Mulga Bill's Bicycle
April 2, 2017 12:53 AM   Subscribe

Classic A.B. "Banjo" Paterson bush ballad from 1896. Text. A recitation by Barry Crocker. A renactment for a high school assignment. As portrayed in Lego. A sequel by Jack Drake. Also Vazoun Bill a bicykl by the Greenhorns. And wiki.
posted by valetta (6 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Ta for this.

The Lego one is cute even to me, and I did AusLit for my HSC option, so obviously I hate Paterson with the fire of a thousand suns.
posted by pompomtom at 1:41 AM on April 2, 2017 [3 favorites]


For me, the definitive version is with Kilmeny & national treasure Deborah Niland's illustrations.
posted by threecheesetrees at 7:49 AM on April 2, 2017 [2 favorites]


Hah, I think this is the only poem I can still recite from memory. And the Niland illustrations are still how I imagine Mulga Bill.
posted by retrograde at 10:27 AM on April 2, 2017


I published that poem over 30 years ago in the Fat Tire Flyer, which was the first magazine for mountain bikers. I thought it was obscure, clearly it wasn't.
posted by Repack Rider at 10:34 AM on April 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


Not obscure among Australians over a certain age, elsewhere probably it is?
posted by Coaticass at 1:00 AM on April 3, 2017


Yeah, I'm certainly over that certain age and a book of Paterson's verse has been in the family collection for eons. On cracking it open this week I was reminded by the inscription inside that I'd given it to my dad for his birthday - no date but judging by the big curvey handwriting and all the kisses I was but a nipper.

I didn't set out to make a post about the poem, was just looking for clips that might interest the residents at the aged care place where I work. I chanced upon the high school kid's version and it struck me as a pretty cool effort, but you need to know the story to follow it. So I looked for a good recitation and after many disappointing ones found the Barry Crocker. In a fully archived ideal world it would have been Leonard Teale, Australia's reciter laureate in ye Olde Days, but Barry did fine. Along the way I found the Lego version, the Sequel and the Polish one, and figured it would make an entertaining post for the Blue.

It's not my fave Paterson work, if I had to pick one to recite it would be "A Bush Christening". I love its opening lines. [Trigger warning for pompomtom: do not read, look away now!]
On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few
And men of religion are scanty
On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost,
One Michael Magee had a shanty ...
Extra data for those to whom Paterson himself is obscure - he wrote "The Man From Snowy River", latterly famed on big and small screens, and the original words for "Waltzing Matilda".
posted by valetta at 11:28 PM on April 3, 2017


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