The purpose of this study is to trace the origin of the `bush debate` which was held between `Banjo` Paterson and Henry Lawson in the Bulletin around 1892, and to compare their different attitudes toward Australian bush, and ultimately to consider the symbolic status of the bush in their works. Historically the 1890s in Australia was an important decade since in that era Australia began to move beyond colonial imitation of British culture and to have a national self-consciousness. Unlike the lassitude of fin-de-siècle of the old world, Australia underwent cultural upheaval in which the genius of young country had a brief and brilliant first flowering. Australian poets in this period trind a symbol for the national identity, and they found it in the typically Australian natural environment as an outer equivalent of an inner reality-the bush where early settlers were struggling to survive and adjust themselves to a new land. `Banjo` Paterson glorified the bush and the people who lived in the rugged surroundings in his bush ballads such as `Clancy of the Overflow` and `The Man from the Snowy River`. And also in `Waltzing Matilda`, widely popular and called by many `the unofficial national anthem of Australia`, he romanticized a swagman`s wandering (`waltzing`) and his suicide. Henry Lawson, on the contrary, described the bush realistically and in a gloomy perspective. To him, the bush was never a romantic place of horse-riding, but a dismal place of drought and hunger. Thus the `bush debate` began in The Bulletin, the weekly magazine founded in 1880 and widely circulated during the 1890s. Although it was staged by the two poets, the debate became more hostile and tended to be personal attacks as other poets took part. Through their debate and other writings, Paterson an Lawson represented conflicting aspects and voices of the Australian bush. To choose one exclusively and forsake the other as many critics do, however, would be to presuppose the bush as monolithic and monologic. For a deeper and broader understanding of the Australian bush and people, we need to listen to the discordant voices of the bush represented by the poets, and to appreciate its major and minor tones in their works. The voice of the bush, therefore, should be plural. From the bush we can hear the warbling magpie`s `joyous, glad, thanksgiving song. / For all God`s mercies upon earth` as Paterson noted in the `Song of the Future.` And yet, at the same time, we are led to hear `the still voice-yet so warm, and yet so cold` through `Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry` as Lawson heard in `On the Night Train`.
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