C.J. Dennis Memorial
Auburn's tribute to the laureate of the larrikin.
A blue granite drinking fountain in Auburn honours C.J. Dennis, author of The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, who was born in the town in 1876.
Auburn's most famous son never wrote a word about wine. Clarence Michael James Dennis — C.J. Dennis to generations of readers — was born here on 7 September 1876, and went on to write The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915), the best-selling verse novel that made him the laureate of the larrikin alongside Lawson and Paterson.
The town remembers him with a blue granite memorial fountain, built in three sections with a birdbath at its foot, unveiled on 29 March 1953 on land opposite the Auburn Institute — near the site of the former Auburn Hotel where the poet was born.
It is a two-minute stop that adds a literary thread to a stroll along the Auburn Heritage Walk, and bookish visitors should continue to Mostly Books, the town's secondhand bookshop, to hunt down a copy of the Sentimental Bloke.
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- C. J. Dennis.png by Unknown authorUnknown author , Public domain via Wikimedia Commons