by Roland Perry
After that, he travelled abroad to Europe. His nostrils filled with the whiff of coming war. But Paterson’s health failed and he returned home to take up farming. This generated more time for reflection and avoided the ‘Clancy’ syndrome of city life, but the poet and adventurer remained restless. He married at forty, and this for a time took his mind off the self-indulgent need for permanent stimulation in his professional life. His choice was the attractive and genteel 25-year-old Alice Walker, but the normal restrictions of marriage did not suit him.
Paterson’s main frustration was that his true love— writing poetry—paid too little to provide for himself and a family. He spoke of the battle to ‘keep ahead of the bills’. Even his wonderful ‘Clancy’, ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and the classic ‘Waltzing Matilda’ brought him a pittance in royalties. This created a sense of cynicism about being so talented yet going unrewarded for it. Artist Norman Lindsay, who worked for The Bulletin as a cartoonist and illustrator, shared something of the same feelings. He described Paterson as ‘sardonic’ after his decades in journalism, and because of the poor returns for his genius as an original Australian poet.
When war broke out in Europe in August 1914, Paterson had a sudden vision of escape from his permanent state of ennui. He would become a war correspondent once more. He had done it so well before and, besides, the military was part of his heritage, if not his DNA. His great-grandfather, Major Edward Darvall, served under Wellington, first in India and then defending the English coast from Napoleon’s threatened invasion. A great-uncle became a major-general in the British Indian Army. (There was a political heritage too. Another great-uncle became attorney-general of New South Wales and a leader of the Sydney establishment.)
Paterson would again be both revived and excited by battle, travel and competing for a ‘scoop’. He anticipated seeing London and Paris a second time. This was what he wanted. The thought thrilled him. He rushed to the Herald to make a case for it hiring him as a war correspondent, but he was turned down. The federal government, under subtle instruction from the seat of Empire in London, would pick and choose whom it wanted in its propaganda arm, which is how it saw the press. The Herald had already chosen Charles Bean to be its reporter. Bean would also act as the official war historian. So much for independent reporting. He had just pipped Keith Murdoch of the Melbourne Herald for the job. The earnest, pedestrian Bean was a good choice. Murdoch was more interested in power than the tedious recording and collating of every event Australia was to take part in on several war fronts. Murdoch instead became the representative of two successive wartime prime ministers, Andrew Fisher and Billy Hughes, when they were not visiting the UK. In effect, he was Australia’s official voice in London’s halls of power. These quasi-governmental roles were never right for Paterson and he knew it. He wanted utter freedom of expression or nothing. In the end he was left with the latter.
In desperation he turned to his second true love (wife Alice aside), which was horses. He had been brought up in the bush where these treasured and essential animals were a big part of his early life. Paterson could ride almost as soon as he could walk. He was a fair horseman despite an arm deformity caused by an accident when he was young. Horses would help facilitate his travel to war via the barn door. He secured a tenuous role as an honorary veterinarian on a troop ship carrying horses and soldiers. It was a touch humiliating to go to such lengths to escape his ‘conventional’ life, but Paterson was good on spin. He would write and despatch from wherever the horses went. He would gain insider knowledge and connections. One was the diminutive, well-bred 49-year-old Harry Chauvel, the lean-as-a-ferret, rigid-backed commander of Australia’s first ever Light Horse Brigade, which would form part of the nation’s 2nd Division. They were nearly the same age, and their paths had crossed briefly at Sydney Grammar.
Paterson’s life was re-energised. He went about his new job with the enthusiasm of a keen first-year cadet journalist, writing his first piece as a freelance for the Herald called ‘Making an Army’.
3
OFF THE DECK
Before Banjo Paterson could revive his career as a war correspondent he had a duty in his role as a would-be vet on board ship in charge of his own horse and a score of others, including Bill the Bastard. Paterson was travelling with 27 qualified vets in the main medical ship. In all there were more than 8000 horses in the 38 transport ships and their minders were kept busy with inevitable equine sickness. Paterson loved his own mount, a sleek, smaller Waler he called ‘Trumper’ after the cricketer Victor Trumper. But as they steamed into the Indian Ocean he grew fonder of Bill than of any other animal.
Everyone knew the temperamental Bastard’s reputation and Paterson was cautious with him. Yet he found an unusual connection. Paterson reckoned this exceptional animal tackled his world in the same way he did his. Bill bowed to no human or thing. Paterson hated bosses or being told what to do. A mutual respect developed. Paterson found himself talking to Bill with more care than he did with any of the other horses. The Bastard in turn didn’t kick, but for a couple of occasions, when he was too near. He didn’t try to bite him or nudge him out of the way, which he was wont to do with any other vet who came close. The army vets were wary but Bill didn’t need anything from them, apart from food and water. When other horses near him had colic, stress or, in a few cases, pneumonia, he remained well.
Bill had caused trouble even before the convoy sailed. He refused to go down to a stall on the lowest of three decks. He leant back like a mule. Four soldiers could not move him. Three pushed from behind and one pulled the reins. Two more soldiers joined the challenge, but Bill was an immoveable object. Paterson was called to deal with it. He suggested Bill was being himself for a reason: the lowest hold was dark and poorly ventilated.
‘He has the lungs and heart of an elephant,’ Paterson opined. ‘I suggest he goes on the top deck. He’d prefer to be in the open.’
Bill was eased up to the top deck, but like a stubborn runner at Flemington, he could not be coaxed or forced into a stall. The ship’s vertically challenged adjutant Fred Phillips, known as ‘Tom-thumb’, intervened and approached Paterson and the six helpers on the top deck.
‘If that stubborn bastard doesn’t behave, he doesn’t go,’ Phillips said, pulling himself up to his full 157 centimetres in front of Paterson. ‘That’s it. I don’t want any troublemakers on board, quadrupeds or bipeds.’
Paterson reflected for several seconds. Staring straight at Bill, he said softly: ‘Alright, gents. He hates the fetid bottom deck. He doesn’t like the idea of getting splashed on the top deck. That leaves one option or we leave him behind: the middle deck.’
Bill was led down to the middle deck. It was well lit and nicely ventilated. Paterson motioned for the others to step back, then he led Bill to a stall facing across the ship. He was like a friendly labrador as he entered, giving no trouble at all. When he was in and the door closed, Paterson eased around to face him.
‘You’re a funny Bastard,’ he said with a bemused shake of the head. ‘Don’t know whether you’re—to mix my metaphors—a pig-headed mule, or just extra smart.’ Bill stared back impassively. ‘Maybe you don’t know either. Maybe it’s all instinct.’
A few weeks into the voyage, five horses died within days of each other on the lowest deck. Each time the boat slowed down and the vets slipped a carcass over the side to a watery grave. Paterson was seconded to do it twice. When the seas became rough in the middle of the Indian Ocean, two stalls on the top deck were smashed and the horses in them were swept overboard. All the animals on the top deck seemed in a perpetual state of agitation with waves often washing over them. Paterson wondered about Bill and his choice of the comfortable second deck.
There were deckhands to clean the stalls and feed the horses with oats, bran and chaff three times a day. Each animal was allotted ten gallons of water a day. Paterson looked after only two horses in these chores, Trumper and Bill. He had to do the latter because no deckhand or v
et would go into the narrow stall with him. One foolhardy sailor tried but was kicked hard on the shoulder and had to have minor surgery. Paterson felt like a courtier in a tyrant king’s throne-room when he slipped in and out of the stall unscathed. There was a terror in it once or twice when Bill seemed in a mood about something. But once Paterson was over his concern, he noticed that Bill sometimes left half of his daily ten gallons of water. This puzzled Paterson. Why would the biggest, strongest horse of the huge contingent drink less than even his small Trumper? Bill ate well enough, but the water was rarely consumed in total. He caused Paterson to think of the hoary old axiom: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. There was another dimension to Bill, Paterson noted in his diary of the voyage on 3 November 1914: ‘You can’t lead Bill the Bastard to anything and you certainly can’t make him drink.’
Paterson was surprised to see a tall, attractive, young fair-haired woman attending to horses on the middle deck.
‘Who’s that stunning filly with the emerald eyes and diamond smile?’ he asked the ship’s senior vet, 45-year-old Dr Ian Parsonson.
‘She is one of our two lady vets; Cath Phelan from Brisbane,’ he replied with a defensive pull at his handlebar moustache. Seeing Paterson’s ogling interest as Phelan bent over to examine a horse’s foot, he added: ‘You’re married, Banjo! And she’s half your age, and taller than you!’
‘Maybe two inches at best! Can you introduce us?’
‘Tonight at the captain’s table, if you wish. But she is engaged to some diplomat named Bob Kerr.’
Paterson groaned. ‘Thought she was too good to be true,’ he sighed.
‘Kath happens to be an excellent vet,’ Dr Parsonson said.
‘Oh, I am sure she is good at everything she does!’
Paterson was introduced to Phelan that night but it was clear she was not impressed, even when Dr Parsonson said, ‘You know he is the famous balladeer?’
‘Really? How is he with the horses?’ she asked, and ignored Paterson for the rest of the night, leaving him with just the strong fragrance of her perfume, which he could not place. But it was distinctive and appealing. Phelan clung to her tall, handsome, rather aloof fiancé, who was also not forthcoming with Paterson.
When asked about his work, Kerr replied: ‘I’m a diplomat,’ a tad pompously, as if such a declaration explained everything.
‘Aren’t we all?’ Paterson said, but when this received a wan smile instead of edification, Paterson turned his attention to other diners. Later the captain explained that Kerr was ‘some sort of emissary for the prime minister, like the journalist Keith Murdoch’.
Paterson noticed Kerr looking at himself in every reflective surface, even a silver serving dish on the table. It gave the balladeer a sliver of hope that Phelan might just become unimpressed with such a vain figure, whom Paterson hoped was a complete narcissist. Such men, he found, always allowed someone with the balladeer’s flair and character, but lesser looks, a chance to compete. But on this occasion, Paterson was left looking on wistfully at the shapely Phelan, whose big sensual mouth and eyes seemed to become larger and more alluring as dinner wore on. Her long white off-the-shoulder evening dress was gathered by a large black belt which accentuated her narrow waist and hourglass figure.
He observed her consuming copious amounts of champagne and chain-smoking small cigars perched in a gold holder. Paterson objected to women who smoked and drank heavily, but he would forgive this sensual, apparently unattainable coquette anything, even the fact that she flirted with everyone except him when her urbane, utterly self-absorbed fiancé retired to their cabin early. Paterson noticed that she was keen to dance, accepting the offers from the best-looking young officers to join them on the dance floor. Encouraged, he invited her but she ignored his offer, almost looking through him as she did so.
Towards the end of the evening, the much-sought-after Phelan, smiling and holding a champagne glass high, swivelled her way to a corner of the dining area and approached a lean, fit-looking, blue-eyed lieutenant who had been sitting alone through dinner, engrossed in a book while the revelry and dancing whirled on the floor a few metres away.
‘May I?’ Phelan asked as she pulled out a chair at the man’s table. The square-jawed, ruggedly handsome Light Horse officer neither nodded nor shook his head as he stood and somewhat reluctantly drew himself out of the tome that was absorbing him.
‘Must be a damned good book!’ Phelan observed with a grin of full-on charm, without bothering to look at the cover. He proffered a half-nod, his gaze fixing on her as if he was in two minds about engaging her. Phelan thrust a hand towards him at chest level in a manner suggesting that he should kiss it. Instead he pulled it down with a firm handshake grip.
‘I’m Cath Phelan,’ she said with a smile.
‘Michael Shanahan,’ he said as they both sat down.
‘I knew it!’ she said, pointing at him. ‘I’ve been wondering if it was you all night! You’re a builder from Roma.’
‘Italy?’ he asked innocently.
‘No, silly, Queensland.’
A smile, or something like it, swept his granite face.
‘You haven’t changed an iota since I last saw you, what . . . twenty-two, twenty-three years ago?’ she said.
‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘You don’t remember me?’ Phelan asked with a mock frown. ‘But you’re forgiven. I was a skinny little kid of thirteen when I last saw you. You would have been a dozen years older, which makes you forty-four or forty-five now, right?’
Ignoring the question, he replied: ‘You have changed.’
‘Our parents were good friends. My father was the local pharmacist.’
‘Lance Phelan? I remember. They used to go to Sunday mass together.’
‘Good Catholics.’
‘Not that good. Mine, anyway. They missed Sunday service quite often.’
‘Too busy making babies? You would have had about ten siblings when we left Roma for Brisbane in ninety-three.’ ‘They ended up having sixteen kids.’
‘My God, your poor mother!’
The band started up for the last bracket of dances. People around them were making for the dance floor.
‘You religious?’ she asked.
‘No. I’m an agnostic. A socialist agnostic.’
‘My, my,’ she said, her tone tinged with derision, ‘not just a heathen non-believer, but one with a radical political bent. How absolutely fascinating! I would never have picked it.’
Shanahan glanced at his book.
‘Lieutenant,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘you must dance with me.’ Phelan reached out a flamboyant paw again.
He hesitated. She lunged across the table and closed his book.
‘Now c’mon,’ Phelan prompted, ‘you simply can’t refuse me. I’ve waited for this for almost a quarter-century! You were the most beautiful ballroom dancer I ever saw.’ He stood, still in two minds as she added: ‘I used to get dragged along with my siblings to the local dance places. I recall watching you in awe and some envy for your partners as you’d glide your way around that old barn at the . . . the . . .’
‘MacDonalds.’
‘Yes, yes, the MacDonalds. I wished, I prayed that you would ask me to dance, but you never did. You didn’t know I existed.’
‘What a rotter . . .’ he mumbled, ‘but you know that old Sicilian saying—beware of answered prayers . . .?’ He took her hand and led her to the floor. They flowed gracefully through several waltzes. Other dancers made room for them.
‘You’re so brilliant!’ she whispered in his ear. She kissed his cheek lightly.
They finished the bracket together. Shanahan accompanied her to her table. Phelan leant close and said quietly: ‘I must confess, I had the most terrible, terrible knee-trembling crush on you.’ She fixed her gaze on him, waiting for a reaction.
‘If only I’d known,’ he responded, deadpan.
She stopped short of the table. ‘What? Would
you have done anything?’
‘Perhaps given you a good spanking for being so precocious.’
‘I would have enjoyed it—anything—from you!’
Phelan let her hand slip from his and he received her most seductive smile of the evening.
The next day, Paterson groomed Bill and Trumper after the midday feed and attended to their feet. In the afternoon, mats were placed on the decks and the horses were walked around for exercise. Bill refused to come out of his stall, and not even Paterson could budge him. ‘Wallow in your own bloody excrement then!’ Paterson called to him as he left the stall. He jumped clear as Bill kicked back at the door so hard that he split the wood. His minder never abused him again.
On 4 November his diary noted: ‘Horses very drowsy. My horse goes to sleep and falls down. I don’t realise it until Bill makes such a ruckus two stalls away that I investigate. Was Bill letting me know or just being his bloody-minded self? I don’t know. I never know with him.’
5 November: ‘Put big horse [Bill] in a sling [hammock]. He went to sleep, lay in the sling and nearly pitched out.’
Paterson became acquainted with a big, muscular American soldier on board who had been in the Philippines War (1899–1902, between the United States and Filipino revolutionaries). They spoke about their respective wars, and their current charges. The American had a trick pony which he was ‘hustling’ about the stall.