smoking

The person at center alo appeared in this photo series: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/55138164138/]

A swagman (also called a swaggie, sundowner or tussocker) was a transient labourer who travelled by foot from farm to farm carrying his belongings in a swag (bedroll). The term originated in Australia in the 19th century and was later used in New Zealand. Swagmen were particularly common in Australia during times of economic uncertainty, such as the 1890s and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Many unemployed men travelled the rural areas of Australia on foot, their few meagre possessions rolled up and carried in their swag. Their swag was frequently referred to as "Matilda", hence Waltzing Matilda refers to walking with their swag. Typically, they would seek work in farms and towns they travelled through, and in many cases the farmers, if no permanent work was available, would provide food and shelter in return for some menial task. The figure of the "jolly swagman", represented most famously in Banjo Paterson's bush poem "Waltzing Matilda", became a folk hero in 19th-century Australia, and is still seen today as a symbol of anti-authoritarian values that Australians considered to be part of the national character. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swagman

While clandestine smoking may have been indulged in by the avant-garde and the fashionable prior to the war, the changes in society during the 1920s brought female smoking into the open, and in the following decades advertising began to target women.5,6 The increasing engagement of women in the paid workforce, particularly with the outbreak of the Second World War, led to greater social and financial freedom for many women, which in turn fuelled higher smoking rates.2,5 By the end of the war, more than one-quarter of Australian women were smokers, along with almost three-quarters of adult males.7 Although the second half of the 1900s brought confirmation that tobacco use is a major cause of death and disease, female smoking continued to increase, peaking at one-third in the mid-1970s, by which time smoking in males had begun to decline.8,9 Source: www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au/chapter-1-prevalence/1-1-a-...