Elements of the Australian Bush
Examined in The Loaded Dog
• Mateship – The unbreakable bond between
those who reside in the bush
• Resilience – The cheerful and humorous
attitude maintained against all hardships
• The cyclic nature of life – Each day bush
people are presented with new difficulties
and different shenanigans
Task
• Now choose three of the vivid scenes –
one from each element you have
identified.
• For each go back to the text and reread
the scene.
• Then answer: What is distinctively
visual here?
• Draw up a STEE to record your findings
The Loaded Dog
• The order in which events are revealed
add to the suspense of the story. Lawson
only reveals elements of the story as it is
necessary to create humour.
• This can be seen in the fact that the
reader isn’t introduced to the dog until
after the cartridge is made. At this point
we can see his purpose in the story and
accept him as the silly pup he is described
as.
The Loaded Dog
• A third person narrator is used to tell the
story. This is important to the telling of
the story.
• The narrator is a detached observer and is
not involved in the story.
• Unlike, ‘In a Dry Season’, this story does
not use comments or asides to the
audience. Lawson wants the reader to
accept the story as it is presented
The Loaded Dog
• Lawson is not trying to present a point of
view or paint a depressing picture of life in
the bush as he does in ‘In a Dry Season’
and ‘The Drover’s Wife’.
• The purpose of ‘The Loaded Dog’ is purely
entertainment. It is the type of ‘yarn’ told
around a campfire. The reader is not asked
to believe it but just to accept the unusual
event and laugh at it
Mateship
The Loaded Dog explores that particularly
Australian sense of mateship that existed
between bush men. The three men, Jim,
Dave and Andy have a strong bond with one
another. This is not directly stated in the
story but is shown in the their actions,
particularly the way that Andy and Dave
work together to create the cartridge.
Lawson showed this strong sense of
mateship in his stories and particularly in
relation to bush characters.
Mateship
The mateship that exists between man and
animal is emphasised to an even greater
extent in this story. Tommy, the retriever,
is portrayed as having human like qualities.
Tommy is silly, mischievous and really quite
a nuisance yet the bond remains between
the men and Tommy. There is no
suggestion that Tommy’s deeds with the
cartridge are punished at all. Tommy is a
loyal companion to the men and they try to
treat him as a mate. The strong bond
between humans and animals can also be
examined in The Drover’s Wife.