Andrew Barton Paterson's "The Man From Ironbark"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem explains why some Australians wear beards.

Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, CBE (17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author, widely considered one of the greatest writers of Australia's colonial period.

Born in rural New South Wales, Paterson worked as a lawyer before transitioning into literature, where he quickly gained recognition for capturing the life of the Australian bush. A representative of the Bulletin School of Australian literature, Paterson wrote many of his best known poems for the nationalist journal The Bulletin, including "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889) and "The Man from Snowy River" (1890). His 1895 ballad "Waltzing Matilda" is regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem and, according to the National Film and Sound Archive, has been recorded more than any other Australian song.

-bio via Wikipedia

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the Daily Poem, podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Friday, May 16th, 2025.
0:13.3	Today's poem is by Australian author, poet, journalist Andrew Barton Patterson, better known to his friends as banjo, probably best known as
0:25.6	the author of the song Waltzing Matilda. Today's poem is The Man from Ironbark, and it is a
0:34.3	light verse ballad about a man from the bush, a man from Ironbark, who comes in to Sydney
0:42.8	and is taken in by a colorful barber with a penchant for practical jokes and ends up heading
0:50.2	back home to Ironbark with a newfound attachment to his beard.
0:56.6	Here is the man from Ironbark.
1:00.8	It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town.
1:04.6	He wandered over street and park. He wandered up and down.
1:08.0	He loitered here, he loitered there till he was like to drop.
1:12.5	Until at last in sheer despair, he sought a barber's shop. Ears shave my beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of Mark.
1:18.8	I'll go and do the Sydney Toff at home in iron bark. The barber man was small and flash, as
1:24.4	barbers mostly are. He wore a strike your fancy sash. He smoked a huge cigar.
1:29.7	He was a humorist of note and keen at Repartee. He laid the odds and kept a tote, whatever that may be.
1:36.0	And when he saw our friend arrive, he whispered, here's a lark. Just watch me catch him all alive,
1:41.2	this man from Ironbark. There were some gilded youths that sat along the
1:46.2	barber's wall. Their eyes were dull. Their heads were flat. They had no brains at all. To them,
1:51.9	the barber passed the wink, his Dexter eyelid shut. I'll make this bloomin yokel think his
1:58.1	bloomin throat is cut. And as he soaked and rubbed it in, he made a rude
2:02.5	remark. I suppose the flats is pretty green up there in iron bark. A grunt was all the reply he got.
2:10.2	He shaved the bushman's chin, then made the water boiling hot and dipped the razor in.
2:16.6	He raised his hand. His brow grew black. He paused a while to gloat,
	...

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