CJ Dennis’s “sentimental bloke” Bill, the larrikin who fell for Doreen and changed his rugged ways for a bucolic life of marital bliss on an orchard, is one of Australian literature’s most celebrated fictional characters.
But 110 years after Dennis introduced “The Bloke” through his book of verse The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, the true identity – and deeply troubled life and battlefield death – of the “real” Bill has finally been discovered by a researcher, Gary Fearon.
