Who was The Banjo?
ANDREW BARTON PATERSON was born on February 17, 1864, at Narambla, New South Wales, not far from Orange. He was the son of a Scottish immigrant from Lanarkshire, who had arrived in Australia in the early 1850s.
His early life was spent near Yass in NSW, and this is where he became acquainted with the colourful bush characters that he wrote about so vividly in his later life.
Much of his early life was spent around horses, and his life-long love of horse-racing and polo is reflected in many of his poems. He was a member of the first NSW polo team to play against the Victorians.
His schooling was at Sydney Grammar and when he left, at the age of 16, he became an articled clerk in a Sydney lawyer's office.
The first of many ballads he had published in The Bulletin (the top newspaper of the time, and still very influential) was El Mahdi to the Australian Troops, in February 1885. This was the beginning of a long and productive relationship with this newspaper. His pseudonym, "The Banjo", was the name of a racehorse his father had once owned. It was not until 1895, ten years later, on the publication of The Man from Snowy River and other verses, that the public finally discovered the name of the man behind these verses.
In 1892, he participated in the celebrated "Bush battle", locking horns with his friend and literary colleague Henry Lawson in a number of poems in the pages of The Bulletin.
For contemporary impressions of Paterson, it is worth looking at a short article written in 1895 by Annie Bright, the founding editor of the Sydney literary monthly, Cosmos.
Paterson on horseback, reading from The Bulletin, from the Christmas 1891 edition of that paper.
Even though he was a practicing lawyer in Sydney, he always had a hankering for the bush, and made numerous trips to remote areas in Queensland and the Northern Territory. His links with The Bulletin prompted the Sydney Morning Herald and The Argus to send him as a war correspondent to the Boer War in South Africa in 1900 and 1901. His vivid and exciting reports were well received.
In 1901, Paterson accepted another commission, to report the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion in China. He went from there to London, where he renewed his friendships with Rudyard Kipling and other people he had met in South Africa. Some of these experiences are remembered in his war memoirs, Happy Dispatches, published in 1934.
In 1902, his second collection was published, Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses.
In 1903, he became editor of the Sydney Evening News. In that year he also married Alice Walker, a grazier's daughter and, in 1906, he published the novel An Outback Marriage.
In early 1904, he showed a well-developed sense of humour in a series of satirical articles for The Evening News, where The Oracle pontificates on a number of subjects.
In 1908 he and his family left Sydney and ran a grazing property in the highlands near Yass in Southern NSW.
In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, Paterson joined the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF). He ended up as a major in the First Australian Remount Unit, a unit of horsemen from bush and racecourse whose task was to train mounts for the Australian Light Horse. This was done in Egypt. His skills with men and mounts gained him great respect.
In 1917, his third collection was published, Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses.
In 1919, after the cessation of hostilities, Paterson returned to Sydney as a freelance journalist. In 1922 he became editor of The Sydney Sportsman, a weekly sporting newspaper, to which he also contributed ballads and essays, and which became very popular under his direction.
In 1930 Paterson retired from full-time journalism, but remained a freelance sports reporter and feature writer. He also became a regular broadcaster for the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
In 1933 he published a delightful collection of children's poetry, The Animals Noah Forgot, illustrated by the popular (and controversial) artist, Norman Lindsay.
In these later years he also published Happy Dispatches, memoirs of his wartime experiences, and a novel The Shearer's Colt, which reflects his great love of horse-racing.
In 1939 Paterson was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) for his services to Australian literature.
Paterson died in 1941, just short of his 77th birthday.
The Banjo left a valuable heritage. His love for the bush and the colourful characters you met there meant that his writing was sympathetic to the landscape and its people. He created enduring myths, not least being Waltzing Matilda, which is one of the most recognisable Australian songs known world-wide. His depiction of the resourcefulness of the bushmen, is written with a true knowledge of the bush and its people, and with a real sense of the humour that permeated life in rural Australia and the racetracks.
I always think Paterson, working at the time in Sydney, spoke from the heart when he penned these lines --
And I somehow 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 faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow.
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[Note: some interesting insights into "The Banjo" can be found in his reminiscinces "Banjo Paterson Tells His Own Story", Sydney Morning Herald, 4 Feb - 4 Mar 1939 (Each Saturday issue, p.21 in each case)]
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