RE:

“I've always looked at a yarn as being embroidered truth. We'll look at it two ways. First of all we'll look at truthful yarns and then we'll look at yarns that are completely made up. “So what you do is that something happens and you embroider that little bit of truth. So a good story-teller can describe a fairly mundane thing and yet make it exciting, amusing or even very sad depending on the circumstances. A yarn doesn't have to be amusing always. “I'll give you an example. Jack Crossland, who was one of the best north Queensland yarn-spinners would talk about quite mundane things. He never bothered about inventing stories, but he would take an ordinary thing that was happening and he would make it seem odd, because the way he looked at it. “He said “you know this lady down there at Babinda?” and I said, “I can't remember.” He said “She's SHORT!” And I said “No I don't remember”. He said “She's short, she's a little black lady – one of those little women”, he said “when you meet her in the street, you don't know whether to walk around her or jump over her!” “I mean just a beautiful way to picture her and just the way he thought of all these things. He told me a story once about having a drink of water, and about his uncle, who, I think his uncle used to give him milk and he had this well with this water in it. And he told me this and he started and he'd get carried away with this story and he'd tell you about the water and how it came through, soaking through from these limestone caverns and how it came up glinting in the sunlight and he said “you're hot out there working in the farm and you'd come in ….” "And by the time he'd finished you were almost panting for a glass of water! And all he was telling you, was that his uncle had a well and it had reasonably drinkable water in it. You know, the cat hadn't died in it or something else. But he did it and so a lot of yarns are based on a real thing and then creating this marvellous picture.

LM:

“Yes, I share your view generally Ron. The Australian Yarn, that's different from the international tall story or the just some of the other bush stories that are fairly well known and it's the actual teller's skill that's important rather than the unique knowledge you might have as a yarn teller. “The real genuine Australian yarn, in my view, is that it is anchored in a real happening somewhere. That it is then embellished in the telling and the re-telling and it changes its form depending on its audience and the circumstances and the skill of the storyteller. I don't think you can actually tell a good Australian yarn unless you've got a first or second hand experience of the event, otherwise you simply take one of the jokes or tall stories that most of us probably know and tell it in your own personal way and you're either going to make it work or not, but it doesn't have that sense of authority or realness about it.

RE:	"A lot of bush yarns only really work in the situation that they're told in and I'm talking about true yarns and so therefore if you're going to entertain urban audiences with bush yarns, what's going to entertain them is not the true bush yarns but the made up stories.

WF:

"I think Laurie's comment, of the performance side of it, is really vital, because obviously our entertainment patterns are changing so dramatically, we're becoming very aware of how we are going to have to interact with each other, after the next 5 years of interacting with computers that we're obviously losing our face to face skills as story-tellers. I think this is reflected in things like on television. OK, lots of people watch comedy on television and to them a story is a one-liner, a throw away line, and you can see that even with the yarn-spinning competitions, a lot of people are just tying together a lot of one-liners to make a story. "It comes down to, as far as I'm concerned, that there are many, many areas of Australian humour that we could put under the banner of yarns and jokes and one liners, if you want. But there are endless numbers of subjects. You can take anything from our history, our modern history or our ancient history and you'll find there are yarns that relate to it. And then you've got to look at the psychological factor. What made people tell those yarns? Were they trying to record their history? Or even with something like an urban myth, are people expressing a fear? Like the myth about the exploding cat in the microwave, which is based on the fact that a lot of people still don't trust microwaves. So they spread an urban myth about microwaves. "So, there are so many things you can analyze with yarn-telling. Ron, when he says we differ, we don't differ in as far as we recognise these things as yarning in the Australian use of the word. I tend to take a more strict definition of "the yarn", which must have a particular structure and certainly not necessarily have to tell the truth. It's just a matter of analyzing it all. Which is obviously great fun if you're interested in yarns.

RE:

“In a session, there's a thing where you have a stage presentation, which is actually an entertainment from a group of people to another group of people who aren't participants. Actual yarning as it occurs in Australia occurs within a group who are actually all equally participating. Yarning doesn't start where someone says lets all gather round, and someone doesn't just get up and say “the theme tonight, brothers ….”. You don't. Someone just says something and that triggers off a series of things, other yarns. “Like when that the chap was telling a story about how he got picked up by the police for being drunk. Well, if he was sitting with us now we would say “Oh that reminds me of a friend of mine, you know how all drunks, well, you know how no drunk has ever been picked up drunk, not heavy drinkers. They always tell you “I wasn't really drunk when I got picked up. I was really half sober. I only had a couple of drinks, but the bastards got me”. They always have this excuse. No one is ever picked up on a drink – driving charge and admitted that they were really drunk. But my friend came in on a push bike and I said “What are you on a push bike for?” and he said, “Lost my bloody license!” and I said, “How did you lose your license?” and he said, “Drink-driving!” “I said, “Of course you weren't drunk!” and he said, “ I wasn't drunk!” he says “When the bloody coppers picked me up, I thought I'd make a run for it. I jumped out the car and fell ass over tit! The legs weren't working at all. And so when they picked me up I said, “Stand back, nobody light a match, if you do, my breath's going to blow us all sky high!”

(laughter)

WF:

“Well as far as I am going concerned that's conversation. That's good conversation that happens to be a personal reminiscence. But you really have just ruined my argument, because, my argument would be that as opposed to a yarn, it's unlikely to pass into the oral tradition, but now that you have repeated it, it has passed into the oral tradition!

RE:

“Yes but we can disagree on this point. You see you're, I don't mean you personally, but you're taking the argument that's used overseas, that is that a yarn is a structured story. Whereas I tend to take a yarn as it actually occurs. What I did when I was writing my two books on the subject was that I actually just taped people in a yarning situation. Not people who were set up. I never asked people to tell yarns. Because, in Australia, what we call a yarn or yarning is natural. I'm not the only one who tells that story. It's passed around the group, it's not particularly structured but it's a group thing and anyone in the group and who knows my mate will tell that story

WF:

“Well. of course there are all sorts of yarns and some come out of the urban situation, naturally, like the classic one about the bloke with the sand. “A man goes to the factory gate every evening with a wheelbarrow full of sand and the security man goes through the sand and can't find anything and says, “Yep, off you go”. And then, the next evening the man comes again with another load of sand and so this time he goes underneath the barrow and looks through all the sand again and says “Ah! You're alright” and off he goes. And this goes on again the next night and there he is with another barrow load of sand and the guard can't find anything and so it goes on all week. “So on the Friday night when they're down the pub, the security man says “Ah Bill, it's been worrying me all week. I know you're coming up every evening with these barrow loads of sand, but I've searched everything and heck if I can find out what it is. What the hell are you stealing? And Bill turns round to him and says “Wheelbarrows!” “Now I don't know if that's based on a true story. Probably unlikely, but it could have. It's possibly the sort of story factory workers would make. It's telling a story and it's got a punch line. As opposed to a conversational piece which is still a story, but this one I've told you has a higher opportunity, I think, of taking legs and going out and being passed round as an entertainment piece rather than the story of the bloke being picked up by the cops. “But what you're doing Ron, recording those conversational vignettes is really very good and it does show that Australians have an ability as story-tellers in their own right. But the book should've been titled The Australian Conversation not The Australian Yarn.

RE:

“This is where Warren and I do again have different thoughts, because to me the wheel barrow story is not an Australian yarn. It just happens to be an international yarn that somebody has “mulgarised”! This is what happens, if the story is told in New York tomorrow, you know, somebody invents it in a factory where they invent jokes in America, it'll come out here and be mulgarised!

WF:	“Well, the same thing could apply to your conversational yarns”

RE:	“No, because as you pointed out they're so fragmentary, that couldn't possibly happen, because these are actual things that are happening.

LM:

“Can I give you say two versions of the same type of thing. There's a good joke dressed up as a yarn, if you like and that's the story of Lofty Trotter, the drover, who was in court on a workers' compensation case 'cause he had a broken back and he couldn't ride again and he couldn't drove. And it was a million dollar claim he was up for. “And the Insurance company had the prosecuting council there and he said, “Lofty we have to remind you, as part of your defence in this whole thing, that you actually advised the police on the day, that there was nothing wrong with you after the accident. Would you like to say something about that?” “And Lofty said, “Yeah, that's true mate, I did say that.” “And then his man got up and said, “Lofty would you like to explain just the circumstances under which you made that statement?” “And Lofty said “Yeah, no problem at all”, he said, “I had about two thousand head out in the long paddock, out west of Cunnamulla. And there's a bit of a rise in the road there. And this bloody yuppie from Brisbane came over the top in his Ferrari, doing about 180 miles an hour and slammed right into the herd”, he said. “He skittled about the first fifteen beasts and he knocked my dog over and he knocked me and the horse down and then he got panic stricken, got his yuppie phone out and phoned the Cunnamulla police. And the old Sarge come out to the carnage and I knew him, mate of mine”. He said. “He took one look at it all, pulled his pistol out and shot the first five cattle. There's me bloody cattle dog lying there with a broken back and he shot that. And me horse has got two broken legs and he shot that! And then he said “Lofty! How are you mate?” And I said “There's nothing wrong with me at all! Sarge!!” (much laughter) “Now that's a joke dressed up as a yarn and it's probably a particular mulgarised version of something that happened somewhere else. But I'll tell you one that's more in the yarn spinning style about two mates of mine. “One had been on a property out west of Rockhampton. A fella named Clarry, his nickname was Jock, who had never worked in the city at all and his mate who had worked in the city. And they were a bit short of cash, well cash flow more than cash, and they invested in a run down chook shop at Canon Hill. Now Jock had never served customers in his life and they've got the kitchen set up really nicely round the back and they were cooking chickens. And you could buy chicken and spuds and gravy and that type of thing in those little aluminium foil trays and what-not. And they were tending to get only the one customer at a time, which Jock could handle 'cos Terry was out the back doing the cooking. And they called this “The night of the rush”. There was five people walked in at the one time and lined up and Jock hit the panic button a bit. He'd never had such a crowd to attend to. And this fella ordered chicken, spuds and gravy and Jock said “Right” and wrote it down with great efficiency and said “Won't be a moment” and flew out the back and said “Terry, we'll be rich!” He said, “there's a rush out there.” And he whacked the chook into the tin pan and he whacked the spuds into it and he went over to the stove that had the boiling gravy on it and whacked a ladle full of that into it. And there's nothing between his hand and the boiling gravy. So he's scalded his hand and he's said, “Oh Shit!” and threw it in the air and it went straight over the partition and hit the five people who'd made the rush outside and disappeared and that was the end of their business that night!” “Now that's not only a true story, but Terry and Jock still get away on a good boozy night with telling it very, very well. Now it's not a joke it's actually a yarn and people who've heard it before say “Hey fellas tell us the story about “the night of the rush!”

RE:	“And what makes that a unique Australian yarn is that nobody in America or anywhere else would sit up and think of it, you see! This is such a stupid bloody story, that no one is going to make a quid of telling that on some American program and turning it into an Australian yarn later

LM:

“A slightly different version of it was the Victorian today, at the festival, telling about when the church said, “What would you do if Jesus Christ came to Hawthorn?” And the answer was. “Put him at full forward and shift Peter Hudson to centre half forward!” “And I've heard that in Rugby League terms. “What would you do if Jesus Christ came to Manly? “But the best one in a similar form is in Brisbane, when Norm Pope the famous Valley prop forward was injured badly in the Preliminary Final and Valleys were hot favourites for the Grand Final. And he was really crook and there was a lot of talk around town that he wouldn't be playing in the Grand Final. Well, Pope John the XX111 died that week and the banner headlines stuck out in the street were simply “Pope dead”. And a lot of people in Brisbane were saying, “What are Valleys going to do? What are they going to do?”(much laughter)

WF:

“I think the fact of the matter is the yarn as I know it or as we know it, the traditional yarn, especially the Crooked Mick stories which were actually literary stories that went into the bush through print. But they obviously tickled the funny bone of the average Australian and it got passed on into the tradition. Now, in those days people used to do a lot of party pieces. People would have a song or they'd have a poem and if they didn't have a song or a poem or a novelty act they might tell a yarn. And they might have a party piece yarn that they would tell regularly. But those days sadly are gone. So what we have now is conversation spiced with personal stories that are funny and that take the place of, I think, the old yarn when people had less complicated lives. But at the same time, I believe very strongly that the joke, in all its many expressions, is not that far removed from the yarn. And many jokes, as we know, would fit very comfortably, even some of the short ones. But I think it's terribly hard to tear them apart and say what's the difference between a joke and a yarn? “Recently, I had a program on 2BL in Sydney, where I'd go in every week and tell a yarn. And we'd ask listeners to write to us, which is very different from speaking a yarn, but we asked them to write them down and send them in. And most of the things we got were really jokes, but they were quite lengthy jokes, so the average person considered that to be a yarn. That's their interpretation.”

LM:

Warren, there's an interesting one where you fuse that yarn spinning thing with a joke structure. That one about the old swaggie and Sampson I think's got those elements in it. “There's an old swaggie, a real bludging old swaggie, strolled into a country town and actually went straight up to the Manse to see if he could cadge a hand out of some tucker there. And the Manse minister was a little bit wary and said to him “My good man, I'll give you a feed if you'll cut all that wood up and stack it on the verandah”. And the old man was a bit buffaloed by this and so he did it. And he came into the kitchen and there was this fairly meagre lunch laid out for him and the minister was sitting on the other side of the table reading from the bible. And the old swaggie didn't even know what the bible was and he said, “What are you reading, mate?” and the minister said, “I'm reading the book of the Lord”. And the swaggie said, “What's this all about?” And the minister said to him “I'll read you one of the stories out of it and then you'll understand it”. And he read him the story of Sampson, who was down in the valley and they were attacked by a bunch of Pharisees. And he actually took the jaw bone of an ass and he slew about six hundred and routed the rest of them. And then with his girl friend Delilah, he went to the city and he was captured in the end and Delilah cut his hair and then they chained him to the temple columns which he pulled down and killed the balance of them. And the old swaggie said “Jeez, you've got some wild stories in that book, mate!” He says, “have you got any more of them, like that?” And the minister said, “Yes it's full of them. The Lord's book is full of these stories”. And the swaggie said, “Well, thanks for the lunch pal, I'm off”. That night, he found another old swaggie down by the creek and the swaggie said “How're ya going?” and he said “Alright, but” he said, “there's a bloody helluva lot of stories getting' around this area”. He said, “I just run into one about a fella named Simpson from Jerilderie”. He said, “He's a bit of a wild bugger” he said, “he's been going round pulling telephone posts down on people apparently”. And he said, “He was down in this valley with his girlfriend Delicious and he got attacked by a thousand Filipinos and he got into 'em. He got into them with the arse bone of a Jew and he did about seven hundred of em in and then he rooted the rest of 'em. He must've been a pooftah or something, aye?” “Now that's a particular Australian variation of whatever it is, but I don't think it could be told anywhere else in the world!”

WF:

“Now after listening to that which is a story, listen to this one because this is more of a joke really, but most people would recognise this as a yarn. “OK, he's a swaggie, he's a sundowner. He goes up to the station door at around 5.30 and it's getting a bit dark. They always did that to avoid having to chop the wood. Anyway, the missus of the house opens up and eyes him and says, “G'day”. And he says, “G'day, I'd like some bread, if you've got some please”. And she says, “You'll have to use the axe” and he just looks at her and says, “Ah no, I'll soak it in me tea!”

WF:

“In the bush material, a lot of the stories are stories related to the Australian people's struggle, and it was a struggle, to succeed as pioneers. So, there's that I will win, I can win against the bushfires, the floods and we can conquer the land sort of attitude. So I think there's a lot of that in the early bush yarns but the city yarns, you've got the urban myths. OK, they've got a role to play. You've also got the urban jokes, so that an event like the Azarian Chamberlain tragedy produced a whole string of jokes and then Michael Jackson marrying Presley produced a series of jokes. Then there are waves of other jokes, like New Zealand jokes and other ethnic jokes, blond jokes came through in a big rush as well and they go and then they just disappear just like kids' games in the playground disappear. But there's a reason why we must, unconsciously, as a society introduce these jokes, there's a reason to bring in to relieve tension or something. After the NASA accident several years ago, when seven people were splattered all over Miami, there were all manner of jokes about that. They arrived about two days after the disaster and I would imagine the society creates these jokes to relieve the tension, because there's nothing else you can do and they were quite feeble jokes. But the creation of jokes is what interests me from a folklore point of view. “The continuing telling of the old jokes, to represent where we've come from is very interesting, but it's the current jokes and stories that tell us about what we are now”.

RE:

“Of course what we've been discussing up to now are yarns which are amusing, but of course a lot of yarns aren't amusing at all. And what Warren said about stories which are told to overcome or explain a fear or rationalize something and they play a very important part in yarns, but they're usually for general consumption, they're told within a group for a reason. I've just come down from Jondaryan working with the whip makers all week. And they were telling a story about a fellow who was one of the early pioneers around Malacootta Inlet, but further south and everything went wrong for him. The station was burnt and the blacks speared his cattle and he was only still a relatively young man and he was cracking a bull whip which is a very long whip and it flew back and split his eye open and killed him. And that was told much longer than that and it was told as a yarn it wasn't told to amuse in any way. But of course, you could see the reason, because they were all whip makers and of course they are talking about something that is a very real danger and can happen.

WF:

“Oh, of course stories right through the ages have been told to scare people and for learning, especially with children's stories “The other area that interests me is the two type of jokes. There was the “I was … “ sort of joke and then there are the other types of jokes, like the “Did you hear of ….”.

RE:

“And then there are the jokes which are told to put people in their place, which are also true ones and of course I'm only interested in the true ones. I'm not interested in the made up ones, never have been. Just again, one of the whip makers up at Jondaryan was Mickey the Whip. And Mickey is like an urban cowboy. Mickey came up to Jondaryan originally, with board shorts and odd thongs and Simon, he's a whip maker and he said, “Look at him! I taught him everything he knows, from how to make a bloody whip! I taught him how to steal clothes from people on the beach and he's got odd thongs on!! “But anyway, after a year or so of this, Mickey changed his image and now he's got this big hat and all this stockman gear. But the others, they never say anything to him, well they do. They tease him unmercifully but never cruelly. But when he's not there, they say, “Look at Mickey. He pretends to be a bushman. They said, “The other night, he went out for a leak. There was a terrible shriek and he comes back saying, “Something happened out there”. They reckon he'd pee'd on the electric fence. And of course, this is told to really say that Mickey is not a bushman.

LM:

“That thong one is interesting, I can remember one a good one about an election recently, and a politician was cadging for votes up on Thursday Island, a mainlander if you like. And he went into one of the Thursday Island pubs and there was a bloke sitting there with a pint of beer in front of him, shorts on, singlet and one thong. And the pollie walked up and shook his hand and said “Lose a thong, mate?” And the bloke looked at him and said, “Nah, found one”.