Employed as clerk in the New South Wales Government service.
| 1895 | In Sydney meets Bertha Marie Louise Bredt, a young nurse from Bairnsdale. |
| 1896 | Marries Bertha Bredt, 15 April, living first in Sydney, then in Perth. In the Days when the World was Wide. Lawson works spasmodically. While the Billy Boils. Returns to Sydney. |
| 1897 | Fred Broomfield forms the Dawn and Dusk Club. Lawson falls into convivial ways. To New Zealand, where Lawson receives an appointment as teacher in the Maori school of Maungamanunu, near Kaikoura. Joe Wilson and His Mates and On the Track and Over the Sliprails written here. Tries play-writing for Bland Holt. |
| 1898 | Birth of his son, Jim, 11 February, at Wellington, during an earthquake. Resolves to return to Sydney. Takes up residence, first at Dulwich Hill, later, in North Sydney. Appointed a clerk in the government service, but unable to discipline himself. Spasmodic writing. |
| 1899 | Meets Earl Beauchamp, Governor of New South Wales, and is persuaded to go to England. |
| 1900 | His daughter, Bertha, born 11 February. The Lawsons leave for London in April. On the Track and Over the Sliprails published (Sydney). Verses. Popular and Humorous. |
| 1901 | The Country I Come From. Joe Wilson and His Mates. Writes preface to Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career. |
| 1902 | Children of the Bush (London). |
| 1903 | Returns to Australia. Separation from Mrs Lawson, who takes up work as a saleswoman. |
| 1905 | When I Was King, and Other Verses (reprinted from Children of the Bush). |
| 1907 | Send Round the Hat and The Romance of the Swag (rearrangement of stores in Children of the Bush). |
| 1910 | The Rising of the Court. With E. J. Brady at Mallacoota Inlet. |
| 1911 | A Coronation Ode and Retrospect. |
| 1913 | For Australia and Other Poems. |
| 1914 | Living a restless life in Sydney. |
| 1915 | Writes the preface to C. J. Dennis’s The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, September. My Army, O, My Army! |
| 1916 | January. Is placed on a farm in the Yanco Irrigation Area, at Leeton. |
| 1917 | Leaves Leeton in November. |
| 1918 | Percy Leason, Selected Poems of Henry Lawson, with preface by David McKee Wright. 1919 Writes preface to Vance Marshall’s The World of the Living Dead. |
| 1920 | Seriously ill. Death of Lawson’s mother. |
| 1921 | In Coast Hospital. |
| 1922 | Death on 2 September, at Abbotsford, Sydney. State funeral. |
YOU remember when we hurried home from the old bush school how we were sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as, “An old mate of your father’s on the diggings, Johnny”.
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