AustLit

Philip Mowbray was well known in the 1890s as a Bulletin writer under the pseudonym 'Scotty the Wrinkler'; he adopted the name for his contributions after meeting in the Riverina a Scottish shepherd who claimed to be an expert on wrinkles. Of Scots descent himself, Mowbray seems to have been a British Army officer who served in India and Abyssinia before travelling to America and then Australia where, among other occupations, he was miner, drover, tutor, cook, and whaler. His gently cynical, often humorous Bulletin contributions consist mainly of paragraphs published in such columns as 'Aboriginalities'; he celebrates the freedoms of bush life and attacks cant and humbug. His death prompted Henry Lawson's poem 'The Passing of Scotty', published in the Bulletin 12 November 1903. A collection of his writings was published as The Swag around 1900. (The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature. William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton, and Barry Andrews. Oxford University Press 1994)