"His Father's Mate" is a melodramatic short story by Henry Lawson.
Islay Mason is the narrator's father's mate, working on a goldfield stake.
While reviewing the anthology A Golden Shanty, a reviewer in The Daily Telegraph (Sydney) noted: "The touching story 'His Father's Mate,' by Henry Lawson, stands out distinctly as an excellent specimen of the kind of writing which Bret Harte set the world imitating in vain.
Full of local color and pathetic suggestion, it is no unworthy copy of the great original.
"[10] Another critic writing about the author's short story collection While the Billy Boils in The Sydney Morning Herald found: "Reading such a sketch as 'His Father's Mate,' with its undeniable pathos and real power, one is more than inclined to think that the Australian life which Mr. Lawson has studied and lived has been coloured by a pessimism native to the writer; but the mounted trooper does or did enter largely into the chronicles of the Australian bush, and there is nothing improbable in the fate of the boy Islay as it is told here.