Barcroft Boake (1866-1892)

Brief Biography

Barcroft Boake was born in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1866. He received a better than usual education but turned his back on the city in favour of bush life, believing it to be 'the only life worth living.' He worked as assistant to a surveyor in the Snowy River country and later a a drover and boundary-rider in the Monaro and Western Queensland. He returned to Sydney in 1891 for family reasons but disappeared in May 1892. His body was found eight days later, hanging by the neck from a stockwhip, in scrub at Middle Harbour in Sydney.

Bibliography

Poetry Collections
Where the Dead Men Lie under the pseudonym 'Surcingle', 1897

Biographies
Barcroft Boake: Poet of the Stockwhip 1965, by Clement Semmler

Selected Poetry

You can read the full text of the following Boake poems:

An Allegory
At Devlin's Siding
The Digger's Song
Down the River
Featherstonhaugh
Jim's Whip
On the Range
Where the Dead Men Lie

This page and its contents are copyright ©2002-06 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: December 2, 2006.