For several months, construction near my residence has interfered with internet reception. Yesterday afternoon, utility companies dug into my neighbor’s yard with the result I do not have internet service. This comes at a particularly inconvenient time while James is in Africa and I could not post our guest article by midnight. At 3a I found myself driving around futilely trying to find a sufficiently strong wi-fi signal to post the story.

Instead of giving our guest short shrift, Rob Lopresti offers up two short stories by Australian storyteller, Henry Lawson. Click on the links and enjoy the tales.

– Leigh

Henry Lawson

by Rob Lopresti

Henry Lawson (1867-1922) was one of Australia’s greatest writers around the turn of the century. While his rival "Banjo” Paterson specialized in heroic tales of the bush (e.g. "Waltzing Matilda"), Lawson tended to write, grimly or romantically, of the hardships of that same wilderness.

I discovered Lawson in the 1970s when a number of folksingers started setting his poems to music ("Past Carin’", "Andy’s Gone With Cattle", "The Shame of Going Back", etc.) but when I read his stories I was astonished at how different they were from the poetry – and from each other.

"The Man Who Forgot" is frontier humor, like Bret Harte or early Mark Twain, except that his heroes are not cowboys or miners but sheepmen in the Outback. There is a crime involved so it seemed like a good choice for Criminal Brief. If you want to read some more of Lawson’s best (non-criminous) stories I recommend the naturalistic suspense of "The Drover’s Wife" (woman versus five-foot snake), or the sardonic wit of "The Union Buries Its Dead" (a small town reveals its nature at a stranger’s funeral).

Now, sit beside the campfire and hear a yarn…