I had one of the guiding writers to help with The Kings Cross Sting was Henry Lawson, it exposed in the poetry my grandmother taught me was a link to the family history. Stone? It was the stone I needed to find.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocks_Push
Australian authors of the time mentioned the Push in various of their works. A poem called The Bastard from the Bush, attributed to Henry Lawson, and a sanitised published version, The Captain of the Push, describe in vivid and colourful language a meeting between a Push leader and a "stranger from the bush".
- Would you dong a bloody copper if you caught the cunt alone,
- Would you stoush a swell or Chinkee, split his garret with a stone?
- Would you have a moll to keep you, would you swear off work for good?'
- What? Live on prostitution? My colonial oath I would!'
Another contemporary poet, Banjo Paterson, describes a group of tourists who go to visit the Rocks Push, and paints the following picture of the appearance of the gang members:
Paterson also said, addressing Lawson in In Defence of the Bush,
- Did you hear no sweeter voices in the music of the bush
- Than the roar of trams and 'buses, and the war-whoop of "the push"?
- Did the magpies rouse your slumbers with their carol sweet and strange?
- Did you hear the silver chiming of the bell-birds on the range?
- But, perchance, the wild birds' music by your senses was despised,
- For you say you'll stay in townships till the bush is civilised.
- Would you make it a tea-garden and on Sundays have a band
- Where the "blokes" might take their "donahs", with a "public" close at hand?
- You had better stick to Sydney and make merry with the "push",
- For the bush will never suit you, and you'll never suit the bush.
One of the most famous haunts of the Rocks Push was Harrington Place
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