PARALLELING AMERICA’S TWO-decade-long period we call the Wild West, Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson wrote of a wild Australia that no longer exists—if, in fact, it ever did. Nonetheless, today’s readers of his verse derive as much delight from The Banjo’s lines, as did those reading them for the first time a century ago. His anthologies are still read, biographies tracing his life are still being written, and star-studded films convert his poems from eight-stanza ballads into two-hour entertainments.
One of his many biographers referred to Paterson as the “finest balladist in the Australian idiom.” Given the proliferation of down-under “bush poets” of the late 19th/early 20th centuries, it is an ambitious—but quite possibly, accurate—claim. He is certainly one of Australia’s most celebrated poets, and among its most prolific.
A.B. Paterson lived a life as exciting as any he framed in verse. As a young man, he was a highly respected war correspondent during the Boer War, and a combat officer in World War I while in his 50s. But it was as a writer of “bush poetry” romanticizing the life and colorful characters of rural Australia that he achieved renown. Today, he is best remembered, and most eulogized, for two of his ballads: “The Man From Snowy River” and Australia’s unofficial national anthem, “Waltzing Matilda.”
Born in rural Narrambla, New South Wales, in early 1864, Paterson spent his first years on two sheep stations (ranches) of his father, an immigrant Scots stockman. The region was populated with teamsters and drovers, many of whom were superb horsemen. These “knights of the outback” and their half-wild horses made an impression on Paterson: He would later become a master equestrian himself and find inspiration in those men for many of his most popular poems.
Paterson’s father sent him to Sydney for his education, where, according to one biographer, “he traded his moleskin pants and hobnailed boots for fine city clothes.” After graduating at 16, young “Barty” took a position clerking at a city law firm.
Having acquired a family appreciation for poetry, he also began writing verse. In 1885, his work attracted the attention of . The fiercely nationalistic newspaper was fast becoming Australia’s foremost creative outlet for the “utopian idealists
