The Legend of Angle Creek and Other Ballads

Book Review By
Professor Colin Roderick in Townsville Bulletin 29/3/80

Claude Morris: ‘The Legend of Angle Creek and Other Ballads. Ilfracombe, Stockwell, available from booksellers, and from the author $4.50 postage paid.

THERE will always be a place in the hearts and minds of Australians for the bush balladist, of which type Claude Morris, born at Watsonville, a defunct tin-mining township 130 Km south-west of Cairns, is a striking model.

In recent years I have read many of these latter-day bush ballads, but none that have made me feel so proud of the spirit of the land I belong to as those in this book. Try this to the tune of “O Tannenbaun”:
O wattle tree, O wattle tree
That lives within my memory;
You spread your blooms when winter nears,
Ere autumn fades and disappears,
And winter’s breath will sweeter be
Wherever grows the wattle tree.
This is the spirit that made Roderick Quinn say a hundred years ago: Wattle must be Australia’s national flower.” It symbolises the spirit that will never die in the Australian ethos.
Whatever else you may or may not do, get this hard-covered sturdy book. You will love it treasure it, and pass it on to your children.
Of that I am prepared to swear on Holy Writ.

Professor of English Literature at James Cook University