Andrew Barton ("Banjo") Paterson, bush poet, lawyer and journalist.

There is no shortage of Internet biographical coverage of "Banjo", eldest child of Scottish immigrants who arrived in Sydney during the early 1850s and with Banjo's uncle took up the squatting run of "Illalong" to breed Indian Army remounts (Banjo's grandfather served as roughrider and, later, captain in East India Company service). After establishing title by five year's occupancy of "Illalong", the two brothers (Andrew and John) squatted at "Buckenbah", near Obley, in the western district of New South Wales. However, for her confinement Banjo's mother, Rose, stayed with her sister at Narrambla, near Orange, where Banjo was born (17 February 1864). Seventy years later, Banjo wrote about "Buckenbah" in recollections for the Sydney Morning Herald (source of much of this compilation):

This place was held on a lease from the Crown at a few pence per acre and was worth no more. It was dingo-infested, unfenced country where the sheep had to be shepherded and the cattle, as the blackboys said could go "longa bush" and wander afield until they got into somebody else's meat cask or could be mustered and driven away by enterprising people who adopted this cheap method of stocking-up. In these surroundings, I, the immature verse-writer, son of Andrew Paterson, had my first taste of bush life.

Banjo adds:

   Of my father I saw little, for he was mainly away pioneering in
   Queensland. There he had a skirmish with the blacks, during which
   his cousin, James Paterson, had his spectacles knocked off his
   nose by the tip of a boomerang; he tried to take sheep to some
   new place, but was caught on flooded country between two rivers,
   and had to shear them on a sandhill; and finally he had to get
   out of Queensland--just another of the many pioneers who
   unsuccessfully threw dice with fate. I never knew the name of
   his place in Queensland, but I understand that it adjoined
   Lammermuir.

To meet losses in Queensland, "Buckenbah" was sold and the family moved back to "Illalong", then on the busy main road between Sydney and Melbourne. Here, Rose brought up two boys and five girls. There is in the National Library a rare map of Binalong police district in 1864 which shows "Illalong", Binalong and other localities familiar to Banjo. The Lambing Flat diggings were only a day's ride from "Illalong". Banjo considered "Illalong" an "unlucky place--enough to break anyone's heart--for the Free Selection Act had just been passed, and the selectors, droves of them, all seemed to pick on us, as there were creeks everywhere which solved for them the water problem".

   "Illalong", Binalong and Bogolong
   Banjo writes of his "Illalong" boyhood:

   There were swimming pools in the creek 10 feet deep and half a mile
   long, and the tides of life surged round us. The gold escort from
   Lambing Flat, too, came by twice a week, with a mounted trooper
   riding in front with his rifle at the ready and another armed
   trooper on the box with the coachman. I used to hope that the escort
   would be "stuck up" outside our place so that I might see something
   worth while, but what with the new settlers and the scores of
   bullock teams taking loading out to the back country, no bushranger
   stood half a chance of making a getaway unseen.

   The roads were quite unmade and when the track got so cut up that a
   wagon would sink down to its axles, the bullockies would try a new
   track. Thus the highway became a labyrinth of tracks, half a mile
   wide, with her and there an excavation where a wagon had been dug
   out; and when, as often happened, a wagon stuck in the bed of the
   creek, they would hitch two teams of bullocks to it, and then (as
   one of the bullockies said) either the wagon or the bed of the
   creek had to come.

   I was not encouraged to go anywhere near the bullockies, who were
   supposed to be up to stratagems, especially in the way of stealing
   horses; but a lonely child will go anywhere for company, and I
   found that they travelled with their families, dogs, and sometime
   even fowls. These latter gentry, after fossicking about the camp
   for worms and grasshoppers, would hop up into the wagon as soon as
   the bullocks were yoked, making for their crate, where a little
   food awaited them. They hurried too!

   I found that these teamsters were like Bracken's hero--"not
   understood". Hard as it may be to believe, they were really
   fond of their bullocks, and only took the whip to shirkers.
   One of them gave me a demonstration with a bullock-whip, cutting
   great furrows in the bark of a white gum tree. When I said it
   was no wonder the bullocks pulled, he remarked, feelingly,
   "Sonny, if I done that to them bullocks I'd want shooting. Every
   bullock knows his name, and when I speak to him he's into the
   yoke. I'd look well knocking 'em about with a hundred miles to go
   and them not getting' a full feed once a week. Many a night I've
   dug up a panel of a squatter's paddock and slipped 'em in, and I've
   been back before daylight to slip 'em out and put the panel up agen.
   So long as they'll stick to me I'll stick to them".

The theme of bullocks appears in several of Banjo's poems, the most popular being those about "Saltbush Bill, JP". Schooling for Banjo, in the village of Binalong, provided a formative education about the ways of the world:

   By this time 1 had learned to ride, and to get me away it was
   decided that I should ride four miles to school every day in
   Binalong, a two-pub town famous for the fact that the bushranger
   Gilbert was buried in the police paddock. Here I sat on a hard
   wooden form alongside some juvenile relatives of Gilbert.

   Carlyle in his "Sartor Resartus" speaks of his hero Diogenes
   Teudelsdrock as being educated at the Academy of Hinterschlag
   (stern-smackers), and there was plenty of Hinterschlag at this
   little bush school in Binalong. The master, Moore by name, had
   to meet emergencies of one sort or another every day, and he met
   them like Napoleon. Spare, gaunt, and Irish by descent, he ran to
   gamecocks and kangaroo dogs in his private moments. It was nothing
   unusual for his flock to go out with him in the long summer
   afternoons to watch a course after a kangaroo, and the elite of the
   school, the pound-keeper's son and the blacksmith's boy, would be
   allowed to stop after school and watch a "go-in" between two cocks
   without the steel spurs, as part of their training for more serious
   business.

   One day the sergeant of police from Yass, in plain clothes, drove
   tip the door of the school in a natty little trap with a pair of
   ponies. We jumped to the conclusion that he had heard of this
   cockfighting business, and we expected (and hoped) to see the
   schoolmaster led away like Eugene Aram with gyves upon his wrist.
   While the sergeant was inside with the teacher we children swarmed
   all over his buggy, and there in a neat-lined box tinder the
   seat we found a gamecock, clipped and looking for a fight!

   The gamecock was rather surprised to se us in charge of his caravan,
   but not nearly so astonished as we were to see HIM. It was our--or,
   at any rate, nay--first introduction to the ways of the world and
   to those who go about in sheep's clothing, but are inwardly ravening
   wolves.

   Apart from his sporting proclivities, there was little fault to find
   with our teacher. Poor man, he was almost daily confronted by irate
   mothers, real rough sorts, whose children he had whipped, and who
   threatened to bring "the old man" down to deal with him if it ever
   happened again.

For those familiar with the Saltbush Bill poems and "The Gundaroo Bullock", Banio's schoolboy memory clearly provided material. Many of Banjo's poems also recapture his love of horses, including an event at "Bogolong" station, owned by the Julian family:

   My first introduction to the racing business came about this way.
   It was New Year's Day and a general holiday. My father was away,
   and the station roustabout, having filled the water-barrel, cut
   the wood and led the fowls, was free to go to the Bogolong races,
   some eight miles away. He suggested that I should go with him,
   and my mother agreed, though I would not have had a hundred-to-one
   chance of getting leave from my lather. Picture us then, a youth
   of eighteen and a boy of eight setting out to take part in the
   sport of kings!

Bogolong (now called Bookham) was a township on the main southern road, and consisted or two "pubs", half a mile apart, with nothing in between! When I asked a roustabout what had happened to the rest of the town, he said: "This is all they is. One pub to ketch the coves coming from Yass and the other to ketch the coves from Jugiong".

   The track was about half a mile out of town, with no grandstand, and
   mostly laid out through a gum and stringy-bark scrub. The racehorses
   were tied to saplings, as were hundreds of othe horses ridden by
   wild men from the Murrumbidgee Mountains, who had all brought their
   dogs. There was a sprinkling of more civilized sportsmen from Yass
   and Jugiong, blackfellows and half-castes from everywhere, and a few
   out-and-outers who had ridden from Lobb's Hole, a place so steep
   that (as the horse-boy said) the horses all wore the hair off their
   tails sliding down the mountains. The days of racing in heats (i.e.
   running the horses three times against each other to see which
   was the best) had died out everywhere except in these outlandish
   places; but there was one heat race still in the programme. This
   was the Bogolong Town Plate of a mile, possibly the last heat race
   ever run anywhere.

   I had ridden over a pony with a child's saddle; glancing at the
   pony to see that he was all right, I saw a Murrumbidgee mountaineer
   seven feet high taking the saddle off my pony and putting it on a
   racehorse. Running over to him, I managed to gasp out: "That's my
   saddle."

   "Right-oh, son," he said. "I won't hurt it. It's just the very thing
   the doctor ordered. It's ketch weights, and this is the lightest
   saddle here, so I took it before anybody else got it. This is
   Pardon," he went on, "and if he wins this heat you come to me and
   I'll stand you a bottle of ginger beer."

   In after years a man who speculated largely told me that he could
   put ten thousand pounds into a speculation without a tremor, but
   if he put a pound on a horse he could hardly hold his glasses
   steady enough to watch the race. Imagine, then, the excitement
   with which I watched Pardon's progress-watched him lying behind
   the leaders as they went out of sight behind the stringy-hark
   scrub; watched them come into sight again with Pardon still
   lying third; and then the crowning moment as he drew away at the
   straight and won comfortably. Greater still, the delirious joy when
   he led the field all the way in the second heat, so that there was
   no need to run a third.

   I had the ginger beer--a bitter, lukewarm stuff with hops in
   it--but what did I care'? My new friend assured me that Pardon
   could not have won without my saddle. It had made all the
   difference. Years afterwards, I worked the incident into a sort of
   ballad called "Pardon, the son of Reprieve."

   We had eight miles to gel home, so we had to leave before things got
   really lively; but before we departed two men had an argument about
   a bet and each made a run to pull a stirrup-iron out of his saddle.
   My old friend the sergeant of police from Yass had no objection to
   a fight, but he drew the lines at stirrup-irons! fie and a mounted
   trooper handcuffed first one man and then the other with their arms
   round saplings, a performance which I had never seen before and
   have never seen since.

Sydney Life

At the age of ten, Banjo was sent to live with his grandmother in Gladesville while he attended Sydney Grammar School, returning to "Illalong" for school holidays:

When I was sent to school a new world opened before me. As a start my cousin and I bought an old boat, mostly held together by tar, and by way of brightening up the colour scheme we painted the floor with white paint over the tar. This was not entirely satisfactory, as the tar turned the paint to a sort of unwholesome muddy colour, which refused to dry; so we had to buy caustic soda to remove both tar and paint and begin all over again. When we got her finished she was a fine fishing boat, for there was generally as much water inside as out, which kept our fish fresh till we got them home.

   But fishing was only a sideline; our real interest lay in the
   scullers whoworked on the championship course right in front
   of our door. Beginning with Hickey and Rush, on down through
   Ned Trickett and Elias Laycock, to Beach and Hanlan, Stansbury
   and Maclean, last and greatest of them Harry Searle--we knew
   every man of them, and could them by their styles at
   three-quarters of a mile distance.

   Stalking with their trainers through the little town of
   Gladesville, they were like Kingsley's Gladiators stalking
   through the degenerate Romans. Elias Laycock could eat a
   dozen eggs for breakfast; Maclean, an axe-man from the northern
   rivers could take an axe in either hand, and fell any tree
   without stopping for rest; Searle had an extra rib on either side
   of his body, or so his opponents implicitly believed. A
   flaxen-haired giant, he was the hero of a queer incident at a dance
   give at the Gladesville Mental Hospital. These dances were for the
   amusement of the patients, and all visitors were expected to dance
   with them. A lady from Sydney, no less than the daughter of Sir
   William Windeyer, Judge of the Supreme Court, was good-natured
   about it all, and after trotting several of the patients out she
   invited Searle to have a turn.

   On coming back to her chaperone she said," What a pity that fine
   young fellow is mad. tie talked quite sensibly until all of a sudden
   he said that he was file champion sculler of the world. I got away
   from him as soon as I could."

At Grammar, Banjo shared a prize with a boy "who is now a Judge of the High Court", with the rueful comment that if he had paid as much attention to lessons as to fish and rabbits, he, too, might haven risen to the same office. He tried unsuccessfully for a University bursary. Instead, at the age of 16 was articled as a clerk to a Sydney solicitor's office (Spain and Salway), which included a lot of shipping business. One of his first jobs was to collect evidence to defend a captain prosecuted for not showing a riding-light while at anchor:

   Evidence! It was too easy. The captain had seen the boatswain put
   out the riding-light. The boatswain remembered the riding-light
   well, as he had nearly fallen overboard while fixing it. The chief
   officer had been strolling about the deck and noticed the
   reflection of the riding-light on the water, I chuckled to think
   how small the opposition would feel when we unloosed our cannon of
   testimony.

   Then the sea-lawyer who was on the Bench, without whys or
   wherefores, and without summing-up, found the captain guilty
   and fined him a fiver!

   I walked away from the court with the captain and was just
   starting to speak a piece about this awful iniquity when he
   said' "Oh, well. I didn't know you had to have a riding-light.
   They'd drive a man mad with their regulations in these--places."
   An unnerving experience, but it taught me that a case at law is
   like a battle. If you listen to the accounts of the two sides
   you can never believe that they are talking about the same fight.

He saw "bank booms, land booms, silver booms, Northern Territory booms and they all had one thing in common--they always burst". At about this time Banjo took up interest as an amateur jockey and he also joined a polo club started by a cavalry officer from England, a club that "brought us in touch with some of the upper circles--a great change alter the little bush school, the game-cocks, and the days when I looked upon the sergeant of police as the greatest man in the world". On a train trip from Sydney, he composed a short ballad:

   We played a match against the Cooma team, real wild men with
   cabbage-tree hats, and skin-tight pants, their hats held on by
   a strap under their noses. I must have the gift of prophecy
   because, before we went up, I wrote a jingle called "The Geebung
   Polo Club", a jingle which has outlasted much
   better work.

Part of the ballad is worth repeating:

   It was somewhere up the country, in a land of rock and scrub,
   That they formed an institution called the Geebung Polo Club.
   They were long and wiry natives from the rugged mountain side,
   And the horse was never saddled that the Geebungs couldn't ride;
   But their style of playing polo was irregular and rash--They
   had mighty little science, but a mighty lot of dash:
   And they played on mountain ponies that were muscular and strong,
   Though their coats were quite unpolished,
   and their manes and tails were long.
   And they used to train those ponies wheeling cattle in the scrub:
   They were demons, were the members of the Geebung Polo Club.

   It was somewhere down the country, in a city's smoke and steam,
   That a polo club existed, called 'The Cuff and Collar Team'.
   As a social institution 'twas a marvellous success,
   For the members were distinguished by exclusiveness and dress.
   They had natty little ponies that were nice, and smooth, and sleek,
   For their cultivated owners only rode "era once a week.
   So they started up the country in pursuit of sport and fame,
   For they meant to show the Geebungs how they ought to play the game,
   And they took their valets with them--just to give their boots a
   rub,

   Ere they started operations on the Geebung Polo Club.

Banjo's Ballads and Lyrics 

Banjo mentioned his first literary effort, a pamphlet entitled "Australia for the Australians" and based on history and economics:

   I blush every time l think of it!

   When my pamphlet fell as flat as the great inland desert, I tried
   my hand at "poetry", and strung together four flamboyant verses
   about the expedition against the Mahdi, who was going well and
   strong at the time.

Banjo avoided his own name lest it be identified as author of the unsuccessful pamphlet when he submitted his first contribution to the Bulletin as his objection to the sending of a detachment of Australian troops to the Sudan:

   And fairest Australia freest of the free,
   Is up in arms against the freeman's fight;
   And with her mother joined to crush the right,
   Has left her threatened treasures o'er the sea,
   Has left her land of liberty and law
   To flesh her maiden sword in this unholy war.

   Enough! God never blessed such enterprise
   England's degenerate Generals yet shall rue
   Brave Gordon sacrificed, when soon they view
   The children of a thousand deserts rise
   To drive them forth like sand before the gate-God
   and the Prophet! Freedom will prevail.

To his surprise, "El Mahdi to the Australian Troops" was published during February 1885 and he was asked to submit more ballads, preferably about his bush experience, His themes ranged from the hardships of pioneer life, courage in adversity and the humour shared around campfires, often with the "new chum" as bait. At times, a Pommie turned the tables, to the amusement of all, as expressed in "Last Week":

   Oh, the new-chum went to the back block run,
   But he should have gone there last week.
   fie tramped ten miles with a loaded gun,
   But of turkey or duck he saw never a one,
   For he should have been there last week,
   They said.
   There were flocks of 'era there last week.

   He wended his way to a waterfall,
   And he should have gone there last week.
   tie carried a camera, legs and all,
   But the day was hot, and the stream was small,
   For he should have gone there last week,
   They said.
   They drowned a man there last week.

   He went for a drive, and he made a start,
   Which should have been made last week,
   For the old horse died of a broken heart;
   So he footed it home and he dragged the cart-But
   the horse was all right last week,
   They said.
   He trotted a match last week.

   So he asked the bushies who came from far
   to visit the town last week,
   If they'd dine with him, and they said 'Hurrah!'
   But there wasn't a drop in the whisky jar
   You should have been here last week,
   He said.
   I drank it all up last week!

Banjo shared space with Henry Lawson and was paid thirteen shillings and sixpence for contributing "Clancy of the Overflow" (December 1889), one of his best remembered ballads. Some of the words have become timeless appreciation of inland Australia:

   And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices
   greet him In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,

      And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
   And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.

By contrast, Banjo's "Song of the Future" (1889) raises questions about the democratic future of urban Australia where a great majority of the population had lost contact with rural customs:

      The freedom, and the hopeful sense
   Of toil that brought due recompense,
      Of room for all, has passed away,
      And lies forgotten with the dead.
   Within our streets men cry for bread
      In cities built but yesterday.

Banjo formed a strong friendship with Lawson and during 1892 they reached an arrangement where they would write against each other, publishing opposite viewpoints. Banjo wrote:

To show how a poet can be without honour (or profit) in his own country, I remember Lawson's wife telling me she was quite happy because Henry was "working" again.

"What's he working at," I asked, "prose or verse?"

"Oh, no," she said. "I don't mean writing. I mean working. He's gone back to his trade as a house painter."

And this was the man whose work was afterwards translated into foreign languages!

Lawson had an experience which happens to few people. He fell over a cliff at Manly and was reported dead. There was no time to make inquiries, so a section of the Press came out with flattering obituary notices, which Henry read with great interest and enthusiasm.

I asked him what he thought of these final "reviews;" and he said that, after reading them, he was puzzled to think how he managed to be so hard tip all his life!

Despite the warm response to Banjo's "A Bush Christening" when published in the Bulletin (December, 1803), his identity was not revealed. The immediate success of his "The Man from Snowy River" two years later changed all this and led him to republish it in his first book of ballads (1805), to break all previous Australian publishing records when the firs edition sold out within a week. I copies sold within a year, to rank Banjo second only to Rudyard Kipling for popularity of English language writing.

During the same year, at "Dagworth" station near Winton, he wrote the ballad "Waltzing Matilda" to the tune of an old marching song and based on a true story of the death of a swagman who drowned in a billabong from the weight of his clothes when fleeing from two troopers aim an Aboriginal tracker after stealing a sheep.

As well as much humour, sonic ballads portrayed tragedy, as captured by "Lost":

   'He ought to be home," said the old man, 'without there's something
   amiss, He only went to the Two-mile--he ought to be back by this.
   He WOULD ride the Reckless filly, he WOULD have his wilful way,
   And, here, he's not back by sundown and what will his mother say?'

   'He was always his mother's idol, since ever Iris father died;
   And there isn't a horse on the station that he isn't game to ride.
   But the Reckless mare is vicious, and if once she gets away
   He hasn't got strength to hold her--and what will his mother say?'

   The old man walked to the sliprail, and peered tip the dark'ning
   track, And looked and longed for the rider that would never more
   come back, And the mother came and clutched him, with sudden,
   spasmodic fright 'What has become of my Willie?--why isn't he
   home tonight?'

   Away in the gloomy ranges, at the foot of an ironbark,
   The bonnie, winsome laddie was lying stiff and stark;
   For the Reckless mare had smashed him against a leaning limb,
   And his comely lace was battered, and his merry eyes were dim.

   And the thoroughbred chestnut filly, the saddle beneath her flanks,
   Was away like fire through the ranges to join the wild mob's ranks;
   And a broken-hearted woman and an old man worn and grey
   Were searching all night in the ranges till the sunrise brought the
   day.

   And the mother kept feebly calling, with a hope that would not die,
   'Willie! Where are you, Will?" But how can the dead reply;
   And hope died out with the daylight, and the darkness brought
   despair. God pity the stricken mother and answer the widow's prayer!

   Though far and wide they sought him, they found not where he fell;
   For the ranges held him precious, and guarded their treasure well.
   The wattle blooms above him, and the blue bells close by,
   And the brown bees buzz the secret, and the wild birds sing reply.

   But the mother pined and faded, and cried, and took no rest,
   And rode each day to the ranges on her hopeless, weary quest.
   Seeking her loved one ever, she faded and pined away,
   But with the strength of her great affection she still sought every
   day.

   'I know that sooner or later, I shall find my boy,' she said.
   But she came not home one evening, and they found her lying dead.
   And stamped on the poor pale features, as the spirit homeward pass'd,
      Was an angel smile of gladness--she had found the boy at last.

Banjo made numerous trips to outback Queensland and the Northern Territory, to collect yarns. The "City of Dreadful Thirst" popularized the phrase, a "Bogan shower" (described as three raindrops and some dust"). Several ballads reflected the White Australia outlook of much of rural Australia. An extract from "A Bushman's Song" (1892) sympathised with the shearers' union movement, with Chinese shearers often described as "lepers" due to the popular belief that they carried this disease and a consequent scabby skin (source of the term "scab" to describe non-union labour):

   I asked a cove for shearin' once along the Marthaguy:
   "We shear non-union here", says he. "I call it scab," says I.
   I looked along the shearin' floor before I turned to go--There
   were eight or ten dashed Chinamen a-shearin' in a row.

   It was shift, boy's, shift, for there wasn't the slightest doubt
   It was time to make a shift with the leprosy about,
   So I saddled up my horses, and I whistled to my dog,
   And I left his scabby station at the old jog-jog."

In other ballads and writing, Banjo repeated his warning of the Asianization of the outback, especially the Northern Territory:

   ... the fear of the N.T.s resumption as a Crown colony, an event
   that would be followed by an influx of cheap Asiatics from Britain's
   Eastern possessions. And, in fact, the Territory itself is now
   clamouring for the introduction of the cheap and nasty Chow,
   notwithstanding that it is breeding its own Chinky fast enough ...
   The hordes of aliens that have accumulated are a menace to the
   rest of Australia. (The Bulletin, 31 December, 1898)

Perhaps also, Banjo's rural travels reflected his lines about Clancy:

   And I somehow I rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
   Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
   While he laced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal
   But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of the Overflow.

Banjo turned to journalism during 1900 to serve as a special correspondent to the Boer War in South Africa, on behalf of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Argus. Here, he established a longstanding friendship with Kipling. He sold his legal practice in 1901. Next, he was commissioned as the journalist to report on the effect of the Boxer Rebellion in China, before returning to Sydney via London. He published Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses during 1902. A year later, at the age of 40, Banjo was appointed Editor of the Sydney Evening News and in Tenterfield, he married Alice Walker, a grazier's daughter. For a while, he moved away from ballad writing and during early 1904 produced a series of satirical articles in the News. He also attempted a romantic novel, An Outback Marriage (published in 1906). As an adventure Banjo was invited to participate in the Dunlop Tyre Reliability

Trial of 1905:

I was a passenger with J. M. Arnott in his car on the first reliability trial from Sydney to Melbourne, and "trial" is exactly' the right word. All sorts and conditions of cars competed, and as for the drivers--they required to be seen to be believed.

One elderly enthusiast turned out in a little one-cylinder rubby-dubby, of which he knew so little that his only accessories for the trip were a tack-hammer and a pair of pincers. Failing to get anyone with experience to accompany him, he picked up a Sydney larrikin for company; but alter the first day's drive (from Sydney to Goulburn) this miscreant deserted him, saying he preferred dishonour to death, or words to that effect.

The elderly driver thereafter spent most of his time oil his back under the car, and finally threw in the towel at Gundagai.

A French driver named Maillard had taken part in some of the big motor races in France, and was a hot favourite for the event. He was driving a De Dion, and beat everybody to Goulburn. On leaving Goulburn he went past the other cars like an express train, but unfortunately he had no knowledge of Australian roads. He could not even speak English.

In those days the roads beyond Goulburn were crossed here and there by steep gutters to drain off the water. They were quite invisible from a distance, and all the experienced drivers had their passengers standing up on the back seats to yell out "gutter" when one hove in sight. The poor little Frenchman, blissfully unconscious of this, hit the first gutter at fifty miles an hour, sending his car up in the air like a hurdle horse which has hit a jump. Parts of the car were scattered all over the road, and the Frenchman ran from one to another shouting: "Pourquoi les canivaux" (why are the gutters there?). As I had some sort of Surry Hills knowledge of French, I did my best to explain things, but the only result was to make him cry worse than ever.

A Melbourne stock-broker, having his first long drive, had a first class "cockatoo" standing up in the back of his car (cockatoos were a sentinel to look out for trouble) and he did so well between Goulburn and Gundagai that he insisted on shouting champagne for all the drivers and their associates. Nothing like this had happened in Gundagai since the big flood, and, as soon as the word got round, the whole population of the town drifted into the bar and started to lap up the champagne like milk. He drank with all and sundry and did himself so well that when he left Gundagai next morning the bridge was not wide enough for him and he hit the abutment fair and square with his radiator....

Sad to say, the local blacksmiths were unequal to a repair job which practically meant taking the tail light and building a new car to it. He and his "cockatoo" passed us somewhere about Seymour, sitting on the remains of their car in a railway truck, waving bottles, and shouting encouragement.

The Lure of the Land

Perhaps, it was Banjo's love of the bush that took him from Sydney in 1908 when he sold his publication rights to his publishers and bought "Coodra", a mountain property on the Goodradigbee River at the junction of the Murrumbidgee. Banjo writes;

In all parts of the world the "hill billies are--well, I won't say greater thieves--but they are more enterprising and resourceful than those of the flat. They have to be, in order to get a living. Walter Scott himself wrote:

Ask we this barren hill we tread

For fatted steer and household bread?

The American hill billies who went without boots and lived mostly on plug tobacco and moonshine liquor were classic examples. We had nothing quite like them in Australia, but we did the best we could.

By way of curing some sort of nervous breakdown I found myself for some years a hill billy, on 40,000 acres, consisting mostly of country left over after the rest of the world was made.

The place had a history. It had been taken tip in the early days by a man who had no capital and no station plant except a wheelbarrow. He built himself some sort of humpy, got an assigned servant, and set out to build some yards. Yards and a branding iron were all they wanted in those days to get a start in life. Moving the timber for the yards was a problem, but he solved it by hitching himself on with a harness to the front of the wheelbarrow, while the assigned servant held up the handles and "drove" his boss, giving him such directions as "come over to the left a bit", "keep away from that gully, "look out the barrow don't run over you down this slope" and so on. After a time this got on his nerves, and he sold out to a member of the Ryrie family, who did some real pioneering. There were girls in the family, and one of them, ... killed sheep when the men were not at home, and carried all the water for the house in buckets from the river.

The prospect of trout fishing at "Coodra" was recalled 30 years later:

Another of the novelties which this chronicleer met with in his time was the first introduction of rainbow trout to Australia. Among other rivers, the trout fly were liberated in the Goodradigbee River. Sufficient time was allowed for them to grow up, and then the local inhabitants set about catching them. A few blackfellows, hanging about the river, used to spend hours fishing for these trout with cod lines, baited with half a parrot. They could see the trout jumping, but could not induce any of them to bite; and the trout, generally speaking, were voted a complete washout.

There was a tradition on this part of the river that a bunyip had once come ashore there--something like a calf with whiskers. If there were any truth in the story, it was probably a seal which had found its way up from the mouth of the Murray, but the blackfellows believed that the bunyip was still in the river and that it was eating all the trout which were big enough to bite. Otherwise, why couldn't they catch them?

Then came the tourists from Sydney, fitted out to beat the band with artificial flies and spinners: but these people had little better luck than the blackfellows, for the river was so lull of feed that the trout did not bother themselves to rise at flies when they could get the pupae of dragon flies and other delicacies without any trouble. Dry-fly purists, and chuck-and-chance-it fishermen, who lowered their flies down the rapids, alike had the poorest of hick: but they held on in the belief that only a barbarian would use live bait for trout. Then somebody caught a big haul of trout using grasshoppers for bait--but the president of the dry-fly school said that he would sooner use a fish-trap than a grasshopper. Later on, he was seen by the sheep-musterer on his hands and knees grabbing at some objects in the grass. Said the sheep-musterer: "Are you ketching grasshoppers, mister?"

"No," said the dry-fly purist. "I'm looking for my knife! I dropped it here somewhere."

Management of "Coodra" contained more hardships than anticipated and in 1914 Banjo moved back to Sydney with Alice and two children. Life at "Coodra" had allowed Banjo time for writing again, some as verses for children although nothing was published until 1917 as Saltbush Bill. JP and Other Verses and a collection of stories, Three Elephant Power and Other Stories.

His ballad, "A Mountain Station", recaptures the challenge of "Coodra":

   I bought a run a while ago,
   On country rough and ridgy,
   Where wallaroos and wombats grow--The
   Upper Murrumbidgee.
   The grass is rather scant, it's true,
   But this a lair exchange is,
   The sheep can see a lovely view
   By climbing up the ranges.

   And She-oak Flat's the station's name,
   I'm not surprised at that, sirs:
   The oaks were there before I came;
   And I supplied the flat, sirs.
   A man would wonder how it's done,
   The stock so soon decreases--They
   sometimes tumble off the run
   And break themselves to pieces.

   I've tried to make expenses meet,
   But wasted all my labours,
   The sheep the dingoes didn't eat
   Were stolen by the neighbours.
   They stole my pears--my native pears
   Those thrice-convicted felons,
   And ravished from me unawares
   My crop of paddy-melons.

   And sometimes under sunny skies,
   Without an explanation,
   The Murrumbidgee used to rise
   And overflow the station.
   But this was caused (as now I know)
   When summer sunshine glowing
   Had melted all Kiandra's snow
   And set the river going.

   And in the news, perhaps you read:
   'Stock passings, Puckawidgee,
   Fat cattle: Seven hundred head
   Swept down the Murrumbidgee;
   Their destination's quite obscure,
   But, somehow, there's a notion,
   Unless the river falls, they're sure
   To reach the Southern Ocean'.

   So alter that I'll give it best;
   No more with late I'll battle.
   I'll let the river take the rest,
   For those were all my cattle.
   And with one comprehensive curse
   I close my brief narration,
   And advertise it in my verse--

'For Sale! A Mountain Station."

War and Postwar

With the outbreak of war, Banjo sailed with the first AIF fleet but continued to London, seeking appointment as a war correspondent. Instead, he was attached as an ambulance driver to the Australian Voluntary Hospital in France, then commissioned in 1916 to the Remount Unit of the AIF in Egypt, rising to the rank of major. Some ballads paid tribute to the men and horses he worked with. One of his finest, "The Last Parade", recalls the memory of thousands of horses discarded in South Africa by the Australian Light Horse at the end of the Boer War. Here is a portion:

   Starving and tired and thirsty
   We limped on the blazing plain;
   And after a long night's picket
   You saddled us tip again.

   We froze on the wind-swept kopjes
   When the frost lay snowy-white.
   Never a halt in the daytime,
   Never a rest at night!

   We knew when the rifles rattled
   From the hillside bare and brown
   And over our weary shoulders
   We felt warm blood run down,

   As we turned for the stretching gallop,
   Crushed to the earth with weight;
   But we carried our riders through it--
   Carried them perhaps too late.

   Steel! We were steel to stand it
   We that have lasted through,
   We that are the old campaigners
   Pitiful, poor, and few.

   Over the sea you brought us,
   Over the leagues of foam:
   Now we have served you fairly
   Will you not take us home?

"We're All Australians Now" reflects on the common bond of mate-ship formed at Gallipoli:

   From shearing shed and cattle run,
   From Broome to Hobson's Bay,
   Each native-born Australian son
   Stands straighter up today.

   The man who used to "hump his drum",
   On far-out Queensland's runs
   Is fighting side by side with some
   Tasmanian farmer's sons.

His ballads "Old Tin Hat" and "Boots" are faithful to the memory of the AIF in France:

   And I hailed our newborn nation and its fruits,
   As I listened to the clatter on the cobblestones of France
   Of the good Australian military boots.

Other war reminiscences were later issued by Banjo as Happy Dispatches (1934).

Initially a freelance journalist when Banio returned to Sydney in 1919, he was appointed editor of The Sydney Sportsman, a weekly, in 1922. Circulation was boosted by his ballads and essays. He retired from full-time journalism in 1930 but remained a freelance sports reporter and feature writer. At about this time, he was heard frequently on radio talks for the Australian Broadcasting Commission. tie also published a book of verse for children, The Animals Noah Forgot (1933), with illustrations by Norman Lindsay, as well as a novel, The Shearer's Colt (1936).

Banjo died of heart problems on 5th February 1941. He wrote 215 ballads, but perhaps "Prelude" best expresses his writing:

   I have gathered these stories afar,
   In the wind and the rain,
   In the land where the cattle camps are,
   On the edge of the plain.
   On the overland routes of the west,
   When the watches were long,
   I have fashioned in earnest and jest
   These fragments of song.
   They are just the rude stories one hears
   In sadness and mirth,
   The records of wandering years,
   And scant is their worth
   Though their merits indeed are but slight,
   I shall not repine,
   If they give you one moment's delight,
   Old comrades of mine.

References

Paterson, A.B. (1895) The man from Snowy River and other verses. Angus & Robertson, Sydney.

Paterson, A.B. (1002) Rio Grande's last race and other verses. Angus & Robertson, Sydney'.

Paterson, A.B. (1917) Saltbush Bill. JP and other verses. Angus & Robertson, Sydney.

Paterson, A.B. (1921) The collected verse of A. B. Paterson. Angus & Robertson, Sydney.

Paterson, A.B. (1985) Illalong children. Lansdowne Press, Sydney. Reprinted 1989, Weldon Publishing Company, Sydney.