Riverina - Culture

Culture

The Riverina was the setting for some of Australia's great artistic and literary works of the 19th and early 20th century. Most of these works reflected the rural lifestyle and agricultural pursuits common in the Riverina at that time and projected an image of Australia and Australians that would later change rapidly.

The writer Joseph Furphy worked as a bullocky for 10 years in the area around Hay from 1872. Later, using the pen name Tom Collins, Furphy wrote Such Is Life set in the Riverina during the drought and depression of the 1890s and drawing on his experiences as a bullocky. Although a slow seller, the novel was described as "fitted to become an Australian classic" by A.G. Stephens, the literary critic of The Bulletin.

Published in 1921, Around the Boree Log and Other Verses was written by Patrick Joseph Hartigan, under the pen name John O'Brien. A Roman Catholic priest, after early stints at Thurgoona and Berrigan, in 1917 Hartigan was appointed as the parish priest of Narrandera where he stayed until 1944. His poems recorded the everyday lives and mateship of the people of the Riverina. His friend and well-known poet C. J. Dennis hailed them in the Bulletin as in 'the direct Lawson-Paterson line mainly—unaffected talk about Australians, much as they would naturally talk about themselves'. Around the Boree Log ran to five editions and 18,000 copies by 1926.

The artist and key member of the Heidelberg School, Tom Roberts spent some time on a sheep station near Brocklesby prior to and during the painting of his most celebrated artwork, Shearing the Rams. The painting was criticised in its time for the depiction of strong manual labour rather than the common "high art" themes of the day. It is seen now as reflecting Australia's largest industry at the time and the work of ordinary Australians. The painting is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria.

Scots of the Riverina, a poem written by one of Australia's most renowned writers, Henry Lawson, is set in Gundagai. The poem describes a father's anger at his son's desertion at harvest time and later his grief when the son dies in battle in World War I. Hay and Hell and Booligal, written by Banjo Paterson, is a humorous take on life on the flat western Riverina plan.

Today, major cultural institutions in the Riverina include the Museum of the Riverina, the Riverina Theatre Company and the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, all located in the regional centre of Wagga Wagga with outreach to the smaller towns. Many regional towns including Hay, Deniliquin and Gundagai house museums of significant regional interest. The HotHouse Theatre group, based in Albury takes live theatre to small towns throughout the Riverina. The tiny town of Morundah holds an annual night at the opera, hosting performances by OzOpera and the Victorian Opera. Popular music groups from the Riverina include one of Australia's most distinctive and popular bands of the '90s and 2000s, Spiderbait who come from the southern Riverina town of Finley.