IF YOU’RE LOOKING for an example of how a classic literary text can speak to the present, you could hardly do better than Clancy of the Overflow. Banjo Paterson’s poem of a century ago caught some Australian attitudes that are with us still. A sweet moment of the later Howard years, during the Australian Wheat Board scandal, came with the email circulation of an apt parody, Howard of the Overflow, penned I believe by a Canberra insider. It begins:

I had written him a letter, which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him at the Wheat Board, years ago.
He was chairman when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him
Just on spec, to make the point that ‘Howard doesn’t want to know’.