.... , or Paterson's Curse?

By way of reminder… or introduction…

Two things for those who haven't heard much of the work, and life and times of "The Banjo" (as he was simply known by the Australian reading public at first), and who haven't grown up in the Australian bush "on the land" as they say.

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The Australian Dictionary of Biography, in 1988 Published an article by Clement Semmler, entitled:

Paterson, Andrew Barton (Banjo) (1864–1941)

Here are several selections from it:

Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson (1864-1941), poet, solicitor, journalist, war correspondent and soldier, was born on 17 February 1864 at Narrambla near Orange, New South Wales ...

…" he became one of that sodality of Bulletin writers and artists for which the 1890s are remarkable in Australian literature, forming friendships with E. J. Brady, Victor Daley, Frank Mahony, Harry 'The Breaker' Morant and others. He helped Henry Lawson to draw up contracts with publishers and indulged in a friendly rhyming battle with him in the Bulletin over the attractions or otherwise of bush life.

…"Although coming from a family of pioneer landholders who, by their industry had achieved some substance, Paterson wrote for all who were battling in the face of flood, drought and disaster. He saw life through the eyes of 

• old Kiley who had to watch the country he had pioneered turned over to the mortgagees, of 
• Saltbush Bill fighting a well-paid overseer for grass for his starving sheep, of 
• Clancy of the Overflow riding contentedly through the smiling western plains:

While the stock are slowly stringing,

Clancy rides behind them singing,

For the drover's life has pleasures

that the townsfolk never know.

In such lines as these Paterson lifted the settled gloom from our literature of the bush.

On the night of Paterson's death, Vance Palmer broadcasted a tribute: 

(which ended)

'He laid hold both of our affections and imaginations; he made himself a vital part of the country we all know and love, and it would not only have been a poorer country but one far less united in bonds of intimate feeling, if he had never lived and written'.

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Concurrently (at the same time), and with no apparent relation to the Banjo, a pretty little purple garden plant (Echium plantagineum) overtook the bush and became an agricultural weed called by some "Paterson's Curse", ...  Though it didn't have such a bad effect on ruminants like cattle, it killed horses. It was more hardy than  imported grasses, it just "kept on", through hard times and good. It helped to keep goats and sheep alive in droughts so the shepherds from South Australia called it "Salvation Jane".

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…., or Paterson's Curse?

Well how do you recall that Banjo Bloke?

Somehow his man from Snowy River won

our hearts as a fair-dinkum leader joke

on those who saw a "stripling" & the son

of one he thought his father, wise in life,

& knew his father's friends as his own too

(expecting from them no less when in strife),

dismissed as lad and horse that  wouldn't "do".

But still an operator who could work

the job with those much stronger than himself,

a walking partnership, with who'd not shirk

but surely give it all - sickness or health.

A master, of the understatement thing - 

key aspect: that his statements show much more

than just another tell you what to think!

But yet he'd tell a yarn - he's not a "bore"!

He feeds the yarn quite care-ful-ly to those

he thinks will have the skill to spin & weave

with ancient art known only to who knows,

then also, he kept at it - no reprieve.

Pro-lif-ic-ly he wrote, his poetry

shows culture (using stories from within,

which had a kind of thought & commentary),

reflecting much on life, beneath what's seen;

& yet he saw, & said, it like it was,

& in that helped us all appreciate

a kind of life that wrestled well because

it wouldn't stop creating in debate!

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