“Unemployed at last”, said the main character in the the opening line of one of Australia’s literary classic.

In the first chapter of ‘Such is Life’ the narrator, Tom Collin is overjoyed that he will have the time to write a novel that will be ‘a fair picture of life’.

Written by Joseph Furphy or Tom Collins, to use his pseudonym, this classic is a rambling series of loosely interwoven stories told by the narrator about the various people he encounters as he travels about the countryside in the late 19th Century.

A “furphy” however, is a story of dubious veracity but one that gains popular currency as it circulates through a community,