Rugby League. Rugby Union in the district is run by the ACT and Southern NSW Rugby Union, with clubs from Albury, Wagga Wagga, Cootamundra, Temora and Hay as well as many others competing in the Southern Inland Rugby Union. Other popular sports in the Riverina include cycling, bowls, cricket, netball, tennis and horse racing. The Riverina is home to many racecourses and picnic race meetings are held regularly at places such as Corowa, Berrigan, Carrathool, Tumut and Lockhart. Culture The Riverina was the setting for some of Australia's great artistic and literary works of the 19th and early 20th century. Most of these works reflected the rural lifestyle and agricultural pursuits common in the Riverina at that time and projected an image of Australia and Australians that would later change rapidly. The writer Joseph Furphy worked as a bullocky for 10 years in the area around Hay from 1872. Later, using the pen name Tom Collins, Furphy wrote Such Is Life set in the Riverina during the drought and depression of the 1890s and drawing on his experiences as a bullocky. Although a slow seller, the novel was described as "fitted to become an Australian classic" by A.G. Stephens, the literary critic of The Bulletin. Published in 1921, Around the Boree Log and Other Verses was written by Patrick Joseph Hartigan, under the pen name John O'Brien. A Roman Catholic priest, after early stints at Thurgoona and Berrigan, in 1917 Hartigan was appointed as the parish priest of Narrandera where he stayed until 1944. His poems recorded the everyday lives and mateship of the people of the Riverina. His friend and well-known poet C. J. Dennis hailed them in The Bulletin as in 'the direct Lawson-Paterson line mainly—unaffected talk about Australians, much as they would naturally talk about themselves'. Around the Boree Log ran to five editions and 18,000 copies by 1926. The artist and key member of the Heidelberg School, Tom Roberts spent some time on a sheep station near Brocklesby prior to and during the painting of his most celebrated artwork, Shearing the Rams. The painting was criticised in its time for the depiction of strong manual labour rather than the common "high art" themes of the day. It is seen now as reflecting Australia's largest industry at the time and the work of ordinary Australians. The painting is now in the collection of the National Gallery of