Aussies can hit a horse’s bum with a Banjo

And they’ve got Banjo Paterson.

Racing in Australia is so popular and so much part of the national culture that the government Down Under wouldn’t dare treat the game with the disdain our politicians do. If they did, one suspects they’d have to deal with mass insurrection – not to mention the ghost of Banjo.

Banjo Paterson is an Australian treasure, a “bush poet” who once crafted gritty little stories of ordinary people’s lives – and especially their involvement with horses and racing. AB Paterson, who died in 1941, was a lawyer, journalist, jockey, soldier, farmer and poet and has been described in literary circles as “the supreme balladist of the horse”.

There is not much balladeering in SA racing, and more’s the pity. Horsey ditties striking a chord in the political heart might get ministers to take our multibillion-rand industry more seriously.

Anyway, Banjo is so important in Australia that they’ve put him on the A$10 banknote, on a stamp, named colleges and libraries after him…the list goes on.

They have also installed him in their Racing Hall of Fame and named a series of races at Melbourne’s Flemington course after him. These honours weren’t because he wrote the country’s unofficial anthem, Waltzing Matilda, which tells of a swagman at a billabong, whatever those might be. Nor was it because Paterson penned the epic poem The Man from Snowy River, which was made into a popular movie a while back.

Banjo is a Hall of Famer for writing about the ups and downs of racing. Perhaps his most famous racing yarn is Rio Grande’s Last Race – too lengthy to relate here but concerning a jockey who dreams of famous riders and horses, all long dead, giving him advice on how to handle the fiery colt Rio Grande in the next day’s big race. It doesn’t end happily.

Familiar racing disappointment also forms the theme of Dandaloo:

It was while we held our races – Hurdles, sprints and steeplechases –  Up in Dandaloo,That a crowd of Sydney stealers,Jockeys, pugilists and spielersBrought some horses, real heelers, Came and put us through. Beat our nags and won our money,Made the game by no means funny, Made us rather blue;When the racing was concluded,Of our hard-earned coin denudedDandaloonies sat and brooded There in Dandaloo.

Banjo knew quite a bit about South Africa, thanks to a war-correspondent stint during the Anglo-Boer War. His vivid accounts of the Relief of Kimberley riveted readers of the Sydney Morning Herald and he was in advanced cavalry parties when the British captured Bloemfontein and Pretoria.

Works such as With French to Kimberley, Johnny Boer, On the Trek and scores of others capture that conflict with a colour and immediacy many history books do not.

…While the khaki soldiers travel like a mob of travelling sheep,
Plodding silent on the never-ending track,
While the constant snap and sniping of the foe you never see
Makes you wonder will your turn come – when and how?
As the Mauser ball hums past you like a vicious kind of bee –

Oh! We’re going on a long job now.

There’s no record of whether Paterson took in any racing during his South African sojourn. If he had, he’d have met the archetypal punter so wittily captured in his poem Riders in the Stand:

There’s some that ride the Robbo style, and bump at every stride;
While others sit a long way back, to get a longer ride.
There’s some that ride as sailors do, with legs, and arms, and teeth;
And some that ride the horse’s neck, and some ride underneath.
But all the finest horsemen out – the men to Beat the Band –
You’ll find amongst the crowd that ride their races in the Stand.
They’ll say “He had the race in hand, and lost it in the straight.”
They’ll know how Godby came too soon, and Barden came too late

They’ll say Chevalley lost his nerve, and Regan lost his head;
They’ll tell how one was “livened up” and something else was “dead” –
In fact, the race was never run on sea, or sky, or land,
But what you’d get it better done by riders in the Stand.

The rule holds good in everything in life’s uncertain fight;
You’ll find the winner can’t go wrong, the loser can’t go right.
You ride a slashing race, and lose – by one and all you’re banned!
Ride like a bag of flour, and win – they’ll cheer you in the Stand. There’s someone who knows his racegoer.

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