Mulga Bill's Bicycle

"Mulga Bill's Bicycle" is a poem written in 1896 by Banjo Paterson. It was originally published in the 25 July 1896 edition of the Sydney Mail, and later appeared in the poet's second poetry collection Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses.

The poem is a ballad. Each line is a fourteener, having fourteen syllables and seven iambic feet.

It tells the tragic tale of Mulga Bill, a man whose pride in his riding skill causes him to purchase, ride and crash a bicycle. Although Mulga Bill claims expertise in riding all things his ineptitude and subsequent accident suggest that he may only know how to ride a horse.

The poem was first published in The Sydney Mail on 25 July 1896. It is amongst Paterson's most popular works. A 1973 reprinting of the poem illustrated by Kilmeny & Deborah Niland has been continuously in print since publication and won the 1973 ABPA Book Design Award and the 1974 Visual Arts Board Award.

The novel by H. G. Wells on cycling, The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll was published in the same year as this poem.

The poem actually featured the Safety bicycle. However, the poem has been inaccurately illustrated by various illustrators with a depiction of the visually more interesting Penny-farthing which had been superseded at the time the poem was written. The introduction of safety cycles gave rise to a bicycling boom with millions being manufactured in the decade 1890-1900. They were very popular in the Australian outback, widely used by shearers and itinerant workers at the time that Paterson wrote this poem.

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