While the billy boils

Henry Lawson’s famous collection of short stories

Boiling the Billy

However, we found Hungerford and camped there for a day. The town is right on the Queensland border, and an interprovincial rabbit-proof fence— with rabbits on both sides of it—runs across the main street.

This fence is a standing joke with Australian rabbits—about the only joke they have out there, except the memory of Pasteur and poison and inoculation.

Henry Lawson’s (1867–1922) harrowing journey through the drought-affected west of New South Wales in 1892, financed by The Bulletin, supplied him with experiences which would inform his writing for years. The short story, Hungerford, first published in The Bulletin in 1893, conveys the bleakness of Lawson’s outback, lightened by that typically Australian laconic humour.

In 1896, Lawson published While the billy boils, a book of short stories which had previously been published in magazines. For this he made extensive revision to the texts. This is a typical page of the final text, with a cutting from the original magazine publication showing extensive manuscript additions and corrections. The book established Lawson as a literary figure of note and is a classic of Australian literature.
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