If the question should arise on a test or in a friendly game of trivia, could you name Australia’s national anthem? Sorry, it’s not “Waltzing Matilda.” At least not officially. Tricky follow-up: What does a dancing woman have to do with the “unofficial” Australian anthem?
First the news: On New Year’s Day, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the sanctioned alteration of one word in his nation’s actual anthem, “Advance Australia Fair.” In a long overdue move to recognize the country’s Indigenous history, the song now begins “Australians all let us rejoice, for we are one and free.” Previously, that sentence ended “young and free,” which suggested a narrative dating only to arrival of European settlers and the establishment of a British convict colony in the late 18th Century, thereby ignoring some 65,000 years that First Nations people inhabited the continent.
This is the kind of thing that encourages a little rummaging around in the historical attic. And tucked in there with the significant matter of how the new one-word anthem tweak signals an acknowledgment of inclusiveness—though not specifically addressing Australia’s shameful “stolen generations” policy through the first half of the 1900s, when Aboriginal children were relocated to white families to be “civilized”—there is the decidedly lesser matter of music minutiae.
It was not until 1984 that Australia discarded “God Save the Queen,” an incessant reminder of British imperialism, as its formal anthem. Based on a national plebiscite seven years earlier to choose a “national song,” the globally familiar and locally embraced “Waltzing Matilda” had been defeated—28% to 43%—by “Advance Australia Fair.”
But among the truths I learned while covering the 2000 Sydney Olympics was how “Waltzing Matilda” remained what Australians consider “fair dinkum”—unquestionably good and genuine. Furthermore, according to an information technology expert named Roger Clark, who has operated a Waltzing Matilda home page for 25 years, “Advance Australia Fair” is “a dreadful dirge with archaic expressions….”
During those Games, informal chats with the natives reinforced a widespread feeling that it was “sad to say” that Aussie gold-medal performances were celebrated with the playing of “Advance Australia Fair.” Because, I was informed, “Waltzing Matilda” was more quintessentially Australian.
The latter is sung rousingly at national team rugby matches and other public events. It routinely is introduced, along with bush dancing (heel, toe, heel, toe, slide, slide, slide) to all small children (“ankle-biters” in the local vernacular). It is such a part of Australia’s identity that many of the nation’s passports include the words to “Waltzing Matilda” hidden microscopically in the background pattern on the visa pages.
Ah, yes, the words.
Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong/Under the shade of a coolabah tree/And he sang as he watched and waited ‘til his billy boiled/“You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.”
Gibberish to us blow-ins (foreign visitors), the lyrics spin a yarn about a drifter or tramp (swagman) who steals a sheep because he is starving and, when the authorities come to arrest him, chooses suicide, throwing himself into a waterhole (billabong) to drown. The swagman had been lounging under a coolabah (eucalyptus) tree, waiting for his billy (tin cup for coffee or tea) to boil…
Written in 1895 by Banjo Paterson, the Bard of Australia, the song is considered evocative of virtually everything Australian—the bush country, traditional resistance to authority and elitism, and sprinkled with descriptions inherited from the Aborigines.
Down came a jumbuck [sheep] to drink at the billabong/Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee/And he sang as he stowed that jumbuck in his tucker [food] bag/“You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.”
There is no woman in the tale. The slang “waltzing Matilda” may have dated to a German presence during the Australian gold rush of the mid-1800s, since “aud die Walz gehen” translates to taking to the road, and “Matilda” was a bedroll, the “girl” a traveling man slept with.
Paterson’s ballad proceeds to describe the arrival of a wealthy landowner—referenced as a “squatter” in that era’s newly upper-class “squattocracy’ in pastoral Australia, those who simply settled on land until they came to be seen as rightful owners—who summons the cops.
Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred/Up rode the troopers, one, two, three/“Where’s that jolly jumbuck you’ve got in your tucker bag?/You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.”
Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong/“You’ll never take me alive,” said he/And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong/“You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.”
Paterson apparently based his Everyman hobo on a sheep shearer named Hoffmeister who had shot himself while mounted troops pursued him and fellow shearers for having set a woodshed full of sheep ablaze during unionization struggles for better wages and conditions.
One fellow I polled on the topic in 2000, a college lad, argued that “Waltzing Matilda” was “a story of the underdog, and Australians love the underdog, because Australia traditionally has been the underdog. It’s about democracy, in a sense. Democracy and the little guy going against the system.”
And set to a catchy tune.
Anyway, if this anthem matter should come up in casual conversation now that “Advance Australia Fair” has been updated, don’t forget the history of Aussie drifters and their distinctly christened sleeping bags.