Henry & Banjo. James Knight. 2015.

We know about Waltzing Matilda, Clancy of the Overflow and the Man from Snowy River, the Drover’s Wife and Joe Wilson and his mates, but we don’t know about the two men who captured our imagination. Now, in Henry & Banjo the storytellers become the story. And there is much to tell.

Both men were country born, Henry on the goldfields  of Grenfell and Banjo on a property near Orange, but their paths to literary immortality took very different routes - indeed at times their lives were ones of savage  and all too tragic contrasts. Banjo, born into a life of comparative privilege , would rise from country boy to Sydney Grammar student , solicitor, journalist, war correspondent and revered man about town. Despite his feminist mother’s best efforts, Henry’s formal education only lasted a few years. After leaving school, he found work as a labourer, a coach. Painter and a writer, all the while wrestling with poverty, alcoholism and mental illness. The divide between the bush and the city, the haves and the have-nots, is sharply revealed. There are broken hearts and thwarted dreams. Both men would become household names  during their lifetimes. Both would have regrets.