Happy 150th Birthday Banjo!
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of Australia’s most famous ‘bards’…
Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson. Writer of the lyrics of many of our best-known songs and verses.
The face on our $5 note, and appearing on postage stamps and featured in sculptures.
I grew up with my father reciting this (and many other) AB (Banjo) Paterson poems.
I find it hard to imagine an Australia without some of this verse echoing through it’s mountain ridges and open plains.
Other favourites are The Man from Ironbark and The Bush Christening (Leonard Tiele and Jack Thompson are two great bush poetry reciters)…
Do you have a favourite Banjo Paterson verse?
Previous
5 Comments
Colin Huggins
Yes, sure is an Aussie “icon”.
Anyone travelling around the Yass to Young
area,NSW, and goes into Binalong, you will get a good dose of Paterson history there.
The real “oldies” of the readers of this fantastic blog on cattle rural life will remember how we all had to recite the poems of Banjo. Of course, I am not an oldie, just a bit younger, but still Banjo’s poems it was.
Banjo also sure had an interesting and fulfilling life – wikipedia him!
jeanie
Clancy of the Overflow is also a fav. I think having Dad recite them really ingrained them into our beings!
Lucinda
Without a doubt, the last verse of Clancy of the Overflow is my favourite:
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’.
Banjo was a lawyer when he wrote this, and it was based on an actual letter he received. Being an office worker myself, who also loves the bush, I really relate to this verse.
Shirley from Rhubarb Whine
“I find it hard to imagine an Australia without some of this verse echoing through it’s mountain ridges and open plains.” So beautifully said, BB xxx
Nicko
His spirit lives on….
https://www.facebook.com/aussiebushlawyer