The One Tree Hotel (1925) between Hay and Booligal was not the “hell” from Banjo’s poem. Photo: Noel Butlin Archives, ANU.
Well thank goodness that’s over!
After a mercifully mild Christmas in the Riverina, summer struck back with a vengeance as the three-day heatwave peaked in the mid-40s on Friday afternoon.
While our region does not quite reach the regular highs of Marble Bar or Tibooburra, the Western Riverina summers retain an iconic place in Australian folklore thanks to Banjo Patterson’s refrain: Hay, hell and Booligal.
We can’t confirm exactly how hot things were in hell on Friday but Hay topped out at 43 degrees and was just a tad hotter than the much maligned Booligal.
Banjo’s infamous 1896 poem that put the region on the map was framed as a conversation with a local who invited the listeners to pay him a visit in Booligal, despite its reputation.
“And people have an awful down
Upon the district and the town —
Which worse than hell itself the call;
In fact, the saying far and wide
Along the Riverina side
Is ‘Hay and hell and Booligal”
The hospitable local concedes that the drought-stricken town is hot and dusty and plagued by flies, mozzies, rabbits and snakes and offers little in the way of entertainment, but he encourages his mates to stop in once the weather breaks.
“Just now there is a howling drought
That pretty near has starved us out —
It never seems to rain at all;
But, if there should come any rain,
You couldn’t cross the black-soil plain —
You’d have to stop in Booligal.”
Despite the friendly invitation, the friends are less than keen and the writer concludes with a prayer that the “gracious Lord” send them anywhere but their mate’s ravaged little town.
“Oh, send us to our just reward
In Hay or hell, but, gracious Lord,
Deliver us from Booligal!”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, locals were not overly impressed with Banjo’s scathing indictment of their town when it was published in Hay’s Riverine Grazier in May of 1896.
A report the following month labeled him “a very indifferent poet” and one irate local declared, “Poet’s licence be hanged; he’s got no licence to tell lies,” and surmised that the poem was “calculated to get Booligal’s hair off”.
Local anger continued to simmer over the decades and when a reporter from the Don Dorrigo Gazette visited the region in July of 1922, mention of Banjo struck a raw nerve.
“Patterson did more harm to us when he wrote that line than an enemy who hated us could have done,” one local spat.
“The imputation that Hay is on one side of hell for heat and Booligal is on the other — positive, comparative, superlative, as it were — is a nasty perversion of the truth.”
The reporter went on to dispel the rumour that the One Tree Hotel that stood on the claypan between the towns had once been known as “hell” and concluded that Banjo was a liar and owed the region an apology.
Booligal did make an attempt to repair the rift and invited the venerable poet to the opening of the town’s Memorial Hall in May 1936.
Sadly, the elderly Patterson was not able to attend and a report from the Riverine Grazier conveyed his apologies.
“I suppose Booligal has grown into a fine big town now,” Patterson remarked.
“No,” replied the president of the hall committee, “It never recovered from the blow you dealt to it in its youth.”
Banjo did however deliver a peace offering that seems to have settled the feud and donated several signed copies of his books that were auctioned off at the event.
