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Ben Bowyang was an Australian newspaper comic strip, first published in the Melbourne Herald on Saturday, 7 October 1933, created by the cartoonist Alex Gurney, that followed the misadventures of two archetypical Australian bushmen, Ben Bowyang and his Mateship, Bill Smith, of "Gunn's Gully": characters that first appeared in the humorous Herald columns written during the 1920s and 1930s by C. J. Dennis.
The characters, Ben Bowyang and Bill Smith, featured in so many of the comical letters published in Dennis' columns, and became such favourites among the Herald's readers that, a year later, the Herald's resident caricaturist Samuel Garnet Wells pretended to have visited Gunn's Gully "Correspondents have frequently asked what Ben Bowyang and Bill Smith are like. This is Wells's impression of them after a visit to Gunns Gully" and presented 'caricatures' of the fictional pair, as if they were, indeed, real people.Wells, S.G. (1923), "Ben and Bill", The (Melbourne) Herald, (20 June 1923), p. 6.
Ten years later, based upon Dennis' columns and Well's (1923) caricatures, Gurney (at the time also a Herald employee) went on to create the characters for his successful comic strip. "Ben Bowyang: Story of Popular Chronicle Feature", The (Adelaide) Chronicle, (21 March 1935), p. 47.
On Thursday, 23 November 1933, the Adelaide weekly, The Chronicle, published the first of its regular single page presentations of five Gurney strips, "Ben Bowyang Makes Debut Tomorrow", The (Adelaide) Advertiser, (22 November 1933), p. 18. "The Exploits of Ben Bowyang by Alex Gurney", The (Adelaide) Chronicle, (23 November 1933), p. 30. each of which had, independently, appeared earlier in the Melbourne Herald.Namely, on 18 October 1933, 16 October 1933, 20 October 1933, 17 October 1933, and on 19 October 1933.
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