Bush-balladry

It anticipated, in its emphasis on outdoor virility and the cult of the horse and its devil-may-care attitude, and to some extent even by its casually ironic meditation, the prolific bush-balladry of a decade or two later—a vogue which in its turn of course, increased the readers of Gordon.

Although bush-balladry may be very Australian, it has many antecedents: partly Irish and Scottish songs, partly Rudyard Kipling.

The Australian 'bush' or rural identity, bush-balladry, and the heroic traditions upon which they rest, speak to rhetorical propaganda of the nation-making through which colonial literature began.