C.J. Dennis Memorial

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.