Quintessential Australian Value Of Bush Poetry

Poetry is a paintbrush and the bush its canvas, the shores spritzed with stories of its beauty. The relevance of bush poetry is still eminently evident throughout society and oral storytelling today. In storytelling today, it is present in the use of diction, in the representation of outcasts in society and in the concern for anti-authoritarianism as a quintessential Australian value. Bush poetry also helps build national character, keeping Australia’s history alive years on. Through the analysis of Waltzing Matilda against Khe Sanh, the qualities of bush poetry can still be found in forms of contemporary storytelling.

Waltzing Matilda is a famous Australian bush ballad written by A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson in 1895. The ballad is about a swagman, …show more content…
Khe Sanh is about soldiers returning from the Vietnam War and how society turned their back and made them outcasts, and how they search for a peace of mind and a long-lost freedom they had lost. The contemporary song is about no longer holding the values of society, living outside of society and …show more content…
In the bush ballad Waltzing Matilda the main character, a swagman, lives outside the norms of society, and when he defiantly steals a sheep to eat the squatter and some troopers come to arrest and incarcerate him. As a last act of defiance, the swagman cries ‘You'll never catch me alive’ and drowns himself in the billabong rather than capitulate and conforming. In Khe Sanh, the solider, upon return, doesn’t shackle himself into the suburban chains but rather goes on an endless journey roaming from end to end abusing drugs, engaging in promiscuous sex all in a search for peace of mind. The characteristic anti-authoritarianism is an underlying theme in both songs, valuing their freedom above anything