Discuss the concept of ‘mateship’ with reference to the writers you have read.

Clancy of the Overflow’ is included in Paterson’s first volume of verse. The poem expresses an intense love of the countryside. The attraction of the drover’s life are found mostly in the natural background of his landscape and his free movement across that vast landscape. The other attraction of the drover’s life is the enjoyment of his mates. The appeal of the natural landscape and the enjoyment of mateship are evident in the following lines :

And the bush has friends to meet him and their kindly voices greet him

In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,

And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,

And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars .

The concept of mateship that characterized the Australian society of the century was also a masculine concept.