I had written him a letter

If you're looking for an example of how a classic literary text can speak to the present, you could hardly do better than Clancy of the Overflow. Banjo Paterson's poem of a century ago caught some Australian attitudes that are with us still. A sweet moment of the later Howard years, during the Australian Wheat Board scandal, came with the email circulation of an apt parody, Howard of the Overflow, penned I believe by a Canberra insider. It begins: I had written him a letter, which I had, for want of better Knowledge, sent to where I met him at the Wheat Board, years ago. He was chairman when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him Just on spec, to make the point that 'Howard doesn't want to know'. That letter, unanswered or never received; the clumsy goings on in far-off lands; the great public unknowing, through perfected bureaucratic arts of the swamp (now known as wetlands) and sinkhole (review, inquiry, commission) the old poem allows for it all in its wistful option of riding off into a neverland where accountability is left behind. The lone male drover survives as a fantasy of settler mythology, the one who doesn't settle, the man on a journey to a void beyond communication and constraint. But for me the poem also comes to mind whenever I reflect on Australia's attempts to engage in cultural dialogue with the outside world.