Banjo

by Paul Terry

  It was advice that Paterson could have given himself. He often found his own inspiration in the small things he saw and heard around him. The thought of an overweight racehorse, the ordered explosion of colour in a glorious English garden at a country station or the wind-baggery of a talentless politician might be enough to spark verses tender in nostalgia or lacerating in political satire. These ‘small things’ continued to set off little lights in Paterson’s mind, but little things grow to become big things and by the end of the decade, the anonymous poet ‘Banjo’ created a landmark ballad, grown from one tiny seed of an idea. It helped to establish him as one of the greats, and, more personally, it came at a time when good news was even more than usually welcome.

  *

  Some time in 1888, not later than October, Paterson became engaged to Sarah Riley, a cousin of his business partner, John Street. At twenty-six, Sarah was a young lady of wealth and class. She was a good catch for Barty and it seemed the course of his life was set—marriage, children and steady progression in a career as a city lawyer. Raised in Geelong, Sarah had attended Oberwyl, a prestigious finishing school in Melbourne. There she learned, among other things, an appreciation of music and art, and how to conduct conversation. The engagement met with the approval of Barty’s grandmother, who in a letter on 18 October, 1888, revealed that she thought Sarah a good match for her grandson:

  Barty’s fiancée, Sarah Riley, has been staying with us, and does credit to his taste; she is an exceptionally nice girl, well connected and educated. I sometimes wonder that she should not have look’d higher, but his talent goes a long way, and also makes his worldly prospects pretty secure.

  Perhaps marriage was indeed what Paterson planned in the hopeful spring of 1888. But any intentions he might have had for an early wedding were derailed by a family tragedy in the following winter, and as time passed it became clear that his heart was not in the practice of law and nor was it in his engagement to Sarah Riley.

  *

  In March 1889, Paterson again dabbled in politics, and this time the target was, inexplicably, one of his relatives. For some reason Paterson was incensed to read in the papers that his mother’s cousin Henry Kater, the same man who had helped Barty begin his career in law, had been appointed a life member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. The stinging ‘Who is Kater Anyhow?’ attacked Kater’s appointment and claimed he only got the job because he had married well. The verses were published not under the pseudonym ‘Banjo’, or even ‘B’ but ‘J.W.’—the initials of Paterson’s law partner, John William Street. It was a rather cowardly assault on Kater, who had done little to deserve it and Paterson’s motivations are unknown. In any case, Archibald was pleased to publish it.

  Less than three months after the publication of ‘Who is Kater Anyhow?’ the Paterson family was rocked by an unexpected tragedy. On the morning of 30 May 1889, Barty’s father, Andrew Bogle Paterson, bid farewell to his wife Rose and left Illalong for a day’s business at Binalong. Andrew’s health was no worse than usual when he left, but soon after he got home that night he was taken ill and retired to bed. Expecting him to improve as always, Rose did not call a doctor. Instead, Andrew was given sedatives and cared for at home. But he did not improve. On the night of 6 June, he collapsed and quickly became unconscious. He died the next morning in his bed. A life of toil for little reward had come to an end. He was fifty-six.

  An inquest was told Andrew’s heart had suffered from fatty degeneration and was ‘very much enfeebled’. A coroner’s report might have shed light on Andrew’s long history of illness and the treatment he received for it, when ‘an overdose of opium . . . and continued heavy drinking’ were found to be the causes of death.

  Dozens of people attended Andrew’s funeral at the little cemetery at Binalong. Later, Rose erected a headstone on the grave. It is inscribed with a line from Psalm 127: ‘He giveth his beloved sleep.’ Observers noted later that the psalm also includes a message well suited to Andrew Paterson, the father of seven who worked himself to death: ‘It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows.’

  Without Andrew, Rose could no longer remain at Illalong and she soon followed the widow’s tradition set by her mother and sister, retreating to the refuge of Rockend in Gladesville, with the youngest children, Hamilton, Grace, Edie and Gwen. Rose and her mother would care for the children but, as head of the family, it was now Barty’s responsibility to support them financially. It was a significant demand on a young man still trying to secure his own fortune and it might have been enough to hold him back from marrying. Sarah Riley, a patient young woman, had to be content to wait.

  In the meantime, Paterson the poet returned to his familiar metier of bush verses. In September, the Bulletin published ‘Tar and Feathers’ and ‘How M’Ginnis Went Missing’. November’s issue was equally productive for Paterson, with the publication of the sketch ‘Hughey’s Dog’, and the romping doggerel of ‘Mulligan’s Mare’. ‘The Banjo’ was showing that he could indeed tackle this writing caper, and in his straitened circumstances, the handful of shillings earned for these works were warmly received. But it was December’s Bulletin that really made ‘Banjo’ a name to notice. The last of four poems he wrote for that month’s edition was one of his greatest. Engaging, evocative and dreamy, it sings the glories of the bush, celebrating its beauties and freedom. It is the story of a humble drover, a simple man, whose greatness lies not within himself but in the landscape around him. The drover’s story is an Australian classic which, for all its importance, had its genesis in an event just as mundane as the hole in Henry Lawson’s pants.

  At some unspecified time, Paterson’s firm sent a ‘business letter’ to a man named Clancy somewhere in rural New South Wales. Clancy owed some money and the letter demanded he pay up. Soon, a note arrived in reply. Written by a friend of Clancy’s, it said that Clancy had ‘gone to Queensland droving and we don’t where he are’. The fractured grammar caught Paterson’s imagination but, more than that, he was enthralled by the thought that Clancy had escaped to the bush, free of the boss and the balance sheet. It seemed to Paterson that Clancy’s carefree life with only his sheep and cattle to worry about was in stark contrast to his own. Where Clancy travelled the long paddock with fresh air and starlight as his companions, Paterson was enslaved to a musty office in a choked and crowded city. Clancy, whoever he was, had a freedom worth singing about, and soon Paterson soon came up with the song—an eight-stanza ballad he called ‘Clancy of the Overflow’. It began:

  I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better

  Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago.

  He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,

  Just ‘on spec’, addressed as follows: ‘Clancy of the Overflow’.

  And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,

  (And I think the same was written with a thumbnail dipped in tar)

  ’Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:

  ‘Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving, and we don’t know where he are.’

  The ballad went on to speak of ‘the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended’ as Clancy enjoyed ‘pleasures that the townsfolk never know’. And in his ‘dingy little office’ in the ‘foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city’ Paterson could only dream of the freedom of the bush and the pull of the plains and the mountains—a yearning that was summed up in the poem’s wistful final 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.

  As he worked long hours in the busy city office through the latter half of 1889, still grieving his father’s death, Paterson’s thoughts might often have strayed to Clancy, fr
ee in the bush with only his beasts to care for and a camp fire to sleep by at night. Contrasted to his own big city life, with its new responsibilities, the carefree existence of his creation Clancy must have seemed idyllic to the young lawyer-poet. Paterson could not ‘change with Clancy’, but he could seize upon any chance to escape the city, even if only for a short while, and a favourite destination was the southern mountains. It was probably late in 1889 when that chance arrived, thanks to his acquaintance with wealthy high-country squatters Peter and Walter Mitchell, who invited him to visit their home at Bringenbrong Station near Corryong in Victoria’s mountainous north-east.

  Nestled under shady trees on the wide green flood plains of the cold and clear Murray River, the station looked over the grassy flats and up to the timbered peaks where cattlemen grazed their herds on pretty alpine meadows and brumbies ran wild through the snow gums. The air was clear and alive with birdsong. There were long trails where a man could ride from ferny gullies to windswept ridge tops and not see another soul. After a difficult year, it was just what Paterson needed and he accepted an invitation to visit the Mitchell brothers that summer with delight.

  The way some see it today, that visit resulted in the creation of a character even greater than Clancy, one so powerful that it helped to define a nation’s identity. Before long, ‘The Man From Snowy River’, the story of a courageous young horseman who performed a feat so spectacular and so dangerous that even grizzled veterans of the bush dared not attempt it, made ‘Banjo’ Paterson as a household name. In the years since, many came forward—or were thrust forward by others—to claim the honour of being the original Man from Snowy River. According to the Mitchell brothers, Banjo Paterson met that original man during his holiday in the mountains, and took from that meeting a story that has captured Australian imaginations ever since.

  5

  THE MAN FROM

  SNOWY RIVER

  Paterson thought highly of the Mitchell brothers. Passionate about horses, they were successful at breeding bigger, faster and stronger racehorses, and Peter had a theory that the same could be done for people. During his stay at Bringenbrong, Paterson went on long rides with the brothers and Peter’s theories about breeding struck a chord. Paterson remembered those ideas and, many years later, he said Peter Mitchell proved to be as good as his word when he left a huge sum of money in his will to provide prizes to those who could ‘improve the physique of the human race’:

  I know there was a prize of a thousand pounds each year for the woman with the best physique and the best disposition and able to swim and cook and ride a horse. There was also a thousand pounds for the best man, to be judged on physique and good temper and ability to do outdoor work, just the same way as they give prizes for speed, style and action at a show.

  During his holiday in the summer of 1889–90, Paterson rode with the Mitchells from Bringenbrong to the stony summit of Mt Kosciuszko, 2228 metres high and often blanketed in snow from May to November. After two days in the saddle, they reached Tom Groggin Station, high in the shoulders of the alps. As darkness closed in that night, they camped at a small timber hut on the edge of a straw-coloured flat. This was the home of Jack Riley, the reclusive overseer of Tom Groggin Station.

  Jack was not fond of visitors but he did enjoy a drink. Those visitors who brought along a bottle of whisky or gin were tolerated, if not welcomed, and when the grog ran out, so did any lukewarm welcome they might have received. Paterson and the Mitchells must have brought a bottle with them when they dropped in on Jack Riley because, according to the way Peter Mitchell remembered it, Jack accepted the intrusion and even spent that mild summer evening sharing a yarn or two with his visitors. But it was one yarn in particular that the brothers wanted Paterson to hear, and, as the firelight flickered in the still alpine night, they persuaded Jack to tell it, as he had many times before.

  The next morning, Jack’s visitors continued their journey to the top of Kosciuszko. After reaching the peak, they headed south along the top of the Great Divide to Mt Pilot and from there back to Tom Groggin. After a brief reunion at Jack’s hut, they bid farewell to the old bushman and returned to Bringenbrong, Paterson taking with him the memories of his journey.

  According to the way it is remembered in the upper Murray, the tall, long-nosed poet had listened closely to Jack’s story, and, a few months later, he came up with a verse that captured something of the yarn that had made Jack a local legend. The way Jack had supposedly seen it, the poet got a lot of it wrong, but the old bushman had to admit the young bloke knew a thing or two about horses and for a city slicker he was a useful hand in the scrub. At the time, though, it was just another telling of his story and, after sharing it, Jack thought nothing more of it.

  *

  Born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1841, Jack Riley sailed to Sydney on the Rodney, arriving in March 1854. According to research by Corryong man, Richard Hubbard, the thirteen-year-old Jack joined his sister Ann who had come out to Australia about four years earlier. After a short time in Sydney, they made their way to the Omeo diggings high on the southern flanks of the Victorian Alps. The young Jack was said to have trained as a tailor but, after arriving at Omeo, like thousands of others he tried his luck on the goldfields. Also like thousands of others, he failed, and so he set up business as a tailor in the fledgling town. Ann had married Joseph Jones, an argumentative character who was charged with threatening to kill her in 1862. He was acquitted of that charge but was convicted of assault in 1873. In 1876, Jones was fined because he and Ann had failed to send their three children to school.

  Jack was no angel either. Apparently unsatisfied with sewing clothes, he left Omeo in the summer of 1863 to try his luck in the windswept Snowy Mountains’ gold town of Kiandra, New South Wales. He was not there long enough to learn the hard way that the gold was already almost gone because soon after his arrival he had to ‘go away’—thanks to the ‘misappropriation of certain stock’. He served two years in Parramatta Gaol and never spoke of his imprisonment. It was widely thought, however, that the horse theft for which he had been convicted was actually committed by his troublesome brother-in-law, and that Jack had taken the blame out of family loyalty. True or not, it earned Jack respect among the mountain cattlemen.

  After his release, Jack returned to the mountains, this time to the Snowy River region in Victoria. For a while, he drove stock between the Monaro in New South Wales and the highlands of Victoria’s Gippsland, and from 1876 he worked as stockman in charge of cattle runs on the border between the two colonies. So far, he had lived an unremarkable life, but a few years later, probably in the early 1880s, he was said to have performed a feat that he is still remembered for today.

  It began when he joined a party of riders on a dramatic mission to recapture a stallion that had escaped from a station and joined a mob of brumbies on the steep sides of Mt Leatherhead. Catching the mob was a matter of pride to the rugged bushmen. They built a stockyard at the foot of the mountain, each hoping to be the first to drive the escapee through the bush and into the trap. But the stallion was too fast, too strong and too smart for his pursuers. After a long and fruitless chase, the men gathered on a ridge top, ready for a final effort to box the stallion in. But then, in a ripple of gleaming muscle, the mighty horse charged down a fearsome slope at breakneck speed.

  The hillside was a jungle of towering trees under-laid with grasping webs of spiky wattle and tea-tree scrub. The ground was pitted with wombat holes, some big enough to hide a cow, and loose shale that littered the slopes slid away from the stallion’s hoofs as he careened down the mountainside. It would be suicide to follow him. It seemed the stallion had made good his escape.

  But then, with a whoop, Jack Riley leapt his sturdy mountain pony from the ridge top and hurtled down the slope in hot pursuit. According to the way the cattlemen told it later, sparks all but flew from the pony’s iron shoes as horse and rider raced down the steep and rocky mountainside. They cleared the wombat holes and fallen log
s in great bounds. In a thunder of hoof beats, rocks flew and branches whipped the faces of man and beast. Headlong they galloped, faster and faster. Clutching the reins with one hand and his hat with the other, Jack leaned so far back in the saddle that he all but lay along the horse’s rump. Only the bottom of the mountain could halt their break-neck charge and any slip meant certain death. The men at the top of the ridge were lesser riders that day, and all they could do was watch in awe as Jack and his horse did what no others dared to try.

  The horse’s name is not recorded, but it deserves as much credit as its rider because together, in a lather of foam and blood, they drove that half-wild stallion down the mountainside and into the stockyard at the foot of the slope. Their sides heaving and gasping for air, man and pony had captured the mighty brumby and Jack Riley’s name was spoken in awe around camp fires for years to come.

  It was partly for this spectacular deed that Jack came to the attention of John Pearce, the owner of the isolated Tom Groggin Station high in the shoulders of the Snowy Mountains. The station lay on a broad and picturesque flat bounded by soaring peaks and the Murray River. It owed its name not to a cattleman or explorer, but rather to the native Yaitmathang people, who knew the area as Tong-ger-rogan—the place of countless water spiders that swarmed in the river during the spring and summer. In the early days, Tom Groggin was used as a summer station where cattle grazed on the broad flat or were driven into the hills to feed on the tough grasses and herbs that grew in clearings between the trees. In winter, however, the station was a wild and often snowbound place where only a handful of cattle roamed and few white men ventured.

  In 1884, Pearce hired Jack Riley as the year-round overseer of the station and Jack made his home in a cabin of logs and split vertical slabs with a roof of shingles at the far end of the sprawling property. One of the few photos taken of Jack shows him standing stiffly to one side of his home in a grassy yard enclosed by split timber palings. With just one door and no windows in the wall facing the photographer, the hut seems to grow from the virgin bush under a backdrop of soaring peaks. Built in two sections of horizontal logs and traditional Australian vertical slabs, the cabin had only one concession to comfort—a single fireplace and chimney.