My Brilliant Career
Glossary
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- "My Brilliant Career"
- The novel's ironic title, echoing Sybylla's private ambition to escape bush drudgery through her writing rather than through marriage and domestic duty alone. Coined as she secretly resolves to write again after her first attempt at a novel, the phrase measures the gap between a clever, ambitious girl's dreams and the narrow options actually available to a woman of her class and place.
- Related: Sybylla Melvyn, Governess, Squattocracy
A
- Archie Goodchum
- A cheerful young bank clerk who joins the festivities on Sybylla's seventeenth birthday at Caddagat. His lighthearted attentions to Sybylla provoke a visible flash of jealousy from Harold Beecham, an early sign of the seriousness of his feelings.
- Related: Harold Beecham, Caddagat
- Aunt Helen (Mrs Bell)
- Sybylla's beautiful and gentle aunt, born Helen Bossier, whose own early marriage to a Colonel Bell ended in humiliating separation after his infidelity. Living at Caddagat, she takes a tender interest in building Sybylla's confidence and appearance, becoming her closest confidante.
- Related: Grannie (Mrs Bossier), Caddagat, Sybylla Melvyn
B
- Bailiff's Sale
- The forced seizure and auction of a debtor's goods by a court officer, or bailiff, to satisfy an unpaid debt. The Melvyn family suffers this humiliation after drought losses leave them unable to pay a debt they had, in fact, already settled, deepening their poverty and Sybylla's sense of injustice.
- Related: The Drought, Possum Gully, Peasantry
- Barney's Gap
- The isolated selection reached only after a long coach and train journey, where Sybylla is sent to work as a governess for the M'Swat family in place of interest owed on a family debt. Its remoteness marks a sharp descent from the comforts of Caddagat.
- Related: The M'Swats, Governess, Selector
- Blanche Derrick
- A glamorous, fashionably dressed visitor from the city who appears at the Wyambeet race-day picnic escorted by Harold Beecham. Her polished city manners prompt Sybylla to feel a sharp, unfamiliar pang of comparison and jealousy over her own plainness and bush upbringing.
- Related: Harold Beecham, Sybylla Melvyn
- Bruggabrong
- The remote high-country cattle station in the Timlinbilly Ranges where Sybylla is born and spends her earliest, happiest years, alongside the neighboring Bin Bin run. Its wide-verandahed slab house was famous for open-handed hospitality, and her father's restless decision to leave this life of rugged plenty sets the family's decline in fortune in motion.
- Related: Possum Gully, Slab House, Swelldom
C
- Caddagat
- The prosperous, cultivated pastoral property up-country belonging to Sybylla's grandmother, Mrs Bossier, where Sybylla is sent to live after years of drudgery at Possum Gully. Filled with books, music, and easy hospitality, it represents the refined, comfortable life Sybylla feels suited to but cannot take for granted.
- Related: Grannie (Mrs Bossier), Aunt Helen (Mrs Bell), Squattocracy
- Cocky
- Bush slang for a small farmer, especially a dairy or mixed farmer working a modest holding rather than a grand pastoral run. Sybylla applies the term to her father once he has traded his standing as a station owner at Bruggabrong for that of an ordinary dairying cocky at Possum Gully, marking his fall from swelldom.
- Related: Selector, Peasantry, Possum Gully
E
- Everard Grey
- A dashing young Sydney barrister and Grannie Bossier's adopted foster son, orphaned and raised by her after unscrupulous relatives stripped him of his inheritance. His arrival at Caddagat, alongside uncle Jay-Jay's homecoming, delights the household when Sybylla shows off her gift for singing, recitation, and mimicry.
- Related: Caddagat, Grannie (Mrs Bossier), "My Brilliant Career"
F
- Five-Bob Downs
- The large, wealthy sheep station near Caddagat belonging to the Beecham family, home to Harold Beecham and his two maiden aunts. As one of the grandest properties in the district, it exemplifies the comfortable squattocracy lifestyle far removed from the poverty of Possum Gully.
- Related: Harold Beecham, Squattocracy, Caddagat
- Frank Hawden
- The talkative jackeroo who collects Sybylla from the train and drives her to Caddagat, freely offering his unflattering opinions of her looks along the way. He later startles her with a serious proposal of marriage, which she mocks so thoroughly that he complains of her conduct to her grandmother.
- Related: Jackeroo, Caddagat, Sybylla Melvyn
G
- Governess
- A woman employed to live with a family and educate its children, typically the only respectable paid occupation open to a genteel but poor unmarried woman. Sybylla's mother arranges for her to take up such a position with the M'Swat family in place of interest owed on a debt, a step Sybylla receives with dismay.
- Related: The M'Swats, Barney's Gap, Sybylla Melvyn
- Grannie (Mrs Bossier)
- Sybylla's maternal grandmother, mistress of Caddagat, who welcomes her granddaughter with unexpected warmth and generosity after years of coldness at Possum Gully. A wealthy matriarch of the old school, she believes firmly that marriage is a girl's proper destiny.
- Related: Caddagat, Aunt Helen (Mrs Bell), Uncle Jay-Jay (Julius)
H
- Harold Beecham
- The tall, wealthy young squatter of neighboring Five-Bob Downs, first encountered by Sybylla while she is disguised in old clothes picking lemons in the orchard. Good-humored and plain-spoken, he becomes Sybylla's most persistent and significant suitor over the course of the novel.
- Related: Five-Bob Downs, Sybylla Melvyn, Squattocracy
J
- Jackeroo
- A young man, often of some social standing, working and learning the practical business of station life on a sheep or cattle property. Frank Hawden, the talkative jackeroo who drives Sybylla from the train to Caddagat, is her first example of the type.
- Related: Frank Hawden, Caddagat, Squattocracy
P
- Peasantry
- Sybylla's own bitter term for the class of hard-working, poorly educated small farmers to which her family has sunk after losing their station wealth. She contrasts the peasantry's ceaseless, joyless toil with the ease of the squattocracy above them, describing rigid class distinction as an "iron ungodly hand" settling over rural Australia.
- Related: Swelldom, Squattocracy, Cocky
- Possum Gully
- The small, flat, unproductive farm near Goulburn to which Sybylla's father moves the family, trading their prosperous mountain stations for a marginal holding he hopes will let him get ahead through cattle-dealing. Its dullness and hard, unending work come to symbolize the grinding peasant existence Sybylla dreads, in sharp contrast to the grandeur of her early childhood.
- Related: Sybylla Melvyn, Bruggabrong, Peasantry
S
- Selector
- A small-scale farmer who has taken up, or "selected," a modest block of land under land-reform legislation, as distinct from the great squatters who hold vast leasehold runs. Selectors typically scrape a hard living from marginal soil, occupying a lower rung of the district's rigid social hierarchy.
- Related: Squattocracy, Peasantry, Cocky
- Slab House
- A simple pioneer dwelling built from rough-hewn timber slabs rather than sawn boards or brick, common on isolated Australian stations. The wide-verandahed slab house at Bruggabrong, always full of visitors, represents the open, generous hospitality of Sybylla's early childhood home.
- Related: Bruggabrong, Swelldom
- Squattocracy
- The informal aristocracy of wealthy pastoralists, or squatters, who had taken up and prospered on large tracts of Australian grazing land. Families like the Beechams and Bossiers belong to this class, and their easy wealth and social standing stand in stark contrast to the struggling selector and peasant families such as the Melvyns.
- Related: Selector, Peasantry, Five-Bob Downs
- Swelldom
- Sybylla's word for the fashionable, well-to-do social world of the squattocracy, in which her family originally held a place through her father's station wealth and her mother's aristocratic Bossier lineage. The loss of this standing after the move to Possum Gully is a lasting source of shame and longing for Sybylla.
- Related: Peasantry, Squattocracy, Bruggabrong
- Sybylla Melvyn
- The narrator and protagonist, a headstrong, plain-featured girl born on her father's remote mountain station who chafes against the narrow domestic future expected of bush women. Fiercely proud and self-critical in turns, she yearns for books, music, and a life of the mind rather than housework, and tells her own story in a blunt, unromantic voice.
- Related: Possum Gully, Caddagat, "My Brilliant Career"
T
- The Drought
- The severe dry spell of the mid-1890s that devastates the Melvyn family's cattle and finances, forcing punishing hours of manual labor to keep starving stock alive. It is the first of several droughts that punctuate the novel, underscoring the fragility of bush livelihoods.
- Related: Bailiff's Sale, Possum Gully
- The M'Swats
- The family of Peter M'Swat, a poor and uneducated selector at Barney's Gap to whom Sybylla's father owes money, and whose children Sybylla is sent to teach as governess in place of interest on the debt. Their name becomes shorthand in Sybylla's mind for a dreaded, comfortless placement far removed from the refinement of Caddagat.
- Related: Barney's Gap, Governess, Selector
- Tramp / Swaggie
- An itinerant, usually unemployed man wandering the bush roads in search of work, carrying his few belongings in a bedroll or "swag." At Caddagat it is one of Sybylla's regular duties to feed the many tramps and swaggies who call at the homestead, and she reflects with pity on their hopeless, endless wandering.
- Related: Caddagat, Peasantry
U
- Uncle Jay-Jay (Julius)
- Sybylla's jovial, teasing uncle, properly named Julius, who lives at Caddagat and drives at a breakneck pace. His good-humored banter and blunt opinions, including his dismissive view of the tramps who pass through the property, provide much of the household's comic energy.
- Related: Grannie (Mrs Bossier), Caddagat, Tramp / Swaggie
W
- Wattle
- A native Australian flowering shrub or small tree, prized for its fragrant golden blossom, that grows wild across the district's hills and gullies. Sybylla singles out its bowers as the one genuine beauty of the otherwise bleak Possum Gully landscape.
- Related: Possum Gully, Bruggabrong