[BITList] Australia Day - Read it while your billy boils

[John Feltham]

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Paterson,  Andrew Barton  [pseud. Banjo]  (1864-1941), poet and journalist, was born on 17 February 1864 at Nyrambla station near Orange, New South Wales, Australia, the first of seven children of Scottish-born grazier Andrew Bogle Paterson (1833-1889) and his Australian-born wife, Rose Isabella Barton (1844-1893). Bartie, as he was known to family and friends, spent his early years with his family at Buckinbah sheep station near Yeoval, New South Wales, and then at Illalong, where he lived from 1870 to 1874. He rode a horse 4 miles to and from the school at Binalong.

At twelve Bartie went to live with his widowed maternal grandmother, Emily Mary Barton (nee Darvall), at her house, Rockend, in Gladesville, Sydney, where he resided until he was twenty. Emily had lived in Yorkshire, Brussels, and Boulogne before migrating with her family to Australia and marrying Robert Johnston Barton, whom she had met on the ship from England. Emily, who wrote poetry herself, had a formative influence on her grandson's literary interests and skills. Paterson attended Sydney grammar school from 1875 to early 1881, when, after a severe bout of typhoid, he withdrew from the pursuit of university matriculation and sought entry to the legal profession. He commenced as an articled clerk in the Sydney office of Herbert Salwey in 1881 and in 1886 he was admitted as a solicitor to the supreme court of New South Wales. In 1888 he went into partnership with John William Street at 85 Pitt Street, Sydney.

Paterson's first published poem, 'El Mahdi to the Australian troops', which appeared anonymously in the Sydney Bulletin on 28 February 1885, signalled a young 'radical' prepared to criticize the British campaign in the Sudan and Australian involvement in it. In 1889 he published at his own expense his pamphlet Australia for the Australians, which argued the necessity for land reform combined with protection. In the 1880s and 1890s Paterson's poems were published in the Bulletin, the Sydney Mail, the Lone Hand, the Australian Town and Country Journal, and elsewhere. His first and most famous book of poems, The Man from Snowy River and other Verses, was published by Angus and Robertson in 1895, and 7000 copies were sold in a few months. Banjo, his pen-name, was borrowed from the name of a station racehorse. Reviews were positive in Australia, and in Britain the Times reviewer compared its author to Kipling. The book's title ballad became Paterson's signature poem, though another ballad, 'Clancy of the Overflow', provided two of his most quoted lines:

And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended
And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.
(Complete Works, 1.105)

A manufactured 'debate' in verse between Paterson and Henry Lawson in the Bulletin in 1892 accentuated differences between the two best-known Australian writers of their generation. Lawson presented himself as the realist, observing the harsh terrain of his homeland from on foot; Paterson offered a more romantic and adventurous landscape as if from horseback.

There has been some dispute about the origins of 'Waltzing Matilda', but most evidence points to Paterson writing the words to the tune of the march 'Craigielea' (adapted from the Scottish song 'Thou bonnie wood of Craigielea'), when he visited Winton in north-west Queensland with his fiancee Sarah Riley (whom he did not marry) in 1895. The song was popularized in its modern form by Marie Cowan's adaptation of Paterson's words to her tune in 1903, and by its use as an advertising jingle for Billy Tea for the tea-distributing firm Inglis & Co. 'Waltzing Matilda' tells of a swagman who evades the law by drowning himself in a billabong; its anti-authoritarian sentiments have appealed to subsequent generations of Australians. A national poll in 1977 placed 'Waltzing Matilda' second behind 'Advance Australia Fair', which became the national anthem in 1984.

Wrong - It was written on Dagwood [Sheep] Station near Kynuna. Winton likes to claim it - but they're plain wrong.  JF

Paterson was fascinated with war, but his crooked right arm, broken several times in childhood accidents, probably prevented any front-line action. On 28 October 1899 he set sail for the South African War on the Kent with the first contingent of the New South Wales lancers and their horses as special correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald. In South Africa he was attached to General French's column and witnessed the surrender of Bloemfontein, the capture of Pretoria, and the relief of Kimberley. He was appointed as a correspondent for Reuters. He wrote twenty-two poems over this period, which are included in the posthumously published Boer War Dispatches (1983). These writings reveal a developing sympathy for the Boers, but largely ignore the black South Africans and never question Britain's right to be in South Africa. In dispatches, articles, and memoirs Paterson wrote vivid pen-portraits of Olive Schreiner, lords Kitchener and Roberts, Sir Alfred Milner, Cecil Rhodes, and fellow journalist Winston Churchill ('the most curious combination of ability and swagger'). When Paterson heard of Harry (the Breaker) Morant's court martial and execution by firing squad in Pretoria in 1902, he could not at first believe the guilt of the carefree, theatrical young man he had met in Sydney in 1893, but as further evidence came his way from Morant's defence counsel in South Africa, he reluctantly acceded that justice had been done.

Paterson returned to Australia in September 1900 and sailed for China in July 1901 to cover the Boxer uprising for the Sydney Morning Herald. He met and interviewed there a fellow Australian, G. E. (Chinese) Morrison, the Times correspondent for China. Paterson went on to England, where he was a guest of Kipling at his home in Sussex in the winter of 1901-2, and returned to Australia in time for the publication of his second book of poems, Rio Grande's Last Race and other Poems (1902).

Paterson married Alice Emily Walker (1877-1963) of Tenterfield station on 8 April 1903 and they settled into their first home at West Hall, Queen Street, Woollahra, in Sydney. A daughter, Grace, was born in 1904 and a son, Hugh, in 1906. Paterson had left his legal practice, and in 1903 accepted an invitation to edit the Sydney Evening News, where he remained until 1908, when he became resident part owner of a 40,000 acre property at Coodra Vale, near Wee Jasper, in the southern highlands of New South Wales. In 1911 the family moved to a wheat farm south of Grenfell called Glen Esk. He collected and edited an influential book of folk ballads, Old Bush Songs (1905), and saw publication of his novel, An Outback Marriage (1906), which had been serialized in the Melbourne Leader in 1900. A treatise, Racehorses and Racing, was not published until 1983.

When Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914 Paterson gained authorization to travel as 'special commissioner' for the Sydney Morning Herald and honorary veterinarian on a ship of men and horses bound for Europe. He drove an ambulance for the Australian Voluntary Hospital in Wimereux before returning to Sydney in July 1915 and enlisting at the age of fifty-one in the remount service. As a lieutenant in the Australian military forces he travelled to the Middle East, where he served for three and a half years behind the lines, gaining promotion to major. Paterson returned to Australia in 1919, and he and Alice Emily (who had worked on voluntary hospital service in Egypt) moved back to Woollahra. He resumed journalism for Sydney newspapers, became a regular visitor to the Australian Club, and contributed occasional talks to the Australian Broadcasting Commission (founded 1932). He sat for a portrait by John Longstaff, which won the 1935 Archibald prize and hangs in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He wrote a five-part series of reminiscences for the Sydney Morning Herald in 1939 and was appointed a CBE in the same year. After signs of heart trouble he was admitted to hospital and died in Sydney on 5 February 1941. He was cremated at the Northern Suburbs crematorium after a brief Presbyterian service.

Paterson's younger contemporary Norman Lindsay described him as an 'aristocrat' in body and spirit who took life as 'a high adventure in action, even to the risk of a broken neck'  (Lindsay, 77, 82). Clement Semmler's study Banjo of the Bush (1966; 2nd edn, 1974) explored his contribution to a legend of Australian identity forged in the bush. Colin Roderick's biography, Banjo Paterson: Poet by Accident (1993), emphasized his abiding interests in sport and war and their interrelatedness. In a late essay, 'Looking backward' (1938), Paterson himself judiciously described his role in literary history as having provided 'footprints preserved for posterity' in 'a new country'  (Complete Works, 2.759).

Bruce Bennett 

Sources  A. B. 'Banjo' Paterson: complete works, ed. R. Campbell and P. Harvie, 2 vols. (Sydney, Australia, 1983) + C. Roderick, Banjo Paterson: poet by accident (1993) + C. Semmler, The Banjo of the bush: the work, life and times of A. B. Paterson, 2nd edn (1974) + C. Semmler, 'Paterson, Andrew Barton', AusDB, vol. 11 + A. B. Paterson, '"Banjo" Paterson tells his own story', Sydney Morning Herald (4 Feb-4 March 1939) + R. Magoffin, 'Waltzing Matilda': the story behind the legend, 2nd edn (1987) + N. Lindsay, 'Banjo Paterson', in N. Lindsay, Bohemians of the Bulletin (1965)
Archives Mitchell L., NSW, MSS + NL Aus., MSS
Likenesses  photogravure, c.1890, NL Aus. [see illus.] · J. Longstaff, oils, 1935, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia; repro. in A. B. 'Banjo' Paterson, ed. Campbell and Harvie, vol. 2, facing p. 711 · portrait, repro. in A10 note, 1993 · portraits, repro. in A. B. 'Banjo' Paterson, ed. Campbell and Harvie
Wealth at death  £1873 9s. 5d.: probate, 13 Oct 1941, CGPLA Eng. & Wales




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