Boots - Analysis

Boots as a national signature

Paterson’s central move is to take something plain and practical and make it carry a whole identity. The poem insists that Australian character is best read on the ground, in what survives long travel and harder fighting: good Australian boots. By repeating that phrase in different settings, the speaker turns boots into proof. They are not decorative; they are what remain when there is no selection, when choices narrow down to marching, enduring, and leaving a visible mark behind.

From swag and river to Europe: one continuous journey

The opening is a brisk travelogue of bush life: humping of our swag in the country of the Gidgee, swimming the Di’man tina with clothes in a bag. These details matter because they frame Europe not as a separate story but as an extension of a long habit of improvisation. Even the joke about having travelled by superior motor car sets up the real point: when they went to Germany, modern options vanish. The line about having no choice ’twixt a Ford or Rolls de Royce is comic, but it also declares a kind of egalitarianism—war strips away luxury, and the one reliable “vehicle” left is the boot.

The larrikin reputation and what it hides

The middle stanza stages a clash between how Australians are seen and what they are actually doing. Outsiders called us “mad Australians” and couldn’t understand how officers and men could fraternise. The tone here is amused and slightly defiant; the speaker seems to enjoy the misunderstanding. Yet the poem quietly corrects the caricature. Yes, they’re labelled reckless and wild, as if they have nothing great or sacred in view, but the next lines pivot toward seriousness: in the thickest of the fray, you could gamble on them. The tension is sharp: the same looseness that looks like disorder becomes, under pressure, a dependable way of moving and surviving.

Tracks past shell holes: proof written in the mud

The poem’s most haunting image is not a flag or speech, but a trail. You could track us past the shell holes, and the tracks were all one way. The boots become a kind of signature stamped into a devastated landscape. That phrase all one way carries two meanings at once: the literal direction of an advance and the grim implication of no return. The speaker doesn’t linger on death directly, but the shell holes make it unavoidable; the boots are both evidence of life pushing forward and a record of how war narrows routes into single, irreversible lines.

Allies and comparison: belonging without boasting

The final stanza widens the frame to other armies, and the speaker’s pride becomes more measured. The Highlanders are next of kin, the Irish a treat, the French fight grimly, and the Americans knew it all and then had to learn. This quick catalogue isn’t just name-dropping; it places Australians among recognisable types while still keeping them distinct. The Australians kept beside ’em, did its bit, and took its chance. The boast is restrained by fellowship, as if the speaker is saying: we didn’t replace anyone, we matched the moment.

The clatter on cobblestones: a newborn nation made audible

The closing sound image is the poem’s emotional arrival. The speaker hailed our newborn nation not in parliament but by listening to the clatter on the cobblestones of France. That clatter is more than marching; it’s Australia becoming real to itself in a foreign place. The mood shifts here from bush-humour and outsider mockery into solemn affirmation: nationhood is not presented as theory, but as a rhythm of boots in step, heard and recognised.

A harder question hidden in the pride

If a nation can be newborn in the sound of boots, what else is being born at the same time? The poem’s confidence depends on the idea that you can read virtue in the tracks, but those same tracks run past shell holes and go one way. Paterson lets the pride stand, yet he also leaves us with the uneasy thought that identity here is purchased by marching into places you didn’t choose.