Character guide

Tom Collins

major

Also known as Collins, Tom, Mr. Collins, Thomas Collins, Terrible Tommy, Tommy

A bullock driver who narrates his own wandering life with philosophical irony, forever balancing hard labour against the luxury of a quiet mind.

Steve Thompson

major

Also known as Thompson, Mr. Thompson, Stephen Thompson

Tom's trusted mate on the road, a bullock driver whose practical errands and easy camaraderie keep the narrator tethered to the working world.

Mosey Price

supporting

Also known as Price, Old Price

An eccentric boundary rider whose philosophical bent and odd habits make him one of the Riverina's most memorable roadside characters.

Warrigal Alf

supporting

Also known as Alf

A rough-hewn bushman and bullock driver whose good heart shows through the grit of a life spent on the track.

Rory O'Halloran

supporting

Also known as Rory, Brave old Rory, Poor old Rory

An old Irishman whose warmth and sorrow, bound up with his daughter Mary, make him one of the novel's most affecting figures.

Moriarty

supporting

Also known as Mr. Moriarty

A local squatter and magistrate whose authority and class position make him a natural counterweight to the bullock drivers' world.

Alf Jones

supporting

Also known as Jones

Alf Jones anchors a stretch of Riverina travel, his paddock a known refuge where the narrator's horses remember the grass as well as he remembers the man's music. The narrator's easy indifference — better for Alf if gone, better for himself if not — quietly exposes the casual, self-interested calculus of a man without official hopes or fear of the sack. He matters as one of the small fixed points that make the vast, wind-scoured plain navigable, a name that turns open country into a route.

Cooper

supporting

Cooper belongs to the loose confederacy of bullock drivers who confer over grass as a vital question, dividing labour and spreading risk across a station too watchful to be safely worked by a township of wagons. He is one of the men whose rough, unprintable talk the narrator confesses he cannot render, and whose practical judgment shapes the day's small strategies. His presence grounds the novel's early arc in the unglamorous logistics of survival on the track.

Mary O'Halloran

supporting

Also known as Molly, pore Molly, Mary

Mary O'Halloran moves through the novel's margins as a daughter of the Riverina, her story shadowed by the narrator's rueful asides and the fatalism of a country that takes what it takes. The tenderness and grief that collect around her name — 'pore Molly' — signal a young woman whose life is bound up with the hard bargains of station and selection. She matters because her subplot gives the book its emotional weight, pulling the loose, episodic narrative toward genuine loss.

Alf Morris

supporting

Also known as Morris

Alf Morris belongs to the fraternity of bullock drivers whose dialogue the narrator deems too coarse for printable form, a limitation that itself becomes a wry comment on the book's honesty. As a friend of Tom Collins, he represents the easy, unpolished companionship of the track, where men share grass, gossip, and the small economies of a hard season. He matters as part of the human texture that makes the Riverina feel inhabited rather than merely described.

Willoughby

supporting

Willoughby is a fallen gentleman among bullock drivers, bearing a striking resemblance to Dixon yet lacking the leathery durability that rough work demands. Educated at an English university, he is harmless, inexpensive, and unobtrusive, his air of refinement equiponderating the physical force he does not possess — a man whose wealth, like Bassanio's, runs only in his veins. He matters as the novel's gentle emblem of class adrift in the colonies, a figure of quiet pathos in the democratic rough-and-tumble of the track.

Bob Dixon

supporting

Also known as Dixon, Bert

Bob Dixon is one of the bullock drivers who gather over grass and risk, his mind visibly engaged in a losing struggle with Willoughby's elegant vocabulary. Rough, practical, and quietly comic, he embodies the plain-spoken world the narrator moves through, where a man's worth is measured in bullocks and judgment rather than education. He matters as part of the novel's rich ensemble of track life, giving the early chapters their texture of camaraderie and small, unheroic decisions.

Dan O'Connell

supporting

Also known as Dan, Daniel O'Connell

Dan moves through the Riverina's bullock-driving circuit as a familiar, dependable presence, the kind of man whose arrival at a camp needs no explanation. His friendship with the narrator is built on shared hardship and unspoken understanding rather than sentiment, and he embodies the rough solidarity that holds together a life of constant movement and scarce grass. He matters because the early chapters' world of droving, camping, and quiet endurance takes its texture from men like him.

Stewart

supporting

Also known as Mr. Stewart, the Stewart

Stewart belongs to the small class of landholders whose decisions ripple through the lives of the men who work the country around them. His authority is real but not absolute, and the gap between his station and that of the bullock drivers and swagmen creates a quiet friction that the narrator observes without rancour. He matters because the novel's social landscape needs a figure who represents settled power, against which the itinerant life can be measured.

Jack the Shellback

supporting

Also known as Jack

Jack the Shellback arrives as a figure on the ground-line, a swagman tramping through the roasting sun whose past is as opaque as it is presumably eventful. The narrator watches him through a binocular and finds in him a springboard for moral reflection, treating the man's ordinary existence as a text worth reading. He matters because he crystallises the novel's recurring question of whose lives are deemed worth recording, and why.

Ida

supporting

Also known as poor Ida

Ida exists at the edge of the narrator's diary entries, a figure whose story is bound up with the emotional undercurrents that run beneath the surface of station life. The narrator's habit of skipping months and picking out days means her appearances are fragmentary, and the tenderness implied by 'poor Ida' suggests a vulnerability that the rough world around her does not easily accommodate. She matters because she introduces a register of feeling that the novel's masculine, itinerant world otherwise keeps at arm's length.

Pup

minor

A young boy or dog, possibly a minor character.

Mrs. Beaudesart

minor

A woman of some social standing in the district.

The Stranger

minor

An enigmatic figure who appears briefly in the narrative.

Prescott

minor

Also known as Mr. Prescott

A minor character, possibly a professional man.

Barefooted Bob

minor

Also known as Bob, Bert

A distinctive bush character known for going barefoot.

Martin

minor

Also known as ole Martin, Mr. Martin

An older bullock driver or station hand.

Priestley

minor

Also known as So Priestley

A minor character, possibly a station worker.

Jack

minor

Also known as Young Jack, Dear Jack

A young man, possibly a relative or friend.

Toby

minor

A minor character, possibly a servant or worker.

Mr. Smythe

minor

Also known as Smythe

A minor character, possibly a station owner.

Ole Sollicker

minor

Also known as Sollicker, Old Sollicker

An eccentric bush character with a distinctive name.

Mr. Montgomery

minor

Also known as Montgomery

A local resident, possibly a squatter.

Tom Armstrong

minor

Also known as Tom, poor Tom, Armstrong

A bullock driver who meets a tragic end.

Bendigo Bill

minor

Also known as Bill

A bushman from Bendigo, a minor character.

Nosey Alf

minor

Also known as Alf, Nosey

A minor character with a distinctive nickname.

Bum

minor

A minor character, possibly a derogatory nickname.

Dad

minor

An older man, possibly a father figure.

Dick

minor

Also known as Dick L⸺

A minor character, possibly a station hand.

M'Nab

minor

Also known as Mr. M'Nab

A Scottish character, possibly a station manager.

Burke

minor

A minor character, possibly a bullock driver.

Archie

minor

Also known as Archie M⸺

A minor character, possibly a young man.

Joe Collins

minor

Also known as Mr. Collins, Joseph, Collins

A different Collins, possibly a relative of Tom.

Saunders

minor

Also known as the patient Saunders

A patient and long-suffering character.

Mrs. Montgomery

minor

Wife of Mr. Montgomery, a minor character.

Magomery

minor

Also known as Mr. Magomery

A minor character, possibly a variant of Montgomery.

Ole Q⸺

minor

Also known as Mr. Q⸺

A minor character with an abbreviated name.

Tregarvis

minor

Also known as ole Tregarvis, Young Tregarvis, young Tregarvis

A family of minor characters, father and son.

Monte Cristo

minor

A minor character, possibly a nickname.

Jerry

minor

A minor character, possibly a station hand.

Ike Cunningham

minor

Also known as Cunningham, Hairy-toothed Ike

A minor character with a distinctive appearance.

Charley Cross

minor

Also known as Cross

A minor character, possibly a bullock driver.

Tammas

minor

A Scottish minor character.

Andrews

minor

Also known as Whereupon Andrews

A minor character, possibly a station worker.

Donovan

minor

Also known as the Don Juan

A minor character with a romantic reputation.

Charley Webber

minor

Also known as Charley

A minor character, possibly a bullock driver.

Donal M'Gregor

minor

Also known as M'Gregor

A Scottish minor character.

Young Mooney

minor

Also known as Mooney, old Mooney, bar Mooney

A minor character, possibly a family member.

Young Arblaster

minor

Also known as Arblaster

A minor character, possibly a young man.

Tam M'Callum

minor

Also known as M'Callum, Tam

A Scottish minor character.

Bat

minor

A minor character, possibly a nickname.

Captain Royce

minor

Also known as Royce

A military man or ship captain, minor character.

Bob Stirling

minor

Also known as Bob, this Bob Stirling

A minor character, possibly a bullock driver.

Damper

minor

A minor character, possibly a nickname from bush food.

Timothy Collins

minor

Also known as Collins, Sir Timothy Collins

A minor character, possibly a relative of Tom.

Charley V⸺

minor

Also known as Charley

A minor character with an abbreviated surname.

Helsmok

minor

Also known as Missa Helsmok

A minor character with an unusual name.

Baxter

minor

A minor character, possibly a station hand.

Ax Billy

minor

Also known as Billy

A minor character, possibly a woodcutter.

Jack Ward

minor

Also known as Ward

A minor character, possibly a bullock driver.

Mr. T. Collins

minor

Also known as Collins

A minor character, possibly a variant of Tom Collins.

Rudolph Winterbottom

minor

Also known as Winterbottom, Mr. Rudolph Winterbottom

A minor character with a formal name.

Mr. Spanker

minor

Also known as Spanker

A minor character, possibly a station owner.

Martin Schoen

minor

Also known as Martin

A minor character, possibly a foreigner.

Posthumus

minor

A minor character, possibly a literary allusion.

Bert Smythe

minor

Also known as Bert

A minor character, possibly related to Mr. Smythe.

Commander David Collins

minor

Also known as Dave, Collins

A historical figure mentioned as a character.

Holmes

minor

A minor character, possibly a station hand.

Mr. Folkestone

minor

Also known as Folkestone

A minor character, possibly a visitor.

Mr. B⸺

minor

Also known as B⸺

A minor character with an abbreviated name.

Edward Stanley Vivian

minor

Also known as Eddie

A minor character with a full formal name.

Moore

minor

A minor character, possibly a station hand.

Ben Cartwright

minor

Also known as Cartwright, Benjamin

A minor character, possibly a bullock driver.

Andrew Glover

minor

Also known as Andrew

A minor character, possibly a station hand.