Clancy of the Overflow by Banjo Paterson illustrated by Andrew Mclean

Clancy of the Overflow is a very famous Australian poem and this new edition illustrated by the wonderful Andrew McLean will give you (here in Australia) the perfect book to share with grades 4-6. This book should be added to every school library. 

You are sure to notice and appreciate the wonderful book design. The front cover stretches across to the back and you can see Clancy himself with his Blue Heeler* dog rounding up a mob of cattle. The land is dry and you can almost hear the grasses crunching under the feet of the lumbering beasts. There is a low mountain range on the horizon and the colour blue suggests this is near the end of the day. Notice how the cattle are running towards the reader inviting you to join in this rollicking tale. 

On the front end paper, Clancy races across the red dirt on his horse with two of his faithful dogs in front racing possibly to their camp site. On the half title page we see Clancy's kit - hat, tin mug, swag and billy. On the imprint page the two dogs face the reader resting but ready for action. By the time we reach the title page Clancy has packed up and he has his dog in his arms while he rides his horse off to another day of droving.

"He was shearing when I knew him ..." but now we learn "Clancy's gone to Queensland droving .. "

The final end paper is set at the end of the day with the drovers gathered around a camp fire as their dogs watch on. 

This wonderful poem lives again. With a salute to Andrew McLean for his stunning visual narrative ... Kids' Book Review

McLean’s artwork is beautifully woven throughout the text and provides for poignant pauses in the read aloud of the story. The endpapers are equally beautiful and depict all the shades of the sunburnt Australian landscape and end with a star-speckled bush campsite. Reading Time

The illustrations by Andrew McLean give a brilliant visual for the contrasts, with soft, sunset and bush colours for the scenes set in the bush and darker greys and browns for the city scapes. This reiterates the feelings of the narrator as he ponders Clancy’s journey and reflects on how he feels trapped in the city. The book Muse

I was surprised the Andrew McLean version of Clancy published in 2021, was not entered in our CBCA 2022 awards. This is not the first picture book version of the famous poem - here are some others:

Illustrated by Kilmeny Niland

Illustrated by Robert Ingpen

You should also look for Drover by Neridah McMullin illustrated by Sarah Anthony as a comparison text. 

Here is the full poem from 1889 by Banjo Paterson.

Clancy of the Overflow

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better

   Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,

He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,

   Just "on spec", addressed as follows: "Clancy, of The Overflow".

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,

   (And I think the same was written in a thumbnail dipped in tar)

'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:

   "Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy

   Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the western drovers go;

As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,

   For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him

   In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,

And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,

  And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy

    Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,

And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city

   Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle

   Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,

And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,

   Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me

  As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,

With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,

   For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,

   Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,

While he faced the round eternal of the cashbook and the journal -

   But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".

I am a huge fan of Andrew McLean's work - I even own a small piece of his art from the book Hazel Green by Odo Hirsch. If you share this book with a group of students you could also explore the way Andrew McLean illustrates another famous Australian poem My Country by Dorothea Mackellar and his version of On the Road to Gundagai. 

* yes people reading this in another country the Blue Heeler is that little tv star Bluey!

I'd also like to mention this poem - The Shearer's Wife by Louis Esson -  which I once recited in a theatre production:

Before the glare o’ dawn I rise

To milk the sleepy cows, an’ shake

The droving dust from tired eyes,

Look round the rabbit traps, then bake

The children’s bread.

There’s hay to stook, an’ beans to hoe,

An’ ferns to cut in the scrub below,

Women must work, when men must go

Shearing from shed to shed.

I patch an’ darn, now evening comes,

An’ tired I am with labour sore,

Tired o’ the bush, the cows, the gums,

Tired, but we must dree for long months more

What no tongue tells.

The moon is lonely in the sky,

Lonely the bush, an’ lonely I

Stare down the track no horse draws nigh,

An’ start . . . at the cattle bells.