"Remittance Man" is a poem by Australian poet Judith Wright.
It was first published in The Bulletin on 15 March 1944 and later in several of the author's poetry collections and a number of other Australian poetry anthologies.
The "remittance man" of the title has been disgraced in Britain and sent by his family to make a new life in Australia. There he would receive a regular payment from the family back home. This will be enough to feed him though he will have to keep seeking casual employment to ensure he lives in some sort of comfort.
While reviewing the poet's collection A Human Pattern : Selected Poems critic Beverley Brahic commented that "As Heaney reveals rural Northern Ireland to us, so Wright trains her refreshingly flinty eye on the settlers of rural Australia. 'Remittance Man' is not Heaneyesque in its irony or in its way of telling rather than evoking with sensuous detail and rich music, but it too delineates the contours of life in a place most people who aren't natives of that place don't think much about. These poems with their laconic jibes have an anvil ring of truth".
In his commentary on the poem in 60 Classic Australian Poems Geoff Page noted "At one level it is simply a character sketch of someone she knew about. At another, it is a microcosm of how British 'settlers' came to terms emotionally with Australian landscapes."
After its initial publication in The Bulletin in 1944, the poem was reprinted as follows: