Banjo Paterson
Oh! there once was a swagman camped in the Billabongs, Under the shade of a Coolabah tree; And he sang as he looked at his old billy boiling, “Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?”
This famous ballad of the outback wanderer who drowns himself rather than lose his freedom needs no introduction. There is no swagman as legendary as the tragic hero of this tale, and there is no Australian song as well-known throughout the world. Few writers are so quintessentially Australian as Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson.
A poet, lawyer, journalist, sportsman and soldier, Banjo Paterson was born near Orange, New South Wales, in 1864.
Sent to school in Sydney around the age of 10, he matriculated but failed a University of Sydney scholarship examination, gaining work as a solicitor’s clerk instead.
He had his first poem published in the Bulletin magazine in February 1885, adopting the pen name ”The Banjo”, after a racehorse owned by his family.
By 1895 ballads including as Clancy of the Overflow and The Man from Ironbark were so popular with readers that Angus & Robertson published the collection, The Man From Snowy River, and Other Verses. The book’s first edition sold out in the week of publication and was widely praised in England and Australia. While on holiday in Queensland late in 1895, Paterson stayed with friends at Dagworth station, near Winton, where he wrote Waltzing Matilda. In 1899 he went to South Africa to cover the Boer War for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. The high standard of his writing earned him a position with the international press agency Reuters. He visited China and England in 1901. Paterson married in 1903 and with wife Alice welcomed a daughter in 1904 and a son in 1906. He was commissioned as an officer in the Australian army during World War I, serving until mid-1919. Returning to journalism after the war, he worked for various newspapers and became a broadcaster with the ABC. Appointed a Commander of the British Empire in 1939, Banjo Paterson died in February 1941 after a short illness.