The Man from Ironbark

The Man from Ironbark
bronze sculpture by Tessa Wallis

"The Man From Ironbark" is a famous poem by Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson.

It was first published in The Bulletin on 17 December 1892. The poem relates the experiences of a native man from the Bush, who reacts badly to a practical joke sprung on him by a mischievous barber from Sydney. While making his displeasure known,

"A peeler man who heard the din came in to see the show;
He tried to run the bushman in, but he refused to go."

The barber confesses that he was playing a joke, and the bushman, unconvinced, returns to Ironbark, where, due to his accounts of his Sydney experiences, "flowing beards are all the go".

There are obvious echoes in the poem of the urban legend of the murdering barber - fictionalised in the penny dreadful The String of Pearls which featured the notorious Sweeney Todd.

Ironbark was the earlier name for Stuart Town, a town in the Central West region of New South Wales.^[1]

In 2004, a representative of The Wilderness Society posed as "The Ghost of the Man from Ironbark", a reference to the poem, to campaign for the protection of the remaining Ironbark woodlands in New South Wales and Queensland.^[2]

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Man from Ironbark

• "The Man from Ironbark" – full text of the poem
• "The Man from Ironbark" – full text of the poem, with a glossary of terms
• "The Man from Ironbark" – full text of the book "The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses" (including the poem "The Man from Ironbark") on Project Gutenberg Australia

References