Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

"Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson (1864-1941), poet, solicitor, journalist, war correspondent and soldier, was born on 17 February 1864 at Narrambla near Orange, New South Wales, eldest of seven children of Andrew Bogle Paterson (d.1889), grazier, and his native-born wife Rose Isabella, daughter of Robert Barton of Boree Nyrang station, near Orange. His father, a lowland Scot, had migrated to New South Wales about 1850, eventually taking up Buckinbah station at Obley in the Orange district.

Barty, as he was known to his family and friends, enjoyed a bush boyhood. When he was 7 the family moved to Illalong in the Yass district. Here, near the main route between Sydney and Melbourne, the exciting traffic of bullock teams, Cobb & Co. coaches, drovers with their mobs of stock, and gold escorts became familiar sights. At picnic race meetings and polo matches, he saw in action accomplished horsemen from the Murrumbidgee and Snowy Mountains country which generated his lifelong enthusiasm for horses and horsemanship and eventually the writing of his famous equestrian ballads.

After lessons in his early years from a governess, once he was able to ride a pony he attended the bush school at Binalong. In 1874 he was sent to Sydney Grammar School where in 1875 he shared the junior Knox prize with (Sir) George Rich, and matriculated aged 16. After failing a University of Sydney scholarship examination, Paterson served the customary articles of clerkship with Herbert Salwey and was admitted as a solicitor on 28 August 1886; for ten years from about 1889 he practised in partnership with John William Street..." - READ MORE LINK (adb.anu.edu.au)