Ever since Leah Purcell first read Henry Lawson’s 1898 short story, The Drover’s Wife, she has been, shall we say, obsessed with the piece. The writer Frank Moorhouse described the longevity of the story in Australian culture as “a phenomenon unique in the Australian artistic imagination – the drover’s wife has become our Mona Lisa”.

Several writers have produced their own versions of it; Russell Drysdale painted the famous picture of the drover’s wife; and Moorhouse’s last book, published in 2017, carried the same title and featured Drysdale’s painting on the cover of a collection of essays dedicated to “drover’s wives”.

No one, however, has worked and reworked the archetypal story as extensively as Purcell: the celebrated Indigenous actress, playwright, director and novelist. She wrote and starred in the award-winning play in 2016. Her novel, The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson, which dramatically extended the story, was published in 2019. She was writer, director and co-producer of the 2021 film adaptation of the novel. And in May, the opera, composed by George Palmer and directed by Purcell, had its world premiere in Brisbane. On Friday, it opened in Sydney.