Story: Rural workers

More links and websites

• New Zealand folk song: Russian Jack

  The lyrics and guitar chords to a New Zealand folk song about swagger Russian Jack, as well as information about swaggers.

• Russian Jack

  The Masterton district library and rural archive has a profile of this famous swagger.

• Totara Estate: New Zealand Historic Places Trust

  This page on the Historic Places Trust’s site has information on Totara Estate, one of the old farm estates near Ōamaru.

More suggestions and sources

• Cant, Garth, and Russell Kirkpatrick, eds. Rural Canterbury: celebrating its history. Wellington: Daphne Brasell Associates and Lincoln University Press, 2001.
• Hatch, Elvin. Respectable lives: social standing in rural New Zealand. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
• Lee, John A. Roughnecks, rolling stones and rouseabouts: with an anthology of early swagger literature. Auckland: Penguin, 1989.
• Martin, John E. The forgotten worker: the rural wage earner in nineteenth-century New Zealand. Wellington: Allen & Unwin/Trade Union History Project, 1990.
• Newton, Peter. Straggle muster. Wellington: Reed, 1964.
• Studholme, E. C. Te Waimate: early station life in New Zealand. Dunedin: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1940.
• Walrond, Carl. ‘Keas in the land of kiwi.’ New Zealand Geographic 54 (November– December 2001): 68–77.