"The Union Buries Its Dead" is a well-known sketch story by iconic Australian writer and poet Henry Lawson.
[1] The story takes place in Bourke, and concerns the burial of an anonymous union labourer, who had drowned the previous day "while trying to swim some horses across a billabong of the Darling."
The narrator, possibly Lawson himself, examines the level of respect the Bushfolk have for the dead, supplementing the story with his trademark dry, sardonic humour.
The story opens with the unnamed narrator and his party, boating on the Darling River, coming across a young man on horseback driving some horses along the bank.
Support for unionism is depicted by an increasing number of town and farm folk falling in behind the hearse as it moves to the cemetery.
The cemetery was a good step from town and many of the mourners developed a strong thirst long before the first pub was met on the way back.'.