Hay and Hell and Booligal is a poem by the Australian bush poet

Bush poet

Bush poets were Australian poets who wrote about Australian rural life during colonial times and about the Australian bush. Many colonial bush poets were illiterate and performed their poems from memory instead of writing them. Bush poetry evolved from the jokes and stories shared by early settlers...

 Banjo Paterson

Banjo Paterson

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...

. Paterson wrote the poem while working as a solicitor

Solicitor

Solicitors are lawyers who traditionally deal with any legal matter including conducting proceedings in courts. In the United Kingdom, a few Australian states and the Republic of Ireland, the legal profession is split between solicitors and barristers , and a lawyer will usually only hold one title...

 with the firm of Street & Paterson in Sydney. It was first published in The Bulletin

The Bulletin

The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...

 on 25 April 1896. The poem was later included in Paterson's collection Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses, first published in 1902.

The poem is about the western Riverina

Riverina

The Riverina is an agricultural region of south-western New South Wales , Australia. The Riverina is distinguished from other Australian regions by the combination of flat plains, warm to hot climate and an ample supply of water for irrigation. This combination has allowed the Riverina to develop...

 town of Booligal; then and now a remote, isolated locality. It compares Booligal unfavourably with the nearby town of Hay

Hay, New South Wales

Hay is a town in the western Riverina region of south western New South Wales , Australia.  It is the administrative centre of Hay Shire Local Government Area and the centre of a prosperous and productive agricultural district on the wide Hay Plains....

 and even Hell

Hell

In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...

, recounting a litany of problems with the town—heat, sand, dust, flies, rabbits, mosquitos, snakes and drought—with humorous intent. "Hell" may also refer to a nearby property called "Hell's Gate". The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia places "Hell" at nearby One Tree

One Tree, New South Wales

One Tree is a location on the Cobb Highway on the flat plain between Hay and Booligal in the Riverina district of New South Wales, Australia. In 1862 a public house was built there – the One Tree Inn – and the locality developed as a coach changing-stage and watering-place between the Murrumbidgee...

, on the stock route

Stock route

In Australia, the Travelling Stock Route is an authorised thoroughfare for the walking of domestic livestock such as sheep or cattle from one location to another...

 between Hay on the Murrumbidgee River

Murrumbidgee River

The Murrumbidgee River is a major river in the state of New South Wales, Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory . A major tributary of the Murray River, the Murrumbidgee flows in a west-northwesterly direction from the foot of Peppercorn Hill in the Fiery Range of the Snowy Mountains,...

 and Booligal on the Lachlan River

Lachlan River

- Course :The river rises in the central highland of New South Wales, part of the Great Dividing Range, 13 km east of Gunning. Its major headwaters, the Carcoar River, the Belubula River and the Abercrombie River converge near the town of Cowra. Minor tributaries include the Morongla Creek...

.

The poem concludes with the lines:
Booligal was indeed the victim of many natural disasters around this time. As well as the usual droughts and floods, in 1890 the town was victim to a rabbit plague

Rabbits in Australia

In Australia, rabbits are a serious mammalian pest and are an invasive species. Annually, European rabbits cause millions of dollars of damage to crops.-Effects on Australia's ecology:...

. Despite poisoning and "drives" killing hundreds and thousands of rabbits, the pasture was severely depleted. This was quickly followed by another plague; this time of grasshoppers

Australian plague locust

The Australian plague locust is a native Australian insect in the family Acrididae and a significant agricultural pest....

 who ate everything that grew, including the produce in the Chinese gardens. Nevertheless, the description of the town was not popular with Booligal residents:

The phrase "Hay and Hell and Booligal" or its variant "Hay, Hell and Booligal" has become part of Australian folklore. In 1897, one year after the poems' publication The Age

The Age

The Age is a daily broadsheet newspaper, which has been published in Melbourne, Australia since 1854. Owned and published by Fairfax Media, The Age primarily serves Victoria, but is also available for purchase in Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and border regions of South Australia and...

 in Melbourne reported:

The author and folklorist Bill Wannan titled his collection of Australian bush humour Hay, Hell and Booligal.