Joseph Furphy
Joseph Furphy was born Sept. 26, 1843, at Yering, near Yarra Glen, Victoria. He was an Australian author whose novels combine an acute sense of local Australian life and colour with the eclectic philosophy and literary ideas of a self-taught workingman, most famous of all being the eponymous Australian novel – Such is Life published under the pseudonym Tom Collins.
After marrying at 24 and suffering a series of droughts in Corop Northern Victoria, Joseph eventually established himself as a bullock driver based in Hay NSW. Alas after 5 years of this occupation drought and disease wiped out his bullock team and he subsequently returned to Shepparton where his brother John Furphy offered him work in his foundry.
During this time Joseph toiled by night at his novel Such Is Life – most of which he wrote in his cottage behind the foundry in Welsford St. He also spent time writing in the Shepparton Mechanics Institute. which now still has the Tom Collins Gallery, part of the older, original part of the building. Such is Life was a collection of stories which reflected his time in the Riverina as a bullock driver. It originally appeared in the Bulletin in 1903 and has since been recognised as a significant piece of Australian Literature. Joseph moved to Fremantle in 1904 to be nearer his three children and died there in 1912.
John Furphy’s great-grandson Roger Furphy created the Joseph Furphy Commemorative Literary Award in 1992, which grew to a national Open Short Story and Open Poetry Award and a more local Youth and Junior Award for the youth of the Goulburn Valley area footprint.
In 2020 major sponsors Lion (Furphy Beer) and La Trobe joined with Goulburn Valley Libraries and the Furphy Foundation to sponsor the Furphy Literary Award with a first prize of $15,000 and a total open category prize pool of $20,000 and a residency at Shepparton’s La Trobe campus. Greater Shepparton City Council came on board as a sponsor of the Youth and Junior competition.
And so the name and legacy of Joseph Furphy lives on, each year unearthing great Australian literary gems and a new genre of writers. The Top 16 Shortlist of the Open Short Story each year are showcased in a quality, hard-cover book published by Hardie Grant.
Author and Furphy Scholar (the late) Patrick Crudden produced a small booklet entitled A Brief History of the Shepparton Mechanics Institute 1877-2012.
June 6, 1901
“Joseph Furphy in a letter to A.G. Stephens, ‘I find myself blocked by my own infernal ignorance, so that I have worn a pad from my sanctum to the Encyclopaedia Britannica at the Mechanics.’
Page 5 notes ‘He [Joseph] was frequently seen in the reading room where his favourite position as he read was leaning with his elbow on the mantlepiece. In the refurbished building there is a photograph of Joseph above the mantlepiece.”… The sanctum he referred to was a small room with a skillion roof close by the river … in Welsford Street [Shepparton].”
This reading room is now known as the Boardroom and still hosts the framed photograph of Joseph.
