The Man from Goondiwindi, Q

Name: The Man from Goondiwindi, Q
Author: Andrew Barton Paterson

"The Man from Goondiwindi, Q." (1904) is a comic ballad by Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, built on the cumulative, repeating structure of "The House That Jack Built": each stanza adds a new character or detail to the story while looping back through everything introduced before it, so the tale grows longer with every verse until the final stanza recites the whole chain of events in one breath. The poem's title figure is a sunburnt, unmistakably outback bushman who arrives in the city fresh from Goondiwindi, on the Queensland border. His rough dress and weathered look mark him at once as a green newcomer amid the city's sharpers and loafers, and he is quickly spotted by "the Push from Waterloo" — Paterson's name for an organized gang of city con men and larrikins who prey on unwary visitors up from the bush. Sensing easy pickings, the gang sets its trap: two of its members pose as "wealthy uncles," respectable-seeming men of means who draw the bushman into a rigged game — "a game by no means new" — meant to relieve him of his money under a show of hospitality. It is a familiar Paterson device: the confidence trick dressed up as friendliness, working on the countryman's trust and his ignorance of city ways. Before the swindle can run its course, a mounted trooper in blue appears and breaks up the game, exposing the sham "uncles." The affair is carried before a magistrate, who hears out the whole business and deals out judgement on the offenders, so that rough justice is done. In the poem's cumulative closing stanza, all the pieces — the sunburnt bushman, the Push from Waterloo, the two wealthy uncles, their crooked game, the trooper, and the magistrate — are recited together in sequence, and the whole escapade has by then passed into local legend, told and retold as a droll cautionary yarn about how a green bushman was nearly fleeced in the city, only for the law to catch up with the swindlers in the end. As in much of Paterson's verse, the poem trades on the stock contrast between the guileless man of the bush and the sly, predatory life of the town, and resolves in favour of bush honesty and the law's belated but decisive intervention.

By Andrew Barton Paterson · First published 1940 · Genre: Poetry, Narrative Poetry, Ballad · 376 words

First lines

I: This is the sunburnt bushman who / Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.

II: This is the Push from Waterloo / That spotted the sunburnt bushman who / Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.

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Genres

Poetry — Written entirely in verse form with consistent rhyming structure and rhythmic meter throughout
Narrative Poetry — Tells a coherent story with multiple characters, sequential plot progression, and dramatic tension through poetic form
Ballad — Employs cumulative ballad structure identical to 'This is the House That Jack Built' with expanding refrains and narrative accretion
Australian Literature — Set in Goondiwindi, Queensland with distinctly Australian characters, vernacular, landscape references, and colonial social dynamics

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The Man from Goondiwindi, Q is listed on Textopian as a poem by Andrew Barton Paterson, dated 1940 CE.

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Work type: Poem
Author: Andrew Barton Paterson
Date: 1940 CE
Language: English
Genres: Poetry, Narrative Poetry, Ballad, Australian Literature, Humorous Poetry
Length: 376 words
Structure: 1 section, 8 paragraphs
Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)

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