Such Is Life

In Short

First published in 1903, Such Is Life is a classic of Australian literature written under the pseudonym Tom Collins. Set in the Riverina district of New South Wales during the drought-planked 1880s, the novel presents itself as an unvarnished series of diary entries kept by a government officer as he travels the tracks. Across seven long chapters, Collins encounters bullock drivers, station owners, boundary riders, and swagmen, all struggling to survive in a harsh environment. Beneath its meandering, anecdotal surface lies a meticulously constructed, highly intricate web of overlapping lives, tragic ironies, and philosophical digressions. It has endured as an Australian masterpiece for its humor, brilliant capture of vernacular speech, and profound meditation on human destiny.

The Story

The narrative opens with Tom Collins, a deputy assistant sub-inspector of stock, finding himself unexpectedly unemployed and deciding to write down his experiences by picking arbitrary dates from his pocket diaries. His journey takes him through the vast expanses of the bush, where he falls in with a colorful cast of characters whose lives repeatedly intersect in ways Collins himself often fails to grasp.

Early in his travels, Collins joins a group of bullock drivers attempting to feed their hungry teams. The men constantly clash with wealthy station owners over grazing rights, sneaking their starving cattle into fenced paddocks under the cover of night. Collins watches their schemes with detached, amused philosophy, observing how small choices—such as where to look for stray stock or which path to take at a fork in the road—lead to sweeping consequences.

Disaster strikes Collins on the ninth of November when he loses his clothes while trying to cross a river. Stripped of his wardrobe and forced to move about naked in the dark, he trips through nettle patches, hides from passersby, and accidentally steals a replacement pair of trousers. In his desperate attempt to avoid detection, he unintentionally sets off a chain of events that leads to an innocent, half-blind itinerant named Andrew Glover being arrested and imprisoned for a fire that Collins accidentally caused. Collins never confesses his involvement, letting chance and circumstances sweep the poor man away.

Later in his travels, Collins comes across Warrigal Alf, a bitter, reclusive bullocky lying gravely ill in his wagon. Collins nurses the dying man back to health, listening as Alf confesses the story of his ruined past: years ago, Alf abandoned his devoted wife after a bitter misunderstanding, leaving her to face a life of disgrace. Collins offers lofty philosophical advice, unaware of how closely Alf's story connects to another figure he encounters on his rounds.

That figure is Nosey Alf, a boundary rider who lives a lonely, immaculate existence in a remote hut, wearing a hat pulled low to cover a horribly disfigured face. Nosey Alf plays the violin with heartbreaking beauty and pines for a lost lover. In his classic density, Collins engages the boundary rider in lengthy debates about literature, art, and the nature of female sincerity, entirely failing to realize that Nosey Alf is actually a woman in disguise—the very wife whom Warrigal Alf had abandoned years before. Collins rides away without ever connecting the two tragic lovers living only miles apart.

As his journey draws toward its close, Collins visits Runnymede station, where he witnesses the daily friction between social classes. He dodges the matrimonial attentions of Mrs. Beaudesart, an impoverished housekeeper with aristocratic pretensions, and observes the hard, unglamorized realities of frontier life. He meets up again with Andrew Glover, now released from prison and broken by his unjust punishment. Collins offers the man a pair of tinted glasses and a bit of practical help, but he never reveals that he was the true culprit behind Glover's downfall.

The novel ends on a quiet, cynical note back at the station. Collins watches the various bushmen, swaggies, and station hands continue their daily struggle against nature, poverty, and each other. Reflecting on the absurd mixture of chance, bad judgment, and cruel luck that shapes every human life, Collins concludes his record with his recurring philosophical refrain on the vanity and unpredictability of human existence.

How It Unfolds

The journey begins Tom Collins finds himself unexpectedly out of work and resolves to spend his leisure time keeping a detailed diary of his travels across the Riverina back-country. He joins a group of rough-talking bullock drivers who spend their nights illicitly grazing their hungry stock on private station paddocks while dodging station managers.

A night of misadventure While attempting to negotiate a river crossing, Collins loses his clothes and is forced to navigate the dark bush in a state of complete nudity. His desperate scramble to find substitute garments leads to a comedy of errors, including a painful tumble into a patch of nettles and an accidental arson that ruins an innocent man's life.

Rescuing a bitter stranger Collins happens upon Warrigal Alf, a bullocky immobilized by a severe illness in the back of his wagon. Collins nurses the man through his fever while listening to Alf's bitter tales of his past marriage and lost happiness.

A tragic search in the scrub The narrative turns to a harrowing search for a lost child who wandered off into the dense bush. Collins describes the agonizing efforts of local trackers as they follow the little girl's footprints, finding where she removed her boots as her feet grew sore.

An encounter with a recluse Collins visits the isolated hut of Nosey Alf, a sensitive boundary rider with a scarred face who plays tragic tunes on the violin. The two spend the evening discussing poetry and human emotion, though Collins remains oblivious to the boundary rider's true identity and secret sorrow.

The station hearth At Runnymede station, Collins navigates a tangled social web of station owners, storekeepers, and servants. He spends his energy dodging the romantic advances of an overbearing housekeeper while watching the casual cruelty of bush society play out around him.

An unjust reunion Collins encounters Andrew Glover, the poor itinerant who took the fall for Collins's accidental fire and served time in jail. Collins offers the ruined man a small token of comfort without ever revealing his own guilt, musing on how blind fate governs all things.

The People

• Tom Collins

The narrator and central figure. He wants to understand the world through reason, philosophy, and grand theories of fate, but his extreme self-conceit and dense pragmatism stand in his way. He constantly misinterprets the very events he records and ends up causing harm to others while remaining convinced of his own wisdom.

• Warrigal Alf (Alf Morris)

A deeply bitter, skilled bullock driver struggling with severe illness and emotional ruin. He wants absolution and peace of mind after destroying his marriage years ago out of pride and jealousy. His inability to forgive himself or others keeps him isolated, and he ends up living a hard, lonely life on the track.

• Nosey Alf (Molly Cooper)

A boundary rider living under an assumed male identity in a secluded hut. Disfigured by a horse's kick and abandoned by her husband, she wants nothing more than to find her lost love and live in peace. Her physical disguise and solitary life keep her hidden from the world, leaving her to pine away in lonely isolation.

• Andrew Glover

A simple, half-blind itinerant bush worker who asks only to earn an honest living on the frontier. His physical infirmities and low social standing make him an easy target for bad luck, culminating in his unjust arrest for a fire caused by Collins. He ends up broken and impoverished by a legal system that does not care to look for the truth.

• Mosey Price

A cynical, hard-bitten bullock driver who wants to keep his stock alive by any means necessary. He spends his life warring against station owners and boundary riders, using trickery and fake keys to steal pasture. He ends up perpetually locked in the harsh, low-wage struggle of the bush.

In Its Own Voice

"Orthodoxly, we are reduced to one assumption: namely, that my indomitable old Adversary has suddenly called to mind Dr. Watts's friendly hint respecting the easy enlistment of idle hands."

(Tom Collins muses on his sudden loss of employment and his decision to begin writing his diary.)

"We are all walking along the shelving edge of a precipice; any one of us may go at any moment, or be dragged down by another."

(Collins reflects on the utter instability of human fortune after finding himself stripped of his clothes and dignity in the dark.)

"Sincerity... Notwithstanding Mrs. Hemans, and others, you will find that, as a rule, men's poetry is superior to women's, not only in vigour, but in grace... But in the quality of sincerity, woman is a good first."

(Collins delivers a dogmatic lecture on literature during his evening conversation with the disguised Nosey Alf.)

What It's Really About

Beneath its rambling, humorous surface, Such Is Life is an uncompromising examination of free will, determinism, and moral responsibility. Furphy uses Collins’s narrative to argue that human existence is shaped by a continuous chain of tiny, seemingly insignificant choices. Every small decision—a choice to turn left instead of right, or to remain silent instead of speaking—sets off unintended consequences that ripple across the lives of others. The book directly attacks the romanticized myths of the Australian Outback, replacing heroic pioneers with weary, flawed individuals struggling against economic inequality and environmental ruin. It argues that society's winners and losers are separated not by virtue or intelligence, but by arbitrary luck and cold social bias. Ultimately, the novel questions whether human beings can ever truly understand the meaning of their own lives or the consequences of their actions.

Why Read It Today

Such Is Life remains one of the most remarkable and original novels in colonial literature. Reading it feels like sitting beside a campfire with a extraordinarily well-read, highly ironic bushman who knows every trick, yarn, and scandal in the territory. Furphy captures the authentic rhythm of late nineteenth-century Australian speech with incredible precision, blending heavy classic literary allusions with broad dialect, colorful bush slang, and explosive local profanity.

The book is not an easy, breezy read; it demands patience and active attention from the reader. Its narrative is intentionally indirect, its style is dense with pedantic digressions, and its pages reflect the harsh class divides and period attitudes of frontier Australia. Furphy does not smooth over the casual prejudices or tough survival tactics of his era, presenting the back-country exactly as he observed it.

What stays with the reader is the brilliant construction hiding under the book's sprawling exterior. As the hidden connections between the characters gradually become clear to the reader—even while remaining completely invisible to the bumbling narrator—the novel transforms into a massive, satisfying literary puzzle. It is a masterpiece of dark humor and deep human sympathy that lingers long after the final page.