Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. "On the fields of Col'raine there'll be labour in vain
Before the Great Western is ended,
The nags will have toil'd, and the silks will be soil'd,
And the rails will require to be mended."
Which horse-racing Australian poet, born in 1833 in England, wrote this?
2. Which deaf balladeer and short story writer, born on a gold field in New South Wales in 1867, penned these lines:
"Our Andy's gone to battle now
'Gainst Drought, the red marauder;
Our Andy's gone with cattle now
Across the Queensland border"
3. "I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains"
Who wrote this stanza?
4. "We are the sons of Australia,
Of the men who fashioned the land,
We are the sons of the women
Who walked with them, hand in hand;
And we swear by the dead who bore us,
By the heroes who blazed the trail,
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail." Which poet, born in New South Wales in 1864, wrote these lines?
5. Who wrote "The Man from Snowy River"?
6. This poet, who was also a critic, fiction writer and editor changed the face of popular Australian poetry in the immediate post-war period with the book of religious and secular poems "Five Senses". Here is a quote from the poem "The Lost Man":
"To go by the way he went you must find beneath you
that last and faceless pool, and fall. And falling
find between breath and death
the sun by which you live."
7. "There is a moment when the pelvis
Explodes like a grenade. I
Who have lived in the shadow that each act
Casts on the next act now emerge As loyal as the thistle that in session
Puffs its full seed upon the indicative air.
I have split the infinitive. Beyond is anything."
This poem was written by reputedly Australia's "first Modernist Poet". His work was published in the 1940s in a special edition of the poetry journal "Angry Penguins". The only problem was... this poet never existed!
8. "Orders is orders, I said after it was over
nothing personal you understand - we had a
drill-sergeant once thought he was God but he wasn't
a patch on you"
(from "And a Good Friday was had by all") Which working-class poet, born in Geelong in 1930, wrote these lines about the Crucifixion of Christ?
9. "The word goes round Repins, the murmur goes round Lorenzinis,
At Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
The Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
And men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him."
Which poet, born on the Northern Coast of New South Wales in 1938 penned these lines about a man who saw "an absolutely ordinary rainbow"?
10. Another living poet, this poet is a Professor at Monash University, and one of my favourite poets. Here's a quote:
"One day the gift arrives - outside your door,
Left on a windowsill, inside the mailbox,
Or in a hallway, far too large to lift.
Your postman shrugs his shoulder, police
consult a statute, and the cat maiows,
No name, no signature, no address."
Source: Author
natsim
This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor
nerthus before going online.
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