Summary
The story begins with the narrator recounting a Sunday afternoon when the narrator and an unnamed group were out boating in the billabong. In the narrator's telling, the group sees a young man on a horse, driving horses along the bank. They greet each other and exchange light-hearted banter: the young stranger says it is a nice day, and asks how deep the water is. One of the members of the narrator's group responds in jest that the water is deep enough for drowning. The group moves on without much notice of the exchange.
The narrator continues the story. The next day, a funeral party gather at a pub while waiting for the hearse to pass. They dance jigs, drink, and play around. The deceased person is a young man who passed away the day before while trying to bring horses across the river.
The narrator goes on to relate that the only reason this young man is having a funeral in town is because of his union affiliation; he is otherwise unknown to the town. The policemen found union papers in his belongings and obtained his information from the office of the General Labourers' Union. The only information the office secretary could impart was that the young man was a "Roman," ostensibly a Roman Catholic, unlike most of the town.
The narrator implies that this difference might have proved a sticking point for the town had he not been a union man; unionism is a commonality strong enough that the town deigns to give him a funeral. Union brotherhood, however, is a bond that fails to overcome the pull of alcohol for the funeral party. By the time the hearse comes around, more than half of the funeral party is too drunk to accompany it.
The procession ends up being about fifteen people. About five of these are boarders at the pub, and they follow the hearse in a horse-drawn carriage, borrowed from the landlord. The narrator draws a distinction between those of the group following on foot, and the boarders on horses. They are "strangers" to each other, as well as to the corpse. The funeral party comes across a drover with a packhorse, who stumbles into the path of the hearse until someone waves him off. He is a stranger to it all, the narrator wryly comments.
The rest of the procession walks in pairs. It is very hot and dusty in the town that day. As they walk through the town, several pubs close out of respect for the dead, and their patrons entered and exit through back entrances. No one minds, the narrator comments, because of their respect for the dead. The procession also passes three shearers. One of them, very drunk, just barely manages to take his hat off out of respect for the dead, only to lose his grip, fumbling to reclaim the hat as the hearse moves past.
The narrator walks alongside a "tall, sentimental drover" who "cynically" quotes melancholic verses about death and cracks a joke about the deceased man's GSU ticket. Then the friend tells the narrator that the body in the hearse was the man they came across yesterday while boating on the billabong. The narrator responds that he barely took note of him. The friend comments that he would have paid more attention if he had known the man was so close to his death. They continue walking along the railway line, discussing the accident amongst themselves.
Analysis
In some ways, "The Union Buries Its Dead" is a classic text in an Australian nationalist genre. The opening words of the story—"While out boating on Sunday afternoon..."—conjure a leisurely image, usually associated with upper-class society, perhaps a Parisian afternoon on the Seine. Yet the next words—"on a billabong"—immediately situate the text in a distinct landscape: a billabong is an Australian Aboriginal term for a small offshoot of a river. This opening contrast emphasizes the highly place-specific nature of the story. Indeed, many of the characters and literary elements are tied to the bush setting and, more generally, to Australian national identity. First of all is the distinguishable dry Australian climate: the "heat rushed in fierce dazzling rays" over the bush town. Second are the Australian bush archetypes, recognizable throughout the "bush yarn" genre, including the isolation and stoicism of the drover, a livestock herdsman; the absurdity of upper-class pretensions, as depicted by the pub owner at the funeral; and simultaneous superfluousness and integration of religion into bush life.
Yet despite his allegiance to many elements of the bush narrative, Lawson also critiques bush life as isolated and lonely. In that same first sentence, for example, the narrator establishes his membership in a collective group, writing, "...We saw..." Against that group identity, the narrator identifies a stranger: "...a young man on horseback driving some horses along the bank." This first image of the text thus creates a profound divide between "us" and a lone other. The man's subsequent death, alone and as yet unidentified to the group, heightens his isolation. Indeed, the narrator comments, even when alive, the deceased man "was almost a stranger in town." Thus, Lawson seems to be arguing, there is the potential for great isolation in bush life.
Nevertheless, the narrator appears to be very much part of an in-group identity, consistently using "we" pronouns. This collective seems to be heavily based on union solidarity. The only reason the deceased stranger gets a funeral, after all, is because "Unionism is stronger" than the differences between them. Yet as the procession to the funeral progresses, the narrator begins to break down that collective strength. For example, a subsection of the funeral procession ride behind the hearse on horse. These few people are boarders at the pub, and thus can be presumed to be slightly wealthier than the others.
For that reason, Lawson's narrator even pokes fun at the theme of union solidarity. En route to the funeral, the narrator's walking companion wonders out loud of the deceased man's union card will be accepted in heaven. On one hand, this irreverence can be seen as another archetypal element of Australian bush nationalism. On the other hand, union membership is a central factor that unites the men in the story. The satire directed towards such unifying theme serves to break down what little cohesion exists.
Lawson also uses sarcasm and an absurdist tone to demonstrate the futility or emptiness of bush nationalism. The story's narrator describes the events of the story with dry humor, converting gestures of sympathy into tokens of absurdity. He points out that the town's pubs, for example, shut their doors out of respect for dead—yet patrons continue to enter and exit through the more discreet back entrance. In this case, what seems like a show of respect is merely pretense. Similarly farcical is the encounter with a drunk shearer, who places his hat on and off his head and finally, in a fit of slapstick comedy, stamps his foot on the hat in order to keep it off and pay his respects. Lawson's commentary is just as dry here, abstaining from commentary other than a simple description of how the shearer "remorsefully" restrains his hat with his foot. Given his pathetic effort, the description of the shearer as remorseful can only be the narrator's attempt to mock the situation. Thus, Lawson clearly refrains from a wholehearted endorsement of the Australian celebration of bush identity and culture.
