastens in the blood the ancient curse
the fear as old as Cain.
2

A plea for humane relationship underlies this poem, for although the tone is highly accusatory,
the final lines also imply that the urgent lesson to be learned is the final unity of mankind.

In an age of appalling brutality and genocide, Judith Wright's plea is, unfortunately, extremely
relevant. Very often the magnitude of the issues involved in today's conflicts makes us, writers
and teachers of literature, conscious of the triviality of our work. There is hardly any more
important task in the world of writing and teaching literature than denouncing and helping to
alleviate the atrocities of man's bestial behavior towards man.

In this sense the poetry and prose writings of Judith Wright bespeak an artist torn between her
faith in the redeeming power of poetry and the awareness that no significant number of people
have yet found it to be so. Hence her desire to convince the reader that we have the power to
change the world by changing our ways of seeing and relating ourselves to it. Hence too, her
recognition that poetry is a medium through which she tries to come to terms with her own
uncertainties and contradictions.: It may be legitimate to say what I think the general direction of
my work is- that is in so far as I know it myself. I am using natural symbols to work out human
problems, (my own of course), and to try to cast some incidental light on their relation to the
whole modern situation.

Judith Wright

Judith Wright, born in the country town of Armidale, but grew to become one of the most
influential modern thinkers through her poetry. Wright writes poems that expand further than just
love, she wrote poems expressing the issues that deal with the spiritual and cultural fracture. Her
views of the disintegrating culture and the physical environment surrounding her world are
portrayed through the various techniques. These elements of techniques are such as Wrights
idea for her poems; the battle between the surfer and the waves that she observed and her poem
reflecting the past in South of My Days. The comparisons of nature and people in the poem
Bora Ring and of the human progress and nature in Sanctuary successfully show the

difference between one definite race of domination, to the co-existence of both nature and man.
The sound techniques Wright used to slow or fasten the pace of the poem; and the structure of
the poem that can show rhymes, and portray the idea successfully.

The Idea of Wrights poem shows the complex mind of Judith Wright, her idea of nature and
cultural disintegration to make way for the human progress. Wrights main idea of the road
representing the human progress, and how the nature and the surroundings that was destroyed for
the sake of the progress of the road. The symbolization of the human progress by the road has
been described as in conflict with the surrounding environment and is still sweeping through.
The description of the road as like a long fuse laid shows that the road (human progress)
connects everywhere, yet potentially destructive hence the word used fuse. The contradiction
between the title of the poem Sanctuary and its idea of the destroying of nature is misleading,
although the poet still gave hope in the fourth stanza; the line and meaning love, perhaps they
are a prayer. Shows the poet giving the readers hope of mans co-existence with the nature,
instead of viewing.
In what way is Judith Wright's poetry a worthwhile study for Australian students?
Judith Wright is a respected Australian poet is also known as a conservationist and protester. Her
poetry has captured the most amazing imagery of Australian Culture. For Australian students to
understand their own culture and history it is necessary to study the best poetry and Judith
Wright's poetry is definitely some of the best.
Her achievement in translating the Australian experience into poetry led in her best work to a
rich inheritance of lyricism and directness. Through stories told by older workers on the property
she learnt of the pioneers' part in both the destruction of the land and the dispossession and
murder of the aboriginal people. The sense of fear she felt at invasion enabled her to understand,
at some level, how the Aborigines would have felt.
Judith Wright wrote about many things in her poems, which are necessary for Australian
students to be taught which apply to learning about Australia. Australian culture is something
Judith wrote about very strongly and this shows through her poem Bora Ring. Bora Ring is about
the Aborigine culture and how it has been lost by the invasion of Europeans.

The hunter is gone: the spear

is splintered underground; the painted bodies
a dream the world breathed sleeping and forgot.
The nomad feet are still.'

This is an incredible paragraph extracted from Bora Ring. This poem depicts perfectly of the
European invasion of Australia. It shows how the traditions and stories are gone, how the
hunting and rituals are gone and lost in an alien tale', the Europeans being the aliens. This poem
also describes that it seemed as if the tradition of Aborigines was breathed sleeping and forgot'.
These are powerful words Judith Wright used to show how they Aborigines were quickly
invaded and forgotten'.
CONTEXT OF HER
When reading poetry, it is often vital to have an awareness of its context. Particularly in the
works of Judith Wright, it is important to have a familiarity with her life and also some
knowledge of Australian during her time. Without an understanding of the context, poems such
as "Woman to Man" and "Bora Ring" could be challenging when considering what they are
reflecting on. However other poems such as "Rainforest", do not require such an in depth
comprehension of the context to be appreciated.
"Woman to Man", a poem comprising of four stanzas, each with four verses, was written by
Judith Wright in nineteen forty-nine. This poem could quite easily be enjoyed as a poem that is
chiefly concerned with nature. The first stanza opens with "The eyeless labourer in the night, the
selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day" and for readers with little or no knowledge of Judith Wright's life,
it would be easy to accept this as a simple reference to nature as is quite common in Wright's
work, without looking for any deeper meaning. However, in order for the poem's ideas to be
understood completely, it is necessary to know that when this poem was written that Judith
Wright was in fact pregnant. Upon acquiring this knowledge, the rest of the poem seems to quite
fittingly explore pregnancy and female sexuality.
For complete appreciation with Judith Wright's "Bora Ring", an awareness of Australian and
particularly Aboriginal history. "Bora Ring" is an entertaining poem that explores Aboriginal
culture. The poem opens with the verses "The song is gone; the dance is secret with the dancers
in the earth", a simple representation of a lost dance. Devoid of any understanding of Australian
and Aboriginal history, the full impact of the poem cannot be felt. This poem is a vivid
exploration of the disappearance of Aboriginal culture at the hands of the colonisers of Australia.
With this knowledge, it is easier to understand exactly what "the tribal story..

Bora Ring
1.. The stanzas in Bora Ring are all equally consistent and a regular four lines.
2.. Similarities in the words of Bora Ring include: song, dance, dancing-ring; earth, grass,
hunters, underground; tribal, corroboree, chant, ritual.
3..Australiana in Bora Ring include: corroboree, painted bodies, Cain and apple-gums.

4.. The allusion of the last line refers to the fear that Cain held towards his brother, this fear, like
the story Wright is telling, is timeless and great.
5.. Wright is making a socio cultural comment in Bora Ring, telling of how other cultures are
being pushed aside in order to promote a different culture. In this case, the original culture of the
aborigines has been assimilated and forgotten amongst the western culture.
Bullocky
1.. The structure of Bullocky is regular and all stanzas have four lines, creating, after each line,
natural pauses that emphasise certain points.
2.. The style of the diction in Bullocky is very biblical, referring to biblical figures or events and
using words and phrases with biblical origins.
3..Bullocky is presenting a part of Australian history that involves the claiming of the aboriginal
lands and the aboriginal ways by settlers.
4.. Wright's final comment is that the land does not belong to the English/westerners and it will
forever be tied to the aboriginal ways and culture.
5.. Wright's method in of presentation in Bullocky is similar to that of Bora Ring's in that the
stanzas are in a regular rhythmical pattern and are designed to emphasise key points through the
use of implied natural pauses.
Half-Caste Girl
1.This poem explores two different worldly experiences, the settlers would and the native
aboriginal world, the former of which is constructed as bad or somehow 'evil'.
2. The world constructed in Half-Caste Girl is one of ownerlessness and native freedom.
Nothing belongs to anyone. However, this is only presented in the first stanza, the second, in a
contrast, is a world of limits, injustice and choicelessness.
3. The pleasures are the freedoms and the lands that can be used by anyone. The fears however,
are the opposite, boundaries exist and the lands freedoms are exterminated.
4. Half-Caste Girl in its presentation is not dated; the cultural coexistence struggles still exist in
Australia today.
Bora Ring
1. The Stanzas in Bora Ring are regular 4 lines each. This is clearly
identifiable by looking at the poem. The last line of each stanza is
emphasized.
2.
Comparisons
Contrast
gone, useless, lost
- hunter is gone riders heart
earth, grass, hunters, underground
tribal, corroboree, chant, ritual
3. Corroboree, apple gums. The Australian Indigenous people Aboriginals
4. The allusion of the last line is the representation of the relationship between Cain and Abel.
Wright refers to the Aboriginals fear of the white man.
5. The socio-cultural comment Wright has made is that the significance the Aboriginal people
place on their ritualistic lifestyle, was overwhelmed when the white man came. She makes clear

that the Aboriginals lifestyle was highly dependent on the rituals and symbolic ceremonies that
took place before European invaders came. She emphasizes this in the first three stanzas, and in
the last stanza describes how the white man has strongly influenced the culture of the Aboriginal
people.
Bullocky
1. The poem is structured so that the second and fourth lines of each stanza
rhyme. The clues came from the reading one could note that emphasis was
naturally placed on these lines.
2. The words chosen here were short, which also increased the emphasis we
place on them when reading.
3. The pioneering stage, where explorers roamed and searched Australia.
4. The final comment Wright makes is that the Aboriginal people deserve a
place to call home. Whether she is in referral to the plight of the
Israelis, also without a place to call home, she questions the fact that
the white man has any right to have land, and the indigenous to not.
5. This poem is similar to that of Bora Ring in that she does not directly
make mention to what she is putting across. This poem describes the
postcolonial settler period, but her point seems to be that the Aboriginal
people deserve land.
Half-Caste Girl
1. The world of experience being explored here is that of the lost generation.
2. Elements that are different from the world I know include the change of policy by the
Australian government for no longer do they take children of
mixed decent (Aboriginal and white background) .
3. The pleasures described are of times when little Josie was with her family, her people. The
pain described is when she is taken away wall
cunningly made.
4. Yes. The poem was written when such injustices took place. Wrights writing of the poem
would have been driven by the desire for the Australian
government to change such policy.
5. The implied answer to the last two lines would be the white man. For it was the white man
who took the children and left her alone in the night.
Bora Ring
"Bora Ring" is structured in four stanzas each consisting of four lines. Personification is used in
the second and third stanzas eg. "the grass stands up" and "the world breathed".
Imagery is also a part of the structure of "Bora Ring". Imagery is used in line six "the dancing
ring" gives the image of a group of Aboriginals dancing in a circle. Onomatopoeia is used in
line eight the word murmur when spoken sounds like a person speaking softly. Overall, the
issues brought up in "Bora Ring" are more important than the poetic devices used. I was able to
establish this by reading and interpreting the poem in such a way so that it meant something to
me. "Bora Ring" tells the story of a lost ritual. Words such as "gone", "lost" and "forgot" stress

the loss of something important and we are told in "Bora Ring" that the lost item was actually a
traditional ritual.
2) Comparison
Contrast
The trees and plants taking over the Aborigines rituals and are seen as representing them.
Past and Present
The Aborigines lifestyle to the European lifestyle
List of Australiana
Tribal
Corroboree
Hunter
Spear
Nomad
The world the elements listed above belong to is the Native Aboriginal world. Words such as
"corroboree" and "painted bodies" are distinctly Aboriginal as no European settlers would have
held a corroboree or painted their bodies. The Aborigines are the first to be and do the actions
and objects above.
The last line of "Bora Ring" is referring to the Europeans settling Australia as "Cain". In the
Bible Cain was the son of Eve and killed his brother. The Europeans killed Aborigines and now
fear retaliation from the Aboriginals because of the way they treated them upon arrival in
Australia. The fear being old as "Cain" means that the Europeans were fearing retaliation from
the moment they harmed the Aborigines and this fear has been passed down through generations
thus becoming "old".
The socio-cultural comment Judith Wright is making is that different cultures often find it hard
to form a society and so the dominant culture may try to take over and marginalize the recessive
culture. Wright has used poetry as her method to convey her socio-cultural comment. She has
also used contrast as she refers both to the Europeans and Aborigines.
"Bora Ring" second Page
A "Bora Ring" is a ring of stones marking a place that is sacred to Aboriginal people.
Repeated-See que 1
Repeated-See que 3
The Biblical reference in stanza four is to Cain, Eves first child. Cain killed his brother Abel
because he was jealous that God rewarded Abel for his offering but did not reward Cain. Cain
was then banished from Eden and built his own city called Henoch, after his son.
5) Two oxymorons in the fourth stanza of "Bora Ring" are :
"Heart halts"- The heart beats to keep a person alive and if it halts the rider would die but in
"Bora Ring" the rider doesnt. It refers to the spiritual feeling the rider feels when passing
through the sacred site where the "Bora Ring" can be found.
"Unsaid Word"- "An unsaid word that fastens in the blood the ancient curse the fear old as
Cain". A word that has not been said cannot possibly make a person scared as they would not
have heard the word in the context that would make it fearful.
Oppositions in "Bora Ring" are the lifestyles of the European "rider" and the Aboriginal "nomad"
and the past and present tenses referred to.
The wider frame of reference they represent is that the Aboriginals are a historical culture and

that the Europeans contributed to the majority of their dying. The Europeans are the present
culture and have taken over many Aboriginal sites.
Impinge-Make an impact on.
The theme of "Bora Ring" is to show the impinge that the Europeans made on the Aborigines as
the settled Australia, especially in the form of discrimination and marginalization.
The theme of "Bora Ring" is similar to that of "Half-Caste Girl" in the fact that "Little Josie" was
discriminated against and marginalized from the Europeans. This is also what happened to other
Aborigines mentioned in "Bora Ring".
Bullocky
Bullocky is structured in seven stanzas each with four lines. Rhyme is used at the end of every
second and fourth line of every stanza. Personification is used in the fifth and seventh stanzas.
Onomatopoeia is also used in the third stanza. Strong imagery is used in the fifth stanza. The
reader can actually visualise darkness surrounding a man sitting at a campfire. The clues that
identified rhyme were words such as "rain", "brain", "load", "road" etc. Each stanzas lines were
counted and found to be equal in length. Personification that was used includes "star-struck
darkness cupped him round" darkness is doing something human. The second example of
personification found was in the seventh stanza. It was "hold it with your rooted hand".
Wright was referring to a vine holding a bone and holding is a human characteristic. Straining is
an example of Onomatopoeia and imagery was discussed above.
The only diction in "Bullocky" is in stanza seven as it sounds as the poet is actually telling a vine
to grow on a bone and hold it.
In "Bullocky" Judith Wright is recalling the part of history in which the early settlers were
having trouble settling and successfully farming Australian soil. They could not handle the
climate and some settlers died.
Wrights final comment is that the land will always win. People cannot control the land but
merely depend on it and if they are unsuccessful in using the land to benefit themselves then the
land will claim and use their lives and bodies to its own advantage.
Wrights method in "Bullocky" is similar to "Bora Ring" because in both poems the land is the
triumphant element. It is always the factor that outlives the people and carries their traditions. It
also holds the peoples remains after they have passed away.
Half-Caste Girl
The word of experience being explored in "Half-Caste Girl" is the world of a marginalised
Aboriginal woman trying to live in an European society. The poem explores the situations she
was in and the marginalisation she must live with.
The elements in "Half-Caste Girl" that are different from the world I know is the discrimination
and marginalisation "Little Josie" suffered and her travelling in the outback when she was
young.
3) Pleasures Pains
Climbing a tree to find a "native cherry"
Dying
Falling in love
Marginalisation
Singing songs, dancing
Trying to be accepted in an European society and failing.

4) "Half-Caste Girl" is becoming dated as much of the marginalization and discrimination

mentioned in this poem is now seen as wrong and generally not done. Society has changed to
include Aborigines but some people still discriminate against and marginalized Aborigines.
5) The answer to the implied question of "Who is it has covered the sun and the beautiful moon
with a wallaby skin, and left her alone in the night?" are the European settlers. They have killed
"Little Josie" as they were settling Australia.

Many Australians still think of Australia's traditional Aborigines as simple hunter

gatherers living in an ancient and unchanging landscape, although there is growing
recognition of the complexity of their social and spiritual life. In fact, within the limits set
by their tools and available food supplies they were also sophisticated builders.
Clearly Wright favors Nature and the Aborigine's perception over that of Western
civilization. She sees a meaningful religious harmony in the Aborigine spirit, something she
questions in its Christian conquerors. By exposing the sin of Western civilization