"The Drover's Boy" is a song by Ted Egan.
Songs on the album (all composed by Ted Egan):
| Song title | Performer(s) | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The Drover's Boy | Ted Egan | |
| 2. A Bunch of Damned Whores | ||
| 3. Mary Broad | Nerys Evans | |
| 4. God's Police | Ted Egan | |
| 5. Truganini | Nerys Evans | |
| 6. Kitty Buchanan | Nerys Evans | |
| 7. Alyandabu | Ted Egan | |
| 8. A Song for Grace | Nerys Evans | |
| 9. Bush Woman | Ted Egan | |
| 10. The Shearer's Wife | Nerys Evans | |
| 11. She's Australian | Ted Egan | |
| 12. The Rouseabout | Nerys Evans | |
| 13. Granny | Ted Egan | |
| 14. Survivors | Ted Egan |
Egan wrote a book based on the story of the song; The Drover's Boy.The jacket description reads:
"Based on a song of the same name and set in the 1920s, The Drover's Boy recalls the time when it was illegal for Caucasians and Aborigines to marry, and the death of an Aborigine went unnoticed by the white community. This popular and moving Australian folk song comes from a true story about a Caucasian drover (the Australian name for a cowboy or sheep herder) who is forced to pass off his Aboriginal wife as his "drover's boy". Ted Egan wrote this song as a tribute to the Aboriginal stockwomen, in the hope that one day their enormous contribution to the Australian pastoral industry might be recognized and honored. Ages 11+."
The Drover's Boy has been collected in:
It has also inspired a series of paintings and a stage production:
Egan saw a potential movie in the story of The Drover's Boy and commissioned Cinevest Limited to find potential backers. A prospectus was issued in 1995The funds raised by Cinevest and Egan personally, after pre-production costs were sufficient to capture extensive footage of outback cattle movements on high quality film, but insufficient to guarantee completion of the full-length movie, so the project was abandoned.
In 2015 a hybrid-documentary based on The Drover's Boy song was released. The short-film, with a run time of 11 minutes, was directed by Margaret McHugh and produced by Lyn Norfor and has been screened at numerous film festivals.[2] [3]