Bicycle circa 1896 with boy and three men

"Mulga Bill's Bicycle" is a

poem Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in ...

written in 1896 by

Banjo Paterson Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, (17 February 18645 February 1941) was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the ...

. It was originally published on the 25th of July 1896 edition of the ''

Sydney Mail Sydney Mailmay refer to: * Sydney Mail (train service), a train service that existed between 1888 and 1972 going from Brisbane to Wallangarra, where passengers would transfer at Wallangarra for the Brisbane Limited. * The Sydney Mail, an Australi ...

'', and later appeared in the poet's second poetry collection ''

Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses ''Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses'' (1902) is the second collection of poems by Australian poet Banjo Paterson. It was released in hardback by Angus and Robertson in 1902, and features the poems " Rio Grande's Last Race", "Mulga Bill's B ...

''. The poem is a

ballad A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads derive from the medieval French ''chanson balladée'' or ''ballade'', which were originally "dance songs". Ballads were particularly characteristic of the popular poetry and ...

. Each line is a

fourteener In the mountaineering parlance of the Western United States, a fourteener is a mountain peak with an elevation of at least . The 96 fourteeners in the United States are all west of the Mississippi River. Colorado has the most (53) of any single ...

, having fourteen syllables and seven iambic feet.

Synopsis

It tells the

tragic Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...

tale of Mulga Bill, a man whose

pride Pride is defined by Merriam-Webster as "reasonable self-esteem" or "confidence and satisfaction in oneself". A healthy amount of pride is good, however, pride sometimes is used interchangeably with "conceit" or "arrogance" (among other words) wh ...

in his riding skill causes him to purchase, ride and crash a

bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bic ...

. Although Mulga Bill claims expertise in riding all things his ineptitude and subsequent accident suggest that he may only know how to ride a horse. The poem was first published in ''

The Sydney Mail ''The Sydney Mail'' was an Australian magazine published weekly in Sydney. It was the weekly edition of ''The Sydney Morning Herald'' newspaper and ran from 1860 to 1938. History ''The Sydney Mail'' was first published on 17 July 1860 by Joh ...

'' on 25 July 1896 and was illustrated by Norman Hardy. It is amongst Paterson's most popular works. A 1973 reprinting of the poem illustrated by Kilmeny & Deborah Niland has been continuously in print since publication and won the 1973 ABPA Book Design Award and the 1974 Visual Arts Board Award. The novel by

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

''The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll'' was published in the same year as this poem. The poem actually featured the

Safety bicycle A safety bicycle (or simply a safety) is a type of bicycle that became very popular beginning in the late 1880s as an alternative to the penny-farthing ("ordinary") and is now the most common type of bicycle. Early bicycles of this style were kno ...

. However, the poem has been inaccurately illustrated by various illustrators with a depiction of the visually more interesting

Penny-farthing The penny-farthing, also known as a high wheel, high wheeler or ordinary, is an early type of bicycle. It was popular in the 1870s and 1880s, with its large front wheel providing high speeds (owing to its travelling a large distance for every r ...

which had been superseded at the time the poem was written.. The introduction of safety cycles gave rise to a bicycling boom with millions being manufactured in the decade 1890–1900. They were very popular in the Australian

outback The Outback is a remote, vast, sparsely populated area of Australia. The Outback is more remote than the bush. While often envisaged as being arid, the Outback regions extend from the northern to southern Australian coastlines and encompass a n ...

, widely used by shearers and itinerant workers at the time that Paterson wrote this poem. The model for the character of Mulga Bill was William Henry Lewis (1880-1968), who knew Paterson in the vicinity of

Bourke, New South Wales Bourke is a town in the north-west of New South Wales, Australia. The administrative centre and largest town in Bourke Shire, Bourke is approximately north-west of the state capital, Sydney, on the south bank of the Darling River. it is also ...

. Lewis had bought his bicycle as a result of a

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

when there was no feed for horses.

Eaglehawk, Victoria Eaglehawk is a suburb within the City of Greater Bendigo and a former gold-mining town in Victoria, Australia. The town is situated to the north-west of Bendigo on the Loddon Valley Highway. The highway is known locally as High Street until ...

—once a rural mining town, now part of greater

Bendigo Bendigo ( ) is a city in Victoria, Australia, located in the Bendigo Valley near the geographical centre of the state and approximately north-west of Melbourne, the state capital. As of 2019, Bendigo had an urban population of 100,991, makin ...

—was given as Mulga Bill's hometown (''Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk ...''). This has been recognised with the development of the Mulga Bill Bicycle Trail, a scenic ride taking in many of the mining attractions, historic sites and modern-day amenities of Eaglehawk. Mulga is a very common species of

Acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as the wattles or acacias, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa and Australasia. The genus na ...

that predominates the interior regions of the Australian bush, and colloquially, it is an alternative term for

the Bush "The bush" is a term mostly used in the English vernacular of Australia and New Zealand where it is largely synonymous with '' backwoods'' or ''hinterland'', referring to a natural undeveloped area. The fauna and flora contained within this a ...

itself or wilderness regions, for example ‘up the mulga’. This poem is extremely important to Australian culture because it includes the start of the cycling craze. In the time this poem was written, everyone was buying bicycles because it was (and still partly is) popular in Australia. The poem has been set to music and the poem title was the name of a prominent Australian folk music group (also known as a bush band) in the 1970s.Folkloric recording. Chris Bettle speaks about joining the prominent folk band ''Mulga Bill's Bicycle Band'' (MBBB) in 1972; touring Australia wide for two years; the songs they were singing; in Bettle, Chris, & Willis, Rob, 2008, Chris Bettle interviewed by Rob Willis in the Rob Willis folklore collection ound recording(at National Library of Australia).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mulga Bill's Bicycle Poetry by Banjo Paterson 1896 poems Works originally published in Australian newspapers