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1[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/banj0paterson.jpg]]
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3Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson (17 February 1864 – 5 February 1941) was an Australian poet and journalist, best known for his poems depicting Australian bush life, which include "Waltzing Matilda", "Clancy of the Overflow" and "The Man From Snowy River".
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5"Waltzing Matilda" is sometimes called the unofficial Australian national anthem. A [[Film/TheManFromSnowyRiver 1982 film version of "The Man From Snowy River"]] itself inspired a sequel, a television series, and a large-scale theatrical musical.
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7Banjo Paterson and "The Man From Snowy River" appear on the Australian $10 note.[[note]]Which is to say, there is a picture of the man from Snowy River, but there is also the full text of the poem itself, in very small print, as part of the copy protection.[[/note]]
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9!!Banjo Paterson's works provides examples of:
10* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: In "Waltzing Matilda", when the police call around to ask some pointed questions about missing livestock, the swagman's response is to shout "You'll never catch me alive!" and drown himself in the nearest body of water.
11* CouldntFindAPen: In "Clancy of the Overflow", after the narrator writes to Clancy:
12-->And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected\
13(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
14* DangerouslyCloseShave: In "The Man from Ironbark", a barber plays a trick of this trope on a country yokel. The barber makes the man ''think'' his throat is cut by heating up the back of a barber's blade and drawing it across newly-shaven skin. The feeling that is left is as if the throat is cut. This ... doesn't go well.
15* DownerEnding: "Waltzing Matilda" ends with the swagman protagonist drowning himself as an act of suicide.
16* DownToTheLastPlay: The Geebung captain in "The Geebung Polo Club" is the last man still alive and conscious on the field (albeit mortally wounded), so he hoists himself back onto his horse and makes one last shot at the goal before dropping dead. [[AntiClimax It misses]].
17* InevitableCrossover: All of Paterson's works were nominally set in the real world, and therefore implicitly part of the same continuity, but it's notable that when a group of famously great horse riders gathers in "The Man From Snowy River", all the named riders are returning characters from earlier poems.
18* LineOfSightName: What the youngster in "A Bush Christening" gets stuck with after the turmoil causes the priest to forget what name his parents had chosen.
19* PrankGoneTooFar: The barber's 'fake murder attempt' prank in "The Man from Ironbark". Quite mean-spirited, and he singles the man out as the target of the trick because he's rural. Results in LaserGuidedKarma, as the prank victim's reaction to thinking his throat's been slit is to [[TheLastDance pay his 'murderer' back as hard as he can]] with what's left of his life.
20* ProductPlacement: "Waltzing Matilda" was bought from Banjo Paterson by the Billy Tea company, who changed one of the lines from "And leading a water bag" to "And waited till his Billy boiled" for the purposes of promoting their product. The latter is now the better-known version. (Note: The company is named after the billy can, a device used by Australian travellers to boil water over a campfire. The line "waited till his Billy boiled" is thus cunningly ambiguous.)
21* SlobsVersusSnobs: "The Geebung Polo Club" pits the titular Geebungs, rough-and-rugged outbackers who ride thoroughbred horses, against the 'Cuff and Collar Team', an immaculate and toffish city polo club with sleek purebred horses which they only ride once a week. The latter travel to Geebung to show the plebs how a ''real'' polo team plays; the resulting match is so bloody that ''[[TakeMeOutAtTheBallGame every single player dies]]''. [[ShootTheShaggyDog And the match ends in a tie.]]
22* ToTheTuneOf: "Waltzing Matilda" (as a song rather than as a poem) is set to an older piece of music known as ''The Craigielee March''.
23* WeNamedTheMonkeyJack: The original "Banjo" was a racehorse owned by Paterson's family.

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