At the Kyabram Bush Verse group Around the Campfire 2025 Don McQueen received a trophy from David Livsey for winning the Johnny Johansson yarn spinning award.
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The Kyabram and District Bush Verse Group has opened entries for its annual Betty Olle Poetry Award, now in its 11th year.
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Entries close August 31, with the awards event to be held on Sunday, October 18, 2026, at the Ky Club from 1pm.
Kyabram and District Bush Verse Group president Greg McKenzie said the organisation had been working to keep Australian bush verse alive since its founding.
“This group started back in the early 1990s,” he said.
“The group aims to ensure that Australian bush verse does not disappear from our society.
“We do a lot of work in the local community trying to promote bush verse.”
The competition is open to poets across Australia, with both senior and junior sections.
“We get entries from all over Australia, from every state, and we also have a junior section, and we try and encourage schools to get involved,” Mr McKenzie said.
“A number of schools have been involved over the years, including local schools, but also schools as far away as NSW and Queensland.”
Kyabram P-12 College student Chris Cheng captured the junior section in 2025.
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Mr McKenzie said the award was highly regarded among bush poets.
“It is very well regarded and keenly sought after to win that award each year by well-known Australian bush poets,” he said.
The group, which has about 15 members, also holds the competition with the Kyabram Lions Club, judging stand-up performances of bush verse or yarn telling.
Bush verse covers a broad range of Australian subjects and traditions.
“A lot of it has an Irish or Scottish base to it; it is the Banjo Paterson, Henry Lawson type verse that we are looking at,” Mr McKenzie said.
“It can be about early history, from both an indigenous point of view or a European settlement point of view.”
He added that many older Australians would remember being taught such poems at school.
“We are trying to keep that alive in the community.
“It is important to keep it alive because it is part of our heritage, where we have come from.”
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