use textual analysis to analyse the following story:

""The Drover’s Wife
The Drover’s Wife (1945)
There has perhaps been a
mistake—but of no great importance—
made in the denomination of this picture. The
woman depicted is not ‘The Drover’s Wife’. She is my wife. We have not seen each other
now…it must be getting on thirty years. This portrait was painted shortly after she left—and had
joined him. Notice she has very conveniently hidden her wedding hand. It is a canvas 20 X 24
inches, signed l/r ‘Russell Drysdale’.
I say ‘shortly after’ because she has our small suitcase—Drysdale has made it look like a
shopping bag—and she is wearing the sandshoes she normally wore to the beach. Besides, it is
dated 1945.
It is Hazel all right.
How much can you tell by a face? That a woman has left a husband and two children? Here, I
think the artist has fallen down (though how was he to know?). He has Hazel with a resigned
helpless expression—as if it was all my fault. Or as if she had been a country woman all her
ruddy life.
Otherwise the likeness is fair enough.
Hazel was large-boned. Our last argument I remember concerned her weight. She weighed—I
have the figures—12 st. 4 ozs. And she wasn’t exactly tall. I see that she put it back on almost
immediately. It doesn’t take long. See her legs.
She had a small, pretty face, I’ll give her that. I was always surprised by her eyes. How solemn
they were. The painting shows that. Overall, a gentle face, one that other women liked. How
long it must have lasted up in the drought conditions is anybody’s guess.
A drover! Why a drover? It has come as a shock to me.
‘I am just going round the corner,’ she wrote, characteristically. It was a piece of butcher’s paper
left on the table.
Then, and this sounded odd at the time: ‘Your tea’s in the oven. Don’t give Trev any carrots.’
Now that sounded as if she wouldn’t be back but, after puzzling over it, I dismissed it.
And I think that is what hurt me most. No ‘Dear’ at the top, not even ‘Gordon’. No ‘love’ at the
bottom. Hazel left without so much as a goodbye. We could have talked it over.
Adelaide is a small town. People soon got to know. They…shied away. I was left alone to bring
up Trevor and Kay. It took a long time—years—before, if asked, I could say: ‘She vamoosed. I
haven’t a clue to where.’
Fancy coming across her in a painting, one reproduced in colours like that. I suppose in a way
that makes Hazel famous.
The picture gives little away though. It is the outback—but where exactly? South Australia? It
could easily be Queensland, West Australia, the Northern Territory. We don’t know. You could
never find that spot.
He is bending over (feeding?) the horse, so it is around dusk. This is borne out by the length of
Hazel’s shadow. It is probably in the region of 5 pm. Probably still over the hundred mark. What
a place to spend the night. The silence would have already begun.
Hazel looks unhappy. I can see she is having second thoughts. All right, it was soon after she
had left me; but she is standing away, in the foreground, as though they’re not speaking. See
that? Distance = doubts. They’ve had an argument.
Of course, I want to know all about him. I don’t even know his name. In Drysdale’s picture he is
a silhouette. A completely black figure. He could have been an Aborigine; by the late forties I
understand some were employed as drovers.
But I rejected that.
I took a magnifying glass. I wanted to see the expression on his face. What colour is his hair?
Magnified, he is nothing but brush strokes. A real mystery man.
It is my opinion, however, that he is a small character. See his size in relation to the horse, to
the wheels of the cart. Either that, or it is a ruddy big horse.
It begins to fall into place. I had an argument with our youngest, Kay, the other day. Both she
and Trevor sometimes visit me. I might add, she hasn’t married and has her mother’s general
build. She was blaming me, said people said Mum was a good sort.
Right. I nodded.
‘Then why did she scoot?’
‘Your mother,’ I said thinking quickly, ‘had a silly streak.’
If looks could kill!
I searched around—‘She liked to paddle in water!’
Kay gave a nasty laugh, ‘What? You’re the limit. You really are.’
Of course, I hadn’t explained properly. And I didn’t even know then she had gone off with a
drover.
Hazel was basically shy, even with me: quiet, generally non-committal. At the same time, I can
imagine her allowing herself to be painted so soon after running off without leaving even a
phone number or forwarding address. It fits. It sounds funny, but it does.
This silly streak. Heavy snow covered Mt Barker for the first time and we took the Austin up on
the Sunday. From a visual point of view it was certainly remarkable.
Our gum trees and stringy barks somehow do not go with the white stuff, not even the old Ghost
Gum. I mentioned this to Hazel but she just ran into it and began chucking snowballs at me.
People were laughing. Then she fell in up to her knees, squawking like a schoolgirl. I didn’t
mean to speak harshly, but I went up to her, ‘Come on, don’t be stupid. Get up.’ She went very
quiet. She didn’t speak for hours.
Kay of course wouldn’t remember that.
With the benefit of hindsight, and looking at this portrait by Drysdale, I can see Hazel had a soft
side. I think I let her clumsiness get me down. The sight of sweat patches under her arms, for
example, somehow put me in a bad mood. It irritated me the way she chopped wood. I think she
enjoyed chopping wood. There was the time I caught her lugging into the house the ice for the
ice chest—this is just after the war. The ice man didn’t seem to notice, he was following, working
out his change. It somehow made her less attractive in my eyes, I don’t know why. And then of
course she killed that snake down at the beach shack we took one Christmas. I happened to lift
the lid of the incinerator—a black brute, its head bashed in. ‘It was under the house,’ she
explained.
It was a two-roomed shack, bare floorboards. It had a primus stove, and an asbestos toilet down
the back. Hazel didn’t mind. Quite the contrary; when it came time to leave she was downcast. I
had to be at town for work.
The picture reminds me. It was around then Hazel took to wearing just a slip around the house.
And bare feet. The dress in the picture looks like a slip. She even used to burn rubbish in it
down the back.
I don’t know.
‘Hello, missus!’ I used to say, entering the kitchen. Not perfect perhaps, especially by today’s
standards, but that is my way of showing affection. I think Hazel understood. Sometimes I could
see she was touched.
I mention that to illustrate our marriage was not all nit-picking and argument. When I realised
she had gone I sat for nights in the lounge with the lights out. I am a dentist. You can’t have
shaking hands and be a dentist. The word passed around. Only now, touch wood, has the
practice picked up to any extent.
Does this explain at all why she left?
Not really.
To return to the picture. Drysdale has left out the flies. No doubt he didn’t want Hazel waving her
hand, or them crawling over her face. Nevertheless, this is a serious omission. It is altering the
truth for the sake of a pretty picture, or ‘composition’. I’ve been up around there—and there are
hundreds of flies. Not necessarily germ carriers, ‘bush flies’ I think these are called; and they
drive you mad. Hazel of course accepted everything without a song and dance. She didn’t mind
the heat, or the flies.
It was a camping holiday. We had one of those striped beach tents shaped like a bell. I thought
at the time it would prove handy—visible from the air—if we got lost. Now that is a point.
Although I will never forget the colours and the assortment of rocks I saw up there I have no
desire to return, none, I realised one night. Standing a few yards from the tent, the cavernous
sky and the silence all around suddenly made me shudder. I felt lost. It defied logic. And during
the day the bush, which is small and prickly, offered no help (I was going to say ‘sympathy’). It
was stinking hot.
Yet Hazel was in her element, so much so she seemed to take no interest in the surroundings.
She acted as if she were part of it. I felt ourselves moving apart, as if I didn’t belong there,
especially with her. I felt left out. My mistake was to believe it was a passing phase, almost a
form of indolence on her part.
An unfortunate incident didn’t help. We were looking for a camp site. ‘Not yet. No, not there,’ I
kept saying—mainly to myself, for Hazel let me go on, barely saying a word. At last I found a
spot. A tree showed in the dark. We bedded down. Past midnight we were woken by a terrifying
noise and light. The children all began to cry. I had pitched camp alongside the Adelaide–Port
Augusta railway line.
Twenty or thirty miles north of Port Augusta I turned back. I had to. We seemed to be losing our
senses. We actually met a drover somewhere around there. He was off on the side making tea.
When I asked where were his sheep, or the cattle, he gave a wave of his hand. For some
reason this amused Hazel. She squatted down. I can still see her expression, silly girl.
The man didn’t say much. He did offer tea though. ‘Come on,’ said Hazel, smiling up at me.
Hazel and her silly streak—she knew I wanted to get back. The drover, a diplomat, poked the
fire with a stick.
I said, ‘You can if you want. I’ll be in the car.’
That is all.
I recall the drover as a thin head in a khaki hat, not talkative, with dusty boots. He is indistinct. Is
it him? I don’t know. Hazel—it is Hazel and the rotten landscape that dominate everything.""