Recently in Literary Monuments Category

The inscription here reads: In Memory of Joseph Furphy "Tom Collins" Born Chateau Yering 1843 Died Western Australia 1912 Author of SUCH IS LIFE RIGBY'S ROMANCE THE POEMS For Australia

Grave of Joseph Furphy, Karrakata Cemetery, Perth.

Henry Handel Richardson plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Dorothea MacKellar plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.
[Not quite lined up as I'd like.]

A.B. "Banjo" Paterson plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Kylie Tennant plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Morris West plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

David Williamson plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Patrick White plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

C.J. Dennis plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Christina Stead plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Tom Keneally plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.
[I should have cleaned the cigarette butts off this one first.]

Christopher Brennan plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Peter Corris plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Dorothy Hewett plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Robert Hughes plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Barry Humphries plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

A.D. Hope plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Kenneth Slessor plaque, Circular Quay, Sydney.

Statue of Joseph Furphy in Shepparton, Victoria.

First day cover for release of Australian stamps commemorating C.J. Dennis's "Sentimental Bloke". The verse on the envelope is taken from "The Intro".

Mary Gilmore on the Australian $10 note.

The verse running vertically on the left-hand side of the note is from Gilmore's poem "No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest". The first two verses of which are:

Sons of the mountains of Scotland,
Welshmen of coomb and defile,
Breed of the moors of England,
Children of Erin's green isle,
We stand four square to the tempest,
Whatever the battering hail-
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

Our women shall walk in honour,
Our children shall know no chain,
This land, that is ours forever,
The invader shall strike at in vain.
Anzac!...Tobruk!...and Kokoda!...
Could ever the old blood fail?
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

Banjo Paterson on the Australian $10 note.

The Australian $10 note has a history of commemorating literary figures. The obverse of this current note features Mary Gilmore (I'll have a posting on her next week) and the previous version, dating from 1972, showed Henry Lawson. If you look very closely you can see some verse running across the bottom of the note. This is the first two lines from Paterson's poem "The Man from Snowy River", which starts:

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses - he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stockhorse snuffs the battle with delight.

Bust of C.J. Dennis

Clarence (Clarrie or Den) Michael James Stanislaus Dennis was born in Auburn, South Australia on September 7, 1876, to James Dennis and his second wife Catherine (Kate) Tobin. After Kate's death in 1890, James Dennis moved the family north, first to Gladstone and then to Laura. Den was sent to school in Adelaide and returned when he was 17 to work in his father's hotel. After some years in Laura, Broken Hill and Adelaide (where he worked on The Critic and The Gadfly) he ended up in Victoria where he was to spend the rest of his life. In 1915 he published The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, an instant Australian classic that is probably the highest selling collection of poetry in this nation's history. He produced further works over the next few years but none reached the heights attained by "the Bloke". For the last 16 or so years of his life Dennis worked as "poet in residence" on the Herald newspaper in Melbourne. He died in 1938. This bust of C.J. Dennis is located in Laura, South Australia, outside the town hall.

From a personal perspective, if you follow the road on the right of the picture all the way to the top, turn left and continue for about 100 metres you'll come to the house where I grew up.

Statue of Adam Lindsay Gordon

Adam Lindsay Gordon was born in 1833 at Fayal in the Azores where his mother's father had a plantation. He completed his education in England and was sent by his family to South Australia in 1853 where he enlisted in the mounted police. He was briefly a member of Parliament and lived in Western Australia and Ballarat before moving to Melbourne. During his time in Ballarat he suffered a severe head injury in a riding accident, was bankrupted by a fire in the livery stable and lost his infant daughter. The day after the publication of his poems in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes he committed suicide on Brighton Beach in Melbourne. He is the only Australian poet to be honoured with a bust in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London. The statue depicted here is located on Spring Street, Melbourne, near the corner of Collins Street, in Gordon Reserve. It was erected in 1932 and funded by public subscription.

Statue of Mary Poppins

Helen Lyndon Goff was born in Maryborough, Queensland, on 9 August 1899. She is mainly known for the creation of the magical British super-nanny, Mary Poppins, ("practically perfect in every way"), which she wrote under the pseudonym P. L. Travers. The character achieved world-wide renown after the release of the Walt Disney film, Mary Poppins, featuring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, in 1964. Goff (Travers) wrote 6 Mary Poppins books from 1934 to 1989. She died in London on 23 April 1996. The best source of material on this writer can be found at the Wikipedia Mary Poppins entry. The picture shows a statue of the character Mary Poppins which was erected on the streets of Maryborough earlier this year.