Helen and Stuart are staying with the politically disenchanted Gavan in his permanent camp in Gippsland. It is the night of the federal election announcement, and while waiting expectantly for the results to come through the wireless Gavin recounts his days of left-wing activism in his youth. While Stuart, a painter, looks forward to the birth of the nation through art yet to come, Gavin laments the insipid turn-out of his political colleagues, who include none other than the Nationalist-Country Party leader Harding. To the bitter disappointment of Gavan, and the utter disinterestedness of bushman Dick – the type of man in whom Gavan once placed all his political ideals – Harding is re-elected. Yet the play ends with a hopeful toast to the land of 'Australia Felix'.
Characters
MICHAEL GAVAN – a writer and politician, about fifty-five
STUART GRAHAM – a young painter
HELEN – his wife
DICK – a bushman, about thirty
WILLIE – Gavan's son, about twenty
"Set in Gippsland, it deals mainly with the relationship between a young man, Harry Lind, and his possessive mother. Harry rejects the girl his mother prefers, brings home a barmaid of dubious reputation, is rejected in turn for a rival squatter, and finally killed in a riding accident."
Source: Oxford Reference.
'The play is set on the lonely Gippsland coast in the late 19th century. Stumpy Johnson lives by the old Cornish trick of luring ships to destruction and collecting and selling the flotsam and jetsam. Martha Kennedy forces her daughter Madge to become Johnson’s second wife. The police catch up with Johnson and he goes to gaol. During his absence his son by his first marriage and Madge fall in love and live together. A child is born. Johnson is released before his full sentence is served, returns and in his vengence kills the baby, shoots his son and chains Madge to the wall of the house. He whips the bullocks with a barb wire lash which flies back and tears his eyes, the bullocks stampede and rush over him and he staggers back to the house, but of course Madge cannot help him, and wouldn't. He dies and Madge is rescued by a passing coastal vessel which calls in, and Johnson’s corpse is taken on board to be tipped over the side when the vessel is at sea.' (Source : University of New England website)
"Life in the bush is hot, hard and not for the faint-hearted. Under the extreme sun of Northern frontier country a pack of itinerant drovers thrive in the land they call home. A freak stampede brings ‘Briglow’ Bill and his mates face to face with mortality and their masculinity and mateship are tested. All the while, Pidgeon, a young Aboriginal boy, watches the white fellows. He sees something the drovers cannot speak of and, for Briglow, this silence is as stifling yet as familiar and as comforting as the heat that surrounds them all.
The Drovers is a bush drama that is rich with tension, grim stoicism and heightened masculinity of the, notably, all-male characters. Clipped sentences and straight-talking speak of the no-nonsense attitude necessary to survive in the remote bush of the 1920s. The play draws us to the campfire where, in light and heat, we see the relationships the drovers experience: between each other, between white man and Aboriginal man, between man and land and, finally, the ultimate and unavoidable relationship: a man’s connection with life and death."
