Swagman on the road to Wilcannia

[NickJP]

I saw this photo in an exhibition of Axel Poignant's photographs at the Art Gallery of NSW about 40 years ago, and bought the exhibition catalogue which had this image as the front cover. The National Gallery of Australia has now scanned their print of the image and put it on their website.

What the photographer said about meeting the swagman in 1954:

"The bike had no chain or pedals. He used it to carry his worldly goods – tent fly, pots and pans, tucker and water and also some books. He gave his name as George Meredith and he was making his way from Paroo to Menindie which he expected to reach months later. He didn’t go to ‘The Hill’ [Broken Hill] anymore. It was too far. We met up with him just past the Springfield Tank."

In fact, if you look closely, the bike has no cranks and the rear wheel is reversed with the cog on the non-drive side. If you look at a map of Australia, and see how far it is between the named towns, you realise why it took him months to travel between them.

Axel Poignant was an English/Swedish photographer who emigrated to Australia in 1926 and spent considerable time travelling the country taking photographs.

[ANTONISH]

Nice picture.
Did he wheel the bike, or sit on it and scoot it along like a hobby horse?

[simonhill]

Magic photo. Interesting animal mask on the back.

Were bikes as common in Oz as they were in the UK back then. You often see pictures of masses exiting our factories, but I don't remember seeing them for Oz.

On the Ho Chi Minh Trail they used (pushed) bikes to carry goods. They attached a long stick to the handlebar to enable steering and balance while pushing. There are probably other examples in Asia.

Aussies love abbreviations and they call a bike a "pushy".

[NickJP]

I don't know about the use of bicycles in cities and large towns, but from the 1890s until probably the 1930s they were the principal means of transport in the bush for miners, prospectors, linesmen, shearers and itinerant agricultural workers who had to get from place to place. Railway lines didn't service very much of Australia, and a bicycle was cheaper than a horse and didn't require stabling or feeding or watering.

Here's a typical shearers bike of the day, used for getting between shearing jobs on sheep stations:



And as for the pushy, the largest Australian bike web merchant and chain of stores is named Pushys: https://www.pushys.com.au/.

[Mike Sales]

If you would like musical accompaniment, here is The Springtime it brings on the Shearing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_r7O-qmB-I

[Jdsk]

I don't know about the use of bicycles in cities and large towns, but from the 1890s until probably the 1930s they were the principal means of transport in the bush for miners, prospectors, linesmen, shearers and itinerant agricultural workers who had to get from place to place. Railway lines didn't service very much of Australia, and a bicycle was cheaper than a horse and didn't require stabling or feeding or watering.

I didn't know that. Off to do some reading.

Thanks

Jonathan

[NickJP]

"The Bicycle and the Bush: Man and Machine in Rural Australia", by Jim Fitzpatrick, is pretty good. But I think it's no longer in print. Amazon have it as a Kindle, but otherwise you'd need to find a second hand copy or find it in a library.

[merseymouth]

Hi all, I may be wrong but I think that I read somewhere that there were more bicycles in use than horses for the same purpose in the Alaska "Gold Rush"? The bicycle stood the cold better than Dobbin!
But that is a very evocative photograph of the hash conditions face by early settlers in our former penal colony. IGICB MM

[ChrisButch]

Interesting colloquial evolution of 'swag': originally a cloth bundle, and still so used by interior furnishers for the bundle of a curtain pulled back to a wall. In UK English applied to the bundle in which a burglar concealed his loot, subsequently to the loot itself (whether or not bundled). In Oz English applied to the bundle in which an itinerant carries all his belongings, hence 'swagman' for one who lives thus.

[PH]

Nice photo, but a little odd to choose a bike to push, there have to be easier ways of transporting stuff if you're not riding.
"Swag" is still used by fairground showmen to describe the prizes won on the stalls.

[simonhill]

Swag is now probably more commonly used in Oz for a big sleeping or over bag. I met people who used them, but they are very bulky and we're carried in the back of their ute (utility - pick up truck).

I s'pose bikes were used because they were cheap and easily available - even beat up ones.