"...the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended"

By Darryl Mason

I had the extraordinary pleasure of seeing & hearing actor Jack Thompson read the poetry of Australia's legendary bush and city balladeers Banjo Paterson & Henry Lawson at the Gearin Hotel, Katoomba, last Sunday. Sorry, photos & vid were banned, unfortunately.

But the gig was filmed for a DVD release, and I have a feeling the performance will also show up on ABC1 or ABC2 on a Sunday afternoon not too far away.

I was lucky enough to have had a teacher in primary school who made sure he read to us a Lawson or Paterson piece at least once a week. But while I got the excitement of The Man From Snowy River and The Loaded Dog, the words and images of Paterson's Clancy Of The Overflow didn't really sink in, having not, back then, seen much of the real Australian bush, or the Big City, I couldn't compare two in my mind.

But hearing Jack Thompson do Clancy last Sunday was a revelation. I finally got it. Paterson dreamed of dumping the gritty city life to become a sun-drenched cattleman, but he knew in his heart it was just a romantic idea, a daydream. Droving cattle would have been broken Paterson as easily as an office life would have shattered his legendary Clancy. But it's the imagery projected by those words that really leaps out at me now. Here's the full poem, published in The Bulletin in 1889 :

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan years ago;
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just on spec, addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow."

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar);
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
"Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."

In my wild erratic fancy, visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plain extended,
And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city,
Through the open window floating, spreads it foulness over all.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street;
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me,and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal
But I doubt he's suit the office, Clancy, of The Overflow.

You can pick up CDs of Jack Thomspon's beautiful readings of the words of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson from Fine Poets here.

Here's Jack Thompson recording Clancy :



UPDATE : Didn't know this, but 'Clancy Of The Overflow', in retirement, penned a sardonic reply to Paterson's romantic view of his droving lifestyle, eight years after The Bulletin published the poem.

Thomas Gerald Clancy made sure readers understood the harsh reality of his world, back then :

Neath the star-spangled dome
Of my Austral home,
When watching by the camp fire's ruddy glow,
Oft in the flickering blaze
Is presented to my gaze
The sun-drenched kindly faces
Of the men of Overflow.
Now, though years have passed forever
Since I used, with best endeavour
Clip the fleeces of the jumbucks
Down the Lachlan years ago,
Still in memory linger traces
Of many cheerful faces,
And the well-remembered visage
Of the Bulletin's "Banjo".
Tired of life upon the stations,
With their wretched, scanty rations,
I took a sudden notion
That a droving I would go;
Then a roving fancy took me,
Which has never since forsook me,
And decided me to travel,
And leave the Overflow.
So with maiden ewes from Tubbo,
I passed en route to Dubbo,
And across the Lig'num country
'where the Barwon waters flow;
Thence onward o'er the Narran,
By scrubby belts of Yarran,
To where the landscape changes
And the cotton bushes grow.
And my path I've often wended
Over drought-scourged plains extended,
where phantom lakes and forests
Forever come and go;
And the stock in hundreds dying,
Along the road are lying,
To count among the 'pleasures"
That townsfolk never know.
Over arid plains extended
My route has often tended,
Droving cattle to the Darling,
Or along the Warrego;
Oft with nightly rest impeded,
when the cattle had stampeded,
Save I sworn that droving pleasures
For the future I'd forego.
So of drinking liquid mire
I eventually did tire,
And gave droving up forever
As a life that was too slow.
Now, gold digging, in a measure,
Affords much greater pleasure
To your obedient servant,
"Clancy of the Overflow".

The Mitchell Library, in Sydney, one of Australia's most beautiful and historically important buildings, is now welcoming virtual visitors to areas of the library once off limits to mere members of the public.

A slide show of some of those areas, collections and exhibits from ABC News

One of the collections includes the death mask, and mementos, of one of my childhood literary heroes, Henry Lawson :


(photo from ABC News)

Henry Lawson wrote the perfect Australian short story for bored boys sitting in late 1970s stiflingly hot classrooms wondering what droning story their teacher was going to read to them next. That perfect Australian short story is The Loaded Dog. Not only did Lawson go into great detail about how to constuct a devastingly powerful bomb (for fishing purposes), the tale romped along and had a gruesomely funny ending.

...there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle-dog sulking and nursing his nastiness under there - a sneaking, fighting, thieving canine, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison.

Nearly a dozen other dogs came from round all the corners and under the buildings - spidery, thievish, cold-blooded kangaroo-dogs, mongrel sheep- and cattle-dogs, vicious black and yellow dogs - that slip after you in the dark, nip your heels, and vanish without explaining - and yapping, yelping small fry. They kept at a respectable distance round the nasty yellow dog, for it was dangerous to go near him when he thought he had found something which might be good for a dog to eat. He sniffed at the cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniff when --

**********

When the smoke and dust cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog were lying against the paling fence of the yard looking as if he had been kicked into a fire by a horse and afterwards rolled in the dust under a barrow, and finally thrown against the fence from a distance.

Read The Loaded Dog By Henry Lawson Here