SOURCE: "'The Loaded Dog': A Celebration," in Australian Literary Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2, October, 1983, pp. 152-61.

In the following essay, Stewart examines two chief characteristics of Lawson 's fiction, "human gregariousness " and "the hardness of things. "

The Loaded Dog inhabits the background of millions of Australian minds, where he jostles amiably and vitally amongst the stiffer corpses and tutored shades of Bell Birds, My Country and Gallant Cook sailing from Albion. There is nothing dutiful, however, about the way the dog lingers in our minds. He is approved. He remains voluntarily, neither as an official and required patriotic cliché of the olden times, like the land of sweeping plains, nor as a drilled and tinkling set piece, like 'Bell Birds', learnt by rote without a meaning. In a central and formative position in Australian popular literary culture, the Loaded Dog grins and slobbers and wags his tail with the...