“Banjo” Patterson

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31500, 14 October 1967, Page 4

“Banjo” Patterson

The World of “Banjo" Patterson: Prose writing of the balladist Edited by Clement Semmler, who contributes an Introduction. Angus and Robertson. 325 pp.

It could be that A. B. Patterson, poet and journalist, is remembered mainly for his Australian verse rather than for his prose; but he wrote a good deal of prose too, and Mr Semmler has done a service to Australian literature by bringing it together in one volume.

Like other Australian writers, such as Henry Lawson, who made a name for themselves round about the latter part of the last century, Patterson could be said to have been discovered and fostered by the Sydney weekly the “Bulletin.” He had already written verse for that journal before he wes persuaded to try his hand at sketches and short stories, mainly of outback life. It turned out that Patterson had a gift for creating atmosphere by the economical use of words. He could pen word pictures that could be “seen.” Moreover, as this collection of more than 50 pieces of his writings reveals, Patterson's word pictures are as “seeable” today as when they were written—they extend from the 1890 s Into the 19305. Patterson likes his humour to be mocking and comic (The Cast-Iron Canvasser," “The Merino Sheep,” “How I Shot a Policeman’’). His drama is lifted from real Ufa in the outdoors and primitive places (“The Wild Cattle," “The Buffalo Hunt,” “The Sinking of the Emden”). Patterson has a sure touch for characterisation in his portraits of lUpling, Allenby and “Chinese” Morrison, and his descriptive power can bring alive the peculiarities of London, and give vividness to a tug-of-war, pearl-fishing or a dog-fight, racehorses and tiieir history, and that later

love of W.. motoring. War and impresstons of people, horses and things concerned therein. Patterson’s newspaper dispatches and letters home depict a leisurely atmosphere compared with the greeter urgency of the First World We: to Egypt, about which he afterwards wrote. t , There is a homely tofofr manty about some of Ms writings to South Africa. He die-

cusses the Australians and the New Zealanders and how they had. to fossick for themselves beceuse no-one seemed greatly concerned that they had arrived. The British Regulars, ship after ship, were arriving too. And to the meantime the Boers, somewhere up country, were fighting the war in tiieir own perverse way, moving from rocky kopje to rocky kopje, firing, rarely showing themselves, and disappearing to fight another day. This was a strange way of fighting to the British Army and even to the mounted colonials: they had to learn how to combat It

As a good reporter, Patterson chronicled the situation for Australian publications, and one does not have to guess very hard to believe that he had some doubts about the war and its purpose.