The Dog on the Tuckerbox

1932 Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons unveiled the statue of the Dog on the Tuckerbox, near Gundagai, New South Wales, at the point where O'Brien's Creek crosses the main Gundagai Road, the site of an old time bullockies' camping-ground. And thereby hangs a tale ...

The "dog that shat in the tuckerbox" is a famous Australian tale and immortalised in an old folk song, possibly penned by someone who called himself 'Bowyang Yorke', but amended ("the dog sat on the tuckerbox") and brought to wider attention by Jack Moses, one of writer Henry Lawson's close mates, fellow pranksters and bards. Lawson and Moses probably would have been drinking mates, too, if Moses, although a wine salesman, were not a teetotaller – something no one could accuse Henry of being.

Jack O'Hagan wrote a hit 'Dog on Tuckerbox' song based on the bowderlised lyrics. ‘Tucker’, by the way, is an obsolescent Australianism for food ...

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

Tagged: australia, biography, music, henry+lawson, folklore, poetry