Jack Moses


Jack Moses was an Australian outback bush poet who wrote the poem "The Dog Sat on the Tuckerbox" from which the well-known Dog on the Tuckerbox monument and the Nine and Five Mile legend of Gundagai were inspired.
Moses' poem, which has echoes of a much earlier Bullocky Bill by someone known only as "Bowyang Yorke", was considered by Gundagai Shire Council to be an important advertisement for their historic Australian town, and influenced creation of the famous monument, five miles from Gundagai, and a 'Jack Moses Street' in Gundagai was named in his honour. In his publisher's note in Jack Moses' collection of verse "Nine Miles from Gundagai", the publisher quoted Frank Morton saying in 1923 that he liked Moses' poems as they "dealt with the interests of real Australian bush people in a truthful, non-gloomy manner."
Jack Moses remained a prominent figure in country shows throughout New South Wales and at smoke concerts where he recited his poems and told stories of the bush. Given to be a born reciter, renditions included the works of Edwin Brady, Henry Lawson, Will H. Ogilvie, Roderic Quinn, and Banjo Paterson.
Moses was a whisky salesman, and an enthusiastic all-year swimmer at Bondi as a founding member of the Bondi Icebergs Club.