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In Defence Of The Bush
By Banjo Paterson (Andrew Barton)
So you're back from up the country, Mister Lawson, where you went,
And you're cursing all the business in a bitter discontent;
Well, we grieve to disappoint you, and it makes us sad to hear
That it wasn't cool and shady, and there wasn't whips of beer,
And the looney bullock snorted when you first came into view,
Well, you know it's not so often that he sees a swell like you;
And the roads were hot and dusty, and the plains were burnt and brown,
And no doubt you're better suited drinking lemon-squash in town.
Yet, perchance, if you should journey down the very track you went
In a month or two at furthest, you would wonder what it meant;
Where the sunbaked earth was gasping like a creature in itts pain
You would find the grasses waving like a field of summer grain,
And the miles of thirsty gutters, blocked with sand and choked with mud,
You would find them mighty rivers with a turbid, sweeping flood.
For the rain and drought and sunshine make no changes in the street,
In the sullen line of buildings and the ceaseless tramp of feet;
But the bush has moods and changes, as the seasons rise and fall,
And the men who know the bush-land, they are loyal through it all.
* * * * * * * * *
But you found the bush was dismal and a land of no delight,
Did you chance to hear a chorus in the shearers' huts at night?
Did they "rise up William Riley" by the camp-fire's cheery blaze?
Did they rise him as we rose him in the good old droving days?
And the women of the homesteads and the men you chanced to meet,
Were their faces sour and saddened like the "faces in the street"?
And the "shy selector children", were they better now or worse
Than the little city urchins who would greet you with a curse?
Is not such a life much better than the squalid street and square
Where the fallen women flaunt it in the fierce electric glare,
Wher the sempstress plies her needle till her eyes are sore and red
In a filthy, dirty attic toiling on for daily bread?
Did you hear no sweeter voices in the music of the bush
Than the roar of trams and buses, and the war-whoop of "the push"?
Did the magpies rouse your slumbers with their carol sweet and strange?
Did you hear the silver chiming of the bell-birds on the range?
But, perchance, the wild birds' music by your senses was despised,
For you say you'll stay in townships till the bush is civilized.
Would you make it a tea-garden, and on Sundays have a band
Where the "blokes" might take their "donahs", with a "public" close at hand?
You had better stick to Sydney and make merry with the "push",
For the bush will never suit you, and you'll never suit the bush.
Extra Info:
The Bulletin, 23 July 1892.
The "Bush Controversy"
In 1892, Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson, his friend and co-contributor to The Bulletin, decided to have a little fun, and to stir up a controversy in their poems. Henry Lawson set out to criticise the optimistic picture The Banjo painted of the Bush, and The Banjo in turn railed against the doom and gloom of Lawson's outlook.
Other poets became willing participants in this poetic altercation, and their poems are represented by these poems.
9 July 1892 Henry Lawson Borderland
(Later re-titled "Up the country")
23 July 1892 Banjo Paterson In Defence of the Bush
30 July 1892 Edward Dyson The Fact of the Matter
6 August 1892 Henry Lawson In Answer to "Banjo", and otherwise
(Later: The City Bushman)
20 August 1892 H.H.C.C. The Overflow of Clancy
27 August 1892 Francis Kenna Banjo of the Overflow
1 October 1892 Banjo Paterson In Answer to Various Bards
(Later: An Answer to Various Bards)
8 October 1892 Henry Lawson The Poets of the Tomb
20 October 1894 Banjo Paterson A Voice from the Town
Paterson described the "Bulletin battle" in these words:
Henry Lawson was a man of remarkable insight in some things and of extraordinary simplicity in others. We were both looking for the same reef, if you get what I mean; but I had done my prospecting on horseback with my meals cooked for me, while Lawson has done his prospecting on foot and had had to cook for himself. Nobody realized this better than Lawson; and one day he suggested that we should write against each other, he putting the bush from his point of view, and I putting it from mine.
"We ought to do pretty well out of it," he said, "we ought to be able to get in three or four sets of verses before they stop us."
This suited me all right, for we were working on space, and the pay was very small . . . so we slam-banged away at each other for weeks and weeks; not until they stopped us, but until we ran out of material . . .
"Banjo Paterson Tells His Own Story",
Sydney Morning Herald, 4 Feb - 4 Mar 1939.
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