With Mr Smythers to think was to act. He was not a man who believed in allowing grass to grow under his feet. His motto was "Up and be doing—somebody… - Andrew Barton Paterson

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his "Billy" boiled, "You'll come a-waltzing Matilda, with me."

The barber man was small and flash, as barbers mostly are,
He wore a strike-your-fancy sash, he smoked a huge cigar;
He was a humorist of note and keen at repartee,
He laid the odds and kept a "tote", whatever that may be,
And when he saw our friend arrive, he whispered, "Here's a lark!
Just watch me catch him all alive, this man from Ironbark."

The hard, resentful look on the faces of all bushmen comes from a long course of dealing with merino sheep. The merino dominates the bush, and gives to Australian literature its melancholy tinge, its despairing pathos. The poems about dying boundary-riders, and lonely graves under mournful she-oaks, are the direct outcome of the poet’s too close association with that soul-destroying animal. A man who could write anything cheerful after a day in the drafting-yards would be a freak of nature.