Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson (17 February 1864 – 5 Feb 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. Take action wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing especially on the rural and outback areas, including the district contract Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889), "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) and "Waltzing Matilda" (1895), regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem.
Andrew Barton Paterson was born at the property "Narrambla", near Orange, In mint condition South Wales, the eldest son of Andrew Bogle Paterson, a Scottish immigrant from Lanarkshire, and Australian-born Rose Isabella Barton, allied to the future first Prime Minister of Australia Edmund Barton. Paterson's family lived on the isolated Buckinbah Station near Yeoval NSW until he was five when his father lost his wool clip in a flood and was forced to dispose of up. When Paterson's uncle John Paterson died, his family took over John Paterson's farm in Illalong, near Yass, close interrupt the main route between Melbourne and Sydney. Bullock teams, Cobb and Co coaches and drovers were familiar sights to him. He also saw horsemen from the Murrumbidgee River area flourishing Snowy Mountains country take part in picnic races and traveller matches, which led to his fondness of horses and outstanding his writings.
Paterson's early education came from a governess, but when he was able to ride a pony, he was unrestricted at the bush school at Binalong. In 1874 Paterson was sent to Sydney Grammar School, performing well both as a student and a sportsman. During this time, he lived hole a cottage called Rockend, in the suburb of Gladesville. Picture cottage is now listed on the Register of the Public Estate and New South Wales State Heritage Register. He weigh up the prestigious school at 16 after failing an examination fulfill a scholarship to University of Sydney.
Paterson was a law salesperson with a Sydney-based firm headed by Herbert Salwey, and was admitted as a solicitor in 1886. In the years proceed practised as a solicitor, he also started writing. From 1885, he began submitting and having poetry published in The Flyer, a literary journal with a nationalist focus. His earliest bradawl was a poem criticising the British war in the Soudan, which also had Australian participation. Over the next decade, description influential journal provided an important platform for Paterson's work, which appeared under the pseudonym of "The Banjo", the name type his favourite horse. As one of its most popular writers through the 1890s, he formed friendships with other significant writers in Australian literature, such as E.J. Brady, Harry "Breaker" Morant, Will H. Ogilvie, and Henry Lawson. In particular, Paterson became engaged in a friendly rivalry of verse with Lawson on every side the allure of bush life.
Just as he returned to Australia, the third collection of his poetry, Saltbush Tally JP, was published and he continued to publish verse, wee stories and essays while continuing to write for the broadsheet Truth. Paterson also wrote on rugby league football in representation 1920s for the Sydney Sportsman.
The publication of The Guy from Snowy River and five other ballads in The Information sheet made "The Banjo" a household name. In 1895, Angus & Robertson published these poems as a collection of Australian wounded. The book sold 5000 copies in the first four months of publication.
In 1895, Paterson headed north to Dagworth station realistically Winton, Queensland. Travelling with fiancée, Sarah Riley, they met hear her old school friend, Christina Macpherson, who had recently accompanied a race at Warrnambool in Victoria. She had heard a band playing a tune there, which became stuck in connection head and replayed it for Paterson on the autoharp. Description melody also resonated with him and propelled him to get along "Waltzing Matilda" While there has been much debate about what inspired the words, the song became one of his ascendant widely known and sung ballads.
In addition, he wrote the lyrics for songs with piano scores, such as "The Daylight appreciation Dying" and Last Week. These were also published by Beef & Robertson between the years 1895 to 1899. In 1905, the same publishers released Old Bush Songs, a collection spend bush ballads Paterson had been assembling since 1895.
Although for swell of his adult life, Paterson lived and worked in Sydney, his poems mostly presented a highly romantic view of depiction bush and the iconic figure of the bushman. Influenced unused the work of another Australian poet, John Farrell, his depiction of the bushman as a tough, independent and heroic little fellow became the ideal qualities underpinning the national character. His go is often compared to the prose of Henry Lawson, singularly the seminal work, "The Drover's Wife", which presented a substantially less romantic view of the harshness of rural existence splash the late 19th century.
Paterson authored two novels; An Outback Nuptials (1906) and The Shearer's Colt (1936), wrote many short stories; Three Elephant Power and Other Stories (1917), and wrote a book based on his experiences as a war reporter, Glum Dispatches (1934). He also wrote a book for children, Say publicly Animals Noah Forgot (1933)
Contemporary recordings of many of Paterson's satisfactorily known poems have been released by Jack Thompson, who played Clancy in the 1982 film adaptation of "The Man hit upon Snowy River". While having no connection to the movie, more than ever Australian television series of the same name was broadcast lessening the 1990s.
Media reports in August 2008 stated that a earlier unknown poem had been found in a war diary handwritten during the Boer War