by Paul Terry
This humble dwelling at the edge of the mountain flat was home to Jack Riley for some thirty years. In that time, he came to know every tree and every trail in the surrounding bush. With contempt for compasses and maps, he could find his way through the wilderness like a homing pigeon, and more than any other white man he learned the little-known routes through dense forest and over stony-headed peaks to the top of Mt Kosciuszko.
It was a country for loners. In 1838, Robert Mason and his wife—whose name is not recorded—were among the first Europeans to settle the area. Mrs Mason was believed to be the region’s first white woman. She was certainly the mother of the first white child to be born there, because Robert junior arrived in the couple’s hut in 1839. We can only imagine how Mrs Mason felt when the time came to have her baby in this wilderness. Perhaps she had Aboriginal midwives to help because the baby arrived safely, only to die two years later. Mrs Mason delivered nine more children—testament, if any is needed, to the strength of the women who pioneered this hard land.
Strange old men lived in the bush too. Known as ‘hatters’ after the Mad Hatter in Lewis Carroll’s classic novel Alice in Wonderland, these strange loners lived with only the trees and animals for company. Today, old locals can remember the wild man who lived in a dugout next to the Hermit Creek in the Depression years. Clothed in kangaroo skins, he was more animal than human. He ate what he could catch—unwary animals, snakes, lizards and insects—supplemented by vegetables grown in a patch of cleared bush next to his cave, and he never spoke a word to another person. Whatever drove him to such seclusion will never be known.
Jack Riley was a loner, too, but he did make infrequent visits to civilisation. Riding a mountain pony and leading a packhorse to carry his supplies, Jack occasionally ventured into Corryong or Khancoban to buy what he needed for the long weeks in his self-imposed exile. Sometimes he stopped to visit a friend and share a bottle of whisky on the way home, but more often than not the white-bearded bushman preferred to turn his horses’ heads back to the highlands and the serenity of his alpine home.
But if Jack wanted to leave the world alone, he could not count on the world to return the favour. The mountains were opening up to stockmen, miners and even tourists. Parties of riders regularly passed his hut on their way to Kosciuszko. Jack reluctantly greeted them—especially if they had been wise enough to bring a bottle of whisky—but soon enough he was happy to send them on their way. Sometimes, however, he showed the tourists to the top of the mountain, perhaps earning a few shillings for his trouble. Those who shunned his help occasionally came to regret it.
In the midst of one wet and bitterly cold winter, a group of riders from the city passed through Tom Groggin en route to the mountain. Jack offered to guide them to the top because in this weather he knew they were risking life and limb. There was no need, they said. They had a good compass and they knew which way to go because they could clearly see their destination starkly silhouetted against the grey and gloomy sky. Soon they were on their way, but within hours a dense fog closed in and the temperature plummeted.
Two days later, soaked to the skin and exhausted, the city slickers returned to Jack’s hut. The weather and the mountains had defeated them. Jack gave them tea and something to eat and kept his thoughts about the foolishness of ill-prepared mountain travellers to himself. Warmed up by Jack’s fire and recharged by hot food, one of the tourists offered Jack five shillings as a reward but he quietly refused. Soon he took them to the track that led to civilisation and he returned alone to the refuge of his home.
*
Barty Paterson’s summer visit to the high country ended all too soon, and it was time for him to return to work in the ‘dusty, dirty city’. At around this time, words began to form in his mind. Soon he had the opening lines for a ballad he titled ‘The Man From Snowy River’.
There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses—he was worth a thousand pound
Reprising some of Paterson’s earlier characters, including Pardon the horse and Clancy of the Overflow, the ballad told how the ‘tried and noted riders from stations near and far’ had gathered at a homestead to chase the valuable colt. One of the riders was ‘a stripling on a small and graceful beast’. ‘Graceful’ was later replaced with ‘weedy’. In the poem, the old hands doubted the young horseman, who ‘hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko’s [sic] side’, could keep up with the rugged bushmen on his scrubby little pony. It soon proved to be a valid concern. The mob easily outpaced their pursuers and even the remarkable Clancy could not hold the brumbies as they charged to freedom down the frightful side of the mountain. It seemed the chase had failed.
But then the Man from Snowy River showed his mettle. He gave a wild cheer and put the spurs to his horse. They raced ‘down the mountain like a torrent in its bed’ and ran the brumbies until their ‘sides were white with foam’. Single-handedly, the rider and his trusty horse captured the brumbies and, as the final stanza explained, he had earned his place in history.
And down by Kosciusko, where the pine-clad ridges raise Their torn and rugged battlements on high,
Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze
At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,
And where around the Overflow the reedbeds sweep and sway
To the breezes, and the rolling plains are wide,
The man from Snowy River is a household word today, And the stockmen tell the story of his ride.
The Bulletin published the ballad in April 1890, several months after Paterson returned from Corryong. It instantly struck a chord with readers who clamoured to know the identity of this exciting new writer, ‘The Banjo’. The Bulletin editor, Archibald, would only say that he was ‘a modest young man of Sydney’. After finishing 1889 on a high note with the publication of ‘Clancy of the Overflow’, Paterson’s anonymity was now working to his benefit and the mystery over his identity only served to heighten public interest in his work. Fortune would always elude him, but thanks to ‘The Man From Snowy River’, fame was assured.
*
The rise of the poet Banjo Paterson meant little to Jack Riley. The years passed at Tom Groggin Station and Jack continued his lonely work looking after the stock and keeping the property in order. As he got older, some of the duties became too much for him but he refused to leave his home. His visits to civilisation became less frequent and, each time, the townsfolk noticed that the old man seemed to be fading. In 1911, word reached town that Jack was in a bad way and a party was sent to check on him.
Father Patrick Hartigan from Albury was among that group. Fearing Jack would need the last rites, the priest had whizzed up to Corryong in his new Renault motor car before joining a group of horsemen for the ride out to Jack’s hut. When they arrived, they found Jack unwell but conscious and not particularly pleased to see this party of well-wishers in his home. Father Hartigan, who was himself a bush poet of note (he wrote ‘Said Hanrahan’ under the pen name John O’Brien) filled in an awkward silence by reciting the first few lines of ‘The Man From Snowy River’. The priest later recalled that the ailing Jack Riley was unimpressed: ‘We often used to do that sort of thing and had tougher “goes” than that,’ Jack supposedly said. ‘I was taking a party up to Kossy and was telling them about it, and one of them put it in a book; but he brings in the names of a lot of men who weren’t there at all. There was nobody named Clancy . . .’
Jack did not need the last rites that night. But, in the winter of 1914, his time was finally up. His mates came for him in July. It was a two-day ride from Corryong to Jack’s hut and the rescuers knew time was running out. It had been several weeks since he had been seen in town and even then he was looking poorly. There was little time to lose, but the going was hard and it was a journey that could not be rushed.
Portrait of J.F. Archibald and Henry Lawson, Sydney,
1918. Photograph courtesy National Library of Australia.
The four rescuers on their hardy mountain horses followed a bridle track that wound its way over waves of hills that rose to steep, tree-crowned ridges and fell to ferny gullies divided by half-hidden creeks. After each descent, the horses picked their way over the gullies and then climbed again—every peak conquered bringing the rescuers a little closer to their destination. The riders urged their horses on as the heavens opened and the mountains fell silent but for the slap of raindrops against leaves. If Jack was alive, the riders would bring him out. If he was not, they would bring him out anyway. He would not be left to the dingoes.
When the riders reached Jack’s hut late on the second day, they saw they were almost too late. The old man’s only hope was to see the doctor at the Cottage Hospital in Corryong. The rescuers camped that night at the hut, hoping the rain would ease. Inside, they lit the fire and made Jack as comfortable as they could as the rain hammered down on the shingled roof. The next morning—14 July—they set out in the downpour on Jack Riley’s final journey.
The rescuers decided to take a different route back to town to avoid a number of river crossings on the main bridle track and, carrying Jack on a stretcher made of saplings and hessian, they followed an old mining trail that hugged the course of the Murray. When the river fell through a series of gorges, the rescuers had to climb Hermit Mountain—a steep ascent that was too much for the stretcher bearers. The rain turned to snow and hopes faded that Jack would reach hospital in time.
The mountain men would not be defeated by mere rain and snow and, as they struggled up the steep slope, Jack was taken from the stretcher and placed in a saddle, one of the rescuers sitting behind him to keep him upright. Late that afternoon, they had made their way back down the mountain and, as night fell they took shelter in an abandoned hut at an old tin mine. Jack complained of being cold and his mates bundled him up in front of the fire. Jack seemed to rally a little and exchanged a few words with his companions. But as the chilly air closed in and the snow piled up on the ground outside, he swayed in his seat and fell silent. Shortly afterwards, he took his last breath. Jack Riley’s life in the mountains was over.
He was taken into town where his body was laid out on the billiard table at the Corryong Coffee Palace. The next day, he was buried in a quiet corner of the town’s cemetery. Visitors to his grave could lift their eyes and see the hazy mountains merge into the horizon above them. Jack’s rescuers had failed but their efforts did not go unnoticed. The Corryong Courier published some words to honour the men who rode to the rescue of a friend:
The bush asks big things of its men and they never fail to respond. Sometimes—as in this case—the task proves impossible, and a Higher Power intervenes; but the credit of a gallant attempt is theirs—and there are many failures which are finer than many successes.
*
The Mitchell brothers never doubted that Jack Riley was the inspiration for Paterson’s famous ballad—a view that is widely accepted in the Upper Murray today. There have been other candidates for the Man from Snowy River, including Charlie McKeahnie from Adaminaby, ‘Hellfire’ Jack Clarke of Jindabyne and Jim Spencer from the Snowy, just to name a few. They were men cut from the same cloth as Jack Riley and their collective deeds made an impression on Banjo Paterson. But, as tempting as it might be to find one Man from Snowy River, the truth is that he was not one man but a compilation of many.
In December 1938, Paterson revealed as much in an article for The Sydney Mail in which he said he wrote the poem to describe ‘the cleaning up’ of wild horses near his childhood home. That was a tough job, he said, although it was infinitely harder in the high country. To create the ballad he had had to invent a character who could ride better than anybody else and ‘where would he come from except the Snowy?’ And Paterson made it clear that his Man from Snowy River was the embodiment of countless bushmen who once rode the hills and plains:
They have turned up from all the mountain districts—men who did exactly the same ride and could give you chapter and verse for every hill they descended and every creek they crossed. It was no small satisfaction to find that there had really been a Man from Snowy River—more than one of them.
‘The Man From Snowy River’ certainly reflected Paterson’s boyhood memories of the horsemen he admired so much at quiet Illalong. It has even been said that Paterson, the consummate horseman, saw himself as that courageous mountain rider. It must also be said, however, that of all the candidates, Jack Riley was the only one known to have met Paterson and echoes of Jack’s story could be clearly heard in Paterson’s poem. While it is true that Jack was not the only Man from Snowy River, at least part of his story shines on in the famous ballad. And, true or not, many folk in the Upper Murray today have no doubt that their man was the Man from Snowy River, a belief that was set in stone in 1947 when Walter Mitchell’s son Tom arranged a headstone for Jack Riley. It reads:
In Memory of
THE MAN FROM
SNOWY RIVER
JACK RILEY
BURIED HERE
16TH JULY 1914
Ironically for a man who preferred to keep his own company, Jack Riley’s grave in Corryong has become a destination for tourists seeking to connect with an Australia that no longer exists. Jack would not have liked being the centre of attention but, perhaps, he and Charlie McKeahnie and the other Men from Snowy River would have been pleased to know that their exploits helped to ensure the legend of the mountain cattleman lives on.
6
TWIN DEITIES
The end of the great drought of the 1860s was followed by a rise in wool prices and by the seventies, the industry was booming again. Demand for land led to rapid pastoral expansion in largely undeveloped areas as investors and settlers sought runs and stations. Among the big investors were fabulously wealthy squatter kings from Victoria’s rich Western District. Feeling the pinch of encroachment from small settlers, the weight of land taxes and the depredations of rabbits, some of the southern colony’s most successful grazing families now set their sights on newly opened pastoral districts in western Queensland. There, a squatter could take up a run—up to 100 square miles (259 square kilometres)—and if he could prove he had stocked it to a quarter of capacity or more, he could be granted a fourteen-year lease. With luck and hard work, more runs could be added and the squatter could become a station owner.
By the 1880s, Australia’s economy was booming. There was rapid growth in the cities, especially in ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ which had exploded during the gold rush and was now roaring in the land boom. The city’s population had doubled to almost half a million, making it bigger than some European capitals. Grand buildings of up to twelve storeys sprang up in the city centre as banks, hotels and speculators made a fortune. Helping to fuel it all were the riches from the land. It seemed the good times would roll forever from the sheep’s back and even when wool prices began to fall it did not seem to matter because Australia produced so much of it.
But the speculation had created a bubble in the economy. When it burst at the end of the decade, it provided the young lawyer Barty Paterson with proof of a truism—where there’s a boom, there’s inevitably a bust. When the economy came crashing down, Paterson the lawyer was assigned the distasteful task of trying to gather some of the scattered pieces: ‘For months I did nothing but try to screw money out of people who had not got it.’
It was the workers in the bush—shearers, shepherds, station hands and others—who had laboured to generate the wealth during the boom, but they saw relatively little of it. Inequity had already led to unionisation in the cities where miners, dock workers and factory hands were becoming a political force. But the army of workers from shearing sheds and stations scattered over tens of millions of square kilometres remained largely disorganised until the pastoralists moved to cut shearers’ pay rates in 1886. It led to the creation of an industrial system that defines the relationship between employer and worker tod
ay.
In June that year, the Australian Shearers Union was formed in Ballarat. Within four years it had branches across the country and claimed to have 20,000 members. The union offered solidarity, support during a time when social security did not exist, and a united voice at the negotiating table. Importantly, it was a force for collectivism, creating a common cause in the shearing shed. And for the bushman, there was something attractive about the ethos of the union. In a country where Jack dared to think he was as good as his master, workforce solidarity offered independence and equality. Even though he might own little more than a billy and a swag, the wandering shearer had a sense of his own place in the wide brown land.
But it was the cities that became the battle ground for Australia’s first great industrial dispute. In 1890, hundreds of sailors and wharf workers walked off the job in a demand for better wages and conditions. When coal miners joined the protest, more than 28,000 workers in essential industries were on strike. Known as the Great Maritime Strike, it was the first in a series of sometimes savage battles between labour and capital in the 1890s.
On the land, pastoralists and workers were also forming up for battle. At its heart was a conflict between the union’s desire to not only fix rates and conditions for all workers in the shed, but also to decide just who worked in that shed. Against that was the employers’ wish to seek individual contracts with shearers and to hire whoever they liked to shear their sheep. The spark was struck in 1890, when pastoralists at Jondaryan Station in Queensland employed non-union labour, or ‘scabs’, on a lower rate. Enraged, the union blocked the station’s wool from the ports in Brisbane. By 1891 it had developed into a bitter and sometimes violent stalemate.