[1] The club was formed around 1898 in Sydney, Australia by poet Victor Daley, and named after his best known book of verses.
[1] The club met at Fred J. Broomfield's home on the corner of Ice Road and Great Barcom Street, Darlinghurst, near St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney about September, 1898.
Foundation members of 'the Duskers', a small and exclusive group of friends, were Daley, Broomfield, James Philp, Herbert Low (journalist), William Bede Melville (a reporter for the Sydney newspaper, The Star), Angus Sinclair (writer), Bertram Stevens and Randolph Bedford.
Daley was elected 'Symposiarch' of the Duskers and the seven 'heptarchs' were Lawson, Stevens, Nelson Illingworth, Frank P. Mahony, George Augustine Taylor, Con Lindsay (journalist), and Philp, who drafted the rules.
Truth magazine publisher John Norton called them "a band of boozy, bar-bumming bards".