Cover image courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales
Banjo Paterson was one of the great scribes of Australia, and few will argue it. However, he was also one of the great racing scribes of Australia, born to an era when horses really were, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, man’s first servant.
Paterson wrote about thoroughbreds with wistful affection in his poetry, and with sharp, often critical, clarity in his newspaper journalism. He knew a racehorse when he saw one, as much as he knew all the racing folk of importance the length of Sydney racing. Those older than him called him ‘Barty’, and the rest called him ‘Banjo’.
Paterson was born in 1864 in the Yass district, christened Andrew Barton Paterson. ‘The Banjo’ was the name of one of his father’s station racehorses, which every family owned in those wonderful days.
Tall and lean, a bean pole for much of his life, Paterson was a nifty horseman. His long legs wrapped around steeplechasers and polo ponies, and he possessed as much grit as wit in the saddle, which is where he most loved to be.
Banjo Paterson ahead of a steeplechase ride | Image courtesy of 'Off Down The Track: Racing and Other Yarns' by A.B. Paterson
Paterson was a solicitor and journalist by profession, and he spent the bulk of his professional life in the ‘foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city’. But his heart was forever in the bush and he wrote as such. The rare exception was when he was at the races, where he was as equally at home.
Late in his life, saying little, he cut a tall, drawn figure with an ancient pair of field glasses at Randwick. He would watch every race carefully, then fold his old glasses and stroll away. Even ahead of his death in 1941, when racing had changed so much, the romanticism of the sport gripped him tight.
Writing for the Sydney Bulletin and Sydney Mail, he put aside his poetry in favour of opinion pieces on breeding and racing. His knowledge was extensive and he visited all the major thoroughbred farms, as well as standing ringside at yearling sales.
As a judge of the racehorse, he was almost flawless, albeit he didn’t always get it right. He thought Peter Pan ‘long-legged and slabby-sided’, and he never worked out how the horse managed two Melbourne Cups.
Banjo Paterson (centre) with prominent owner Hunter White at Randwick in 1930 | Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia
However, in most other regards, Paterson was dazzling correct. His writing was earnest and on-song, and he knew the well-tailored swells as much as the common racing man, the men that ‘ride their races in the stand’.
He travelled to the Boer War at the turn of the century, and to the Great War between 1914 and 1918. He saw a lot in his life, but despite this, he had no ego. It was written of him that he had a bushman’s fear of talking too much, and a dread of anything approaching vanity.
But if any racing man deserved an ego, it was A.B. Paterson. His very first track experience was watching Chester and Cap-a-Pie run a dead heat at Randwick. Thereafter, he was hanging over the rails for the Carbine (NZ), Gloaming (NZ) (The Welkin {GB}) and Phar Lap (NZ) (Night Raid {GB}) eras.
Phar Lap (NZ) | Image courtesy of Wikipedia
He seemed to be able to read the sport with immense clarity, and transcribe that into the written word. A great example of this was his assessment of Randwick's chief handicapper at one time, John Daly. Daly was a peerless judge of thoroughbreds who believed, controversially, that The Barb was superior to Carbine, and Paterson had a perspective on that.
‘You see, he was young and enthusiastic when he saw The Barb (in the 1860s). He was old and disillusioned when he saw Carbine (in the 1890s). He saw them with different eyes.”
Like much of Paterson’s work to this day, it’s hard to argue with that.
