Harrison in The Man from Snowy River: The Owner Behind the Famous Chase

Who is Harrison in The Man from Snowy River?

Harrison is a character in A. B. Paterson's poem The Man from Snowy River, first published in 1890. In the catalog description used for this site he is the wealthy owner whose runaway colt sets off the chase, and the poem's horsemen, as described by the National Museum of Australia's blog on Paterson, include Harrison, an older rider known for his success with a horse named Pardon and for riding fearlessly when roused.

The Wikipedia article on the poem gives the wider publication history. He is a minor figure by word count, but without him there is no story. The poem begins with the colt's escape, and a man with property at risk is what gets the whole district into the saddle.

The poem and the chase

Paterson wrote for The Bulletin in the late 1880s and early 1890s, and the poem tells of a rider who joins a chase after a valuable colt that has run off to join the wild bush horses, or brumbies. Its climax is a dangerous ride down a steep mountainside after the herd. The museum blog notes that the horsemen in the poem also include Clancy of the Overflow, a skilled rider who learned his craft droving.

Harrison therefore represents the station side of bush life, where owners and hired riders worked together on the same horses and the same country. The text itself is on the Project Gutenberg edition of the poem, and readers can judge for themselves how much of Harrison appears on the page.

Banjo Paterson and the bush

Andrew Barton Paterson was born on 17 February 1864 at Narrambla near Orange, New South Wales, and died on 5 February 1941. He took his pen name from a racehorse owned by his family, trained as a law clerk and solicitor in Sydney, and rode in hunts, polo matches and amateur races. In the 1890s he traveled through Queensland, the Northern Territory and New South Wales, experiences that informed much of his writing.

That mix of city work and hard riding is visible in Harrison. He is seen from the standpoint of someone who admired horsemen and also understood owners and stations.

Horses, high country and cattle

The Snowy Mountains region of Victoria and New South Wales has long been used for grazing, and mountain cattlemen and horse breeders appear in much Australian writing about the high country. Harrison is best read in that tradition: a property owner whose valuable stock is mixed up with wild horses, which was a real management problem on open mountain runs.

The poem is a horse story first, though, and this profile does not claim Harrison ran cattle in the text. The seed catalog files him with cattlemen because of his station standing.

Learn more about Harrison and the poem

Readers interested in Australian cattle and horse country can browse the farm.FM ranching section for station and rangeland stories. A good companion read is a farm.FM story about an Australian cattle station, which shows how real stations worked. For Paterson's own words, the poem is short and worth reading in full.