Brief Biography

William Thomas (W.T.) Goodge was born in London in 1862 and arrived in Sydney in 1882 after working his passage as a steward. He roamed around outback New South Wales for twelve years before settling on life as a jounalist. For a time he was editor of the Orange Leader while contributing to the Bulletin. For the nine years prior to his death he wrote a weekly piece for the Sydney Truth concerning the doings of an imaginery drinking group, the Gimcrack Club. During his lifetime he published only one collection of poems: Hits! Skits! and Jingles! in 1899. This was followed much later in 1965 by The Great Australian Adjective, which took its title from his best known work. Norman Lindsay considered him one of Australia's best writers of light verse. He died in 1909.

Bibliography

Poetry Collections
Hits! Skits! and Jingles! 1904
The Great Australian Adjective 1965

Selected Poetry

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

"Australia's Pride"
The Australian Slanguage
A Bad Break!
Daley's Dorg Wattle
The Great Australian Adjective
The Guile of Dad M'Ginnis
How We Drove the Trotter
King Whiskey
A Matter of Knack
The M'Camley Mixture
The Melodious Bullocky
Mulligan's Shanty
No Choice
"Ough": A Phonetic Fantasy
The Shearers' Cook
A Snake Yarn
Two Men and a Maid

This page and its contents are copyright ©2002-05 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: May 20, 2005.