The article examines the features of masculinity as they appear in three plays from the 1950s set in rural Australia - an environment conventionally regarded as a place of authenticy for men - and discusses the uses to which these depictions of masculinity are put. The aims of the article are in part dramaturgical: 'to think about the relationship between the scripts of the plays and the time in which they were first performed, and to ask questions about how these plays worked in relation to changing possibilities for the performance of gender' (38).