It is hard to think of any song as iconically connected to any country as Waltzing Matilda (“WM”) is to Australia. Hear the first notes and you know the reference. Some people may even think it’s the Australian national anthem without realizing there’s already a perfectly good anthem in place, Advance Australia Fair. (Granted, though, WM placed very well on a vote some time ago to choose an anthem, and that some do consider WM the “unofficial anthem”.)

Trying to understand this connection more clearly, first eliminate from consideration all actual national anthems, such as the Marseillaise which are officially chosen to represent a country. You’d also have to eliminate any patriotic song, such as the UK’s Rule, Britannia! or Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory, or the US’s America the Beautiful (2008/18 “Pikes Peak”) or Irving Berlin’s God Bless America, which are still meant to refer to the country involved.

You’d have to move into the area of folk songs with no real national reference, so you’d have to eliminate Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land (2001/9), since, while it is a folk song, does refer to the country. A folk song with NO national reference? Maybe Shenandoah? Maybe Stephen Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer or Oh! Susannah? Maybe so, since that’s the sort of song WM is. In summary, it describes a drifter at a lakeside campsite who is confronted by police authorities about his theft of a sheep, a hanging offence at the time. Rather than submitting, he commits suicide by jumping into the lake, and haunts the area afterward. WM does seem like an unusual candidate for a national song, so we need more investigation of the basis for its popularity.

As a teenager, I somehow became enamored of it, found the lyrics (harder to do before the internet) and learned the verses. Later, Beverly learned them too, and added it to our “repertoire” for singing on long car trips. Of course we really didn’t know what we were singing about, given the obscure lyrics. What’s a jumbuck? A billabong? Tucker, or a tucker bag? Why would you want to see a billy boil? Is this all gibberish? Not at all, and the localized vocabulary is one of the reasons the song has become so iconic as a national reference.

Let’s look first at the vocabulary issues and history, and then I think I can make a good case for WM’s rise to the fame it has.

Those Words and References   We first need to clarify that some of the vocabulary is highly specialized, and historic. People still easily refer to a billabong and a billycan, though jumbuck would be unlikely to come up in conversation, and swagman probably only in a historic context. Sill, all the words would be recognized by most Australians as part of a historic past.

It’s that past, of course, that’s part of the mystique, a mystique similar to Americans’ (and worldwide) appreciation for the days of the old Wild West, and a bit of vocabulary that comes along with it. Most Americans would recognize the unusual vocabulary here: The buckaroo rode his pinto in from the gulch, but when he acted up, the sheriff threw him into the hoosegow. Recognizable, yes, describing figures and period characters, but words not usable in a conversation while walking down Wall Street.

The Title   We’ll start with the title. Remove any images from your mind of a dancing woman, as the reality couldn’t be more different.

Matilda We’re talking about a drifter here, and a Matilda was one of the many words for the backpack he carried with him. So a Matilda is his backpack, his bundle, his bag. It’s the term for backpack that forms a more romantic image, one of a companion for the drifter.

To Waltz This is for me the most interesting word here, one that changes many images for me. As to the dance, I had been told that the name came from the German verb wälzen which describes “rolling around” on the floor. Given the stateliness of previous dances, this was supposed to be a derogatory reference to what was then a new dance becoming popular. I no longer believe this.

We have to go back centuries in Europe, particularly Germany, to the practice of a craftsman having just learned the beginnings of his trade, such as carpentry, being required to then take to the road for three years and a day to perfect his knowledge. He was required to learn new techniques and regional styles from master craftsmen around the country. This lasted through the 19C and even early 20C. To this day craftsmen in Germany are required to fulfill a formal apprenticeship, usually of three years, in order to gain the experience to work as a professional, say, carpenter, although they are not required any longer to travel. In English such a person would be called a journeyman carpenter, denoting high ability, but with only the name referencing the former requirement to travel.

The German word Walz (sounds something like “vahlts”), today outdated, is one word that described this learning-trip. Auf der Walz sein described (already) being on a Walz, while auf die Walz gehen described going on a Walz, and, by slight extension, this latter form could correspond to “to take to the road”.

But first the dance. The waltz (German here spells TS just as Z [think Benz], while English has altered it to TZ) is a dance with not one, but two types of movement, and many people forget to consider the second one. First the couple does their 1-2-3 pivoting in place, but then starts moving, usually counterclockwise, around the dance floor. A room filled with waltzing couples circling the floor is impressive. I am now convinced that this second way of moving around the dance floor, that is, figuratively going on your Walz, or “taking to the road”, is what gave the dance its name, not the 1-2-3 dancing in place, and certainly not the nonsense I’d heard in the past.

To Waltz Matilda It may surprise that the actual verb form of the title is to “waltz Matilda”. If you’re going to waltz Matilda, you take your backpack, your knapsack, or to quite appropriately use the German word, your rucksack, and start down the road with it, it’s as simple as that. If you need a translation, how about “to travel with a backpack”.

But we still don’t quite have the title translated. I found a translation online of the entire song into a more international form, changing all the Australianisms into more easily recognizable words. It’s an emasculation of the original, and a travesty--but I must say, it’s immediately understandable. Later I’ll quote just the first verse, but for now, I’ll just quote the title, where “Waltzing Matilda” appears as “Knapsack A-Swinging”. It makes sense--a swinging knapsack is one on the move. Travesty it is of the original, but just using it for illustrative purposes, it’s a good translation.

The Text   There are variations in the text, some of which are very interesting and which we’ll discuss shortly, but the following four verses, with the chorus as indicated, is the most generally accepted.

Go right ahead and have a jolly, lusty sing. Even though you might not yet fully know all the Australianisms, it’s fun, anyway. Later on, we’ll have a proper video of it.

Swagman Usually, swag is (stolen) loot, but in Aussie usage, a swag is a cloth you can wrap belongings in (there are other names for the cloth), making a swagman a person who has all his belongings in a swag. Using more historic terminology, a swagman is a hobo, a tramp, an itinerant, a “gentleman of the road”. Perhaps the best word is drifter. He was a transient, temporary worker moving from rural community to community looking for work, sometimes for handouts. He’s particularly associated with bad times, such as the depression of the 1890’s and the Great Depression of the 1930’s. His urban counterpart today would be the “bag lady” who carries her possession in a shopping bag and sleeps in doorways. Also the French clochard comes to mind, who sleeps under Parisian bridges along the stone walkways along the banks. But these are urban, and swagmen are rural. Here’s picture, circa 1901, about the time of the song, of a swagman, “swaggie” for short. Note both his swag and the billycan (see below) he’s holding.

Billabong The word has perhaps become familiar because of the clothing line of sports and casual wear. There’s even a Billabong store on the west side of Times Square. But beyond that, few outsiders know what a billabong is, and the concept is easy. For a quick translation, a billabong is a lake, more accurately, an oxbow lake, but let’s clarify that further.

A slow-moving river, such as the Mississippi, often meanders in large S-curves, back and forth. Then a flood comes one fine day and the river course suddenly moves straight ahead through these earlier meanderings, giving the appearance of a dollar sign ($), where the S is the old course, and the I is the new course cutting through it. The new course of the river brings silt with it and forms a new bed, cutting off pieces of the S from the new flow entirely. The upper part of the S looks like a C, the lower, a backward C. These two C-shapes are called oxbow lakes/billabongs. No longer being part of the flow and just adjacent to it has an advantage. If the river runs low or dries up entirely during a drought, since the oxbows/billabongs don’t flow, they retain their water longer for local flora and fauna, possibly being the only waterholes around.

(In the case of the Mississippi, which delineates multiple state lines, changes of course as described have the end result of land semi-encircled by oxbows suddenly being on the opposite side of the river’s new flow/ Thus, small pieces of states mostly located east of the Mississippi end up on the west side, and vice-versa.)

Coolabah Easy answer: it’s a tree (also spelled coolibah). Better answer: it’s a eucalyptus tree. Best answer: its scientific name actually is eucalyptus coolabah, which does tell it all. Unfortunately, the only connection many people have with eucalyptus is with eucalyptus cough drops, which they may or may not like, and which in any case evokes thoughts of medicine. Eucalyptus, however, is a marvelous scent, and my experience with it is driving along the coastal roads of southern Portugal through eucalyptus forests. You can crush a fresh eucalyptus leaf off a tree to experience the scent, or even a leaf already on the ground, but even if you don’t do that, you can smell the heavy scent in the air if you leave the car windows open.

Eucalyptus dominates Australian flora. There are 700 species, and most of them are native to Australia. Only 15 species occur outside Australia, and a mere nine species do NOT occur in Australia. Some eucalyptus has been introduced in a few locations abroad, as I now find out, one of them being Portugal (!!!), and another, curiously being California. After the 1849 California gold rush started, Australians arriving during the 1850’s brought eucalyptus trees with them, hoping to grow them commercially for wood production. Unfortunately, the found that only the old-growth eucalyptus in Australia was suitable for carving, not the transplanted eucalyptus.

Back to our story. Eucalyptus requires a lot of water, so where might you expect to find them if not beside a billabong? (You see, you’re getting used to the vocabulary already!)

Billy(can) & Billy Tea Quick answer: you make your billy tea in your billy, or billycan, a lightweight cooking pot. This shows a traditional billycan of the type referred to in the song, although modern campers have much more up-to-date models. The origin of the word has nothing to do with the name Billy, although use of “can” is significant. We start with the French word boulli (bu.YI), which means, essentially “boiled” and is directly related to another French word we use, bouillon. For years large cans were used to transport beef to Australia, and this beef was also known as bully beef. These cans are the origin of the term billycans. I can picture folk etymology taking hold and boulli (possibly even boeuf boulli) changing into bully (beef), given the word “bull” associated with “beef”, but I have a harder time seeing it develop into billy, yet so it did.

But now we enter further into the world of campsite cookery. Billy tea, certainly at a campsite, is traditionally made with billabong water (everything here ties together), and you do need to boil it thoroughly. But not only tea leaves, sometimes eucalyptus leaves can be added for a different flavor, and our waterside image continues to grow.

Although it’s not mentioned in the song, we need to bring up damper. Damper is a type of soda bread that consists just of flour, water, and salt. It’s traditional campsite fare, since it’s baked on top of the campfire coals, traditionally by swaggies. The name derives from it being able to “dampen” your appetite.

[Just to go one step further, we also need to mention Golden Syrup, a name not familiar to everyone’s ear; nor is the word “treacle” (outside of “treacle tart”). Treacle is the umbrella term for sugar syrups. Americans would be most familiar with the darkest, strongest treacle, molasses. Somewhat lighter is “dark treacle” or “black treacle”. Golden Syrup, on the other hand is a pale treacle, thin, and amber-colored, looking something like honey. It is used to make ANZAC biscuits, which we’ll discuss at another time. Now for the point: damper is usually served with Golden Syrup, although doubtfully by swaggies at a billabong.]

Note here that the fourth line of the verse, is also the fourth line of every other verse, and beyond that, is repeated twice within each chorus. This is the swagman eagerly singing to his knapsack how he wants the two of them to get going on the road after leaving the campsite.

Jumbuck Easy answer: a sheep. Better answer: a large, oversized, difficult to shear sheep, and therefore probably not a tame sheep. If the swagman were to steal a sheep, he might want to avoid commercially useful sheep to cause its owner less financial harm, so he’d be more interested in this jumbuck. Note the attraction of the billabong to fauna as well as flora. Jumbuck is the word in the song that is now entirely archaic and out of use elsewhere.

Tucker & Tucker Bag Easy. Tucker is food, and it’s kept in a tucker bag.

Squatter Squatter is an easily understood word, but not in this Australian context. We know a squatter as a person who takes over property without permission, such as land, or buildings, and “squats” illegally. Before governmental authority arrived in many parts of Australia, squatters had come in first. They grazed land, planted crops, and built fences and houses. When the government finally reached them, the claims of whoever was de facto in possession of the land were usually accepted as fact. In this way, the word “squatter” changed in meaning to “landowner”, with no illegality implied. These squatters/landowners could have become quite wealthy, as indicated by this squatter who doesn’t arrive on any old workhorse, but on his thoroughbred, sharpening the class distinction between him and the swagman.

Troopers This could be any sort of police, military, or militia authority. The word in this sense is now dated. The question the trooper asks seems weird, as he seems to be giving the answer to what he’s asking. This can be understood ironically. “Where’s that jumbuck?” said with a finger pointing to the bag means “Give me that jumbuck”. It’s like confronting a child with his hand in the cookie jar and saying “What are you doing?” as if you didn’t already know.

WM History   I see three phases to the development of WM, all of which occurred in about a dozen years preceding WWI. Usually only the first phase is cited, which names the original composer. Yet the second phase, rarely brought up, made at least one important alteration to the text. I’ll assume you can’t guess which Australianism we’ve discussed was the key word that caused the second phase to come about. Finally, the third phase in my estimation is what made WM what it is today, and involves WWI itself.

Banjo Patterson   WM was written by Australian poet and songwriter Banjo Patterson (real name: Andrew Barton Patterson) in 1895, and it was finally published in 1903. Patterson considered it a bush ballad, or country folk song. He had been holidaying at a station (another Australianism! A station is a large landholding with cattle, so read: ranch) near Winton, Queensland, which is located inland in the south-central part of the state, and was apparently influenced by the landscape in and around the station. It is significant that Winton today has the Waltzing Matilda Centre, a rare situation of a museum dedicated to one single song.

It would be easy to think that the history ends there, which is what one would expect and what one might even be told. But actually, the story only gets started with the song being composed. Let’s now see which of the words we’ve reviewed within the song caused the next turning point of the song’s history.

Billy Tea Company   Right after the song was published to some acclaim, the Billy Tea Company couldn’t believe its good fortune. It had been founded in 1881, and had an iconic trademark on its packages of tea, which included a line drawing of a swagman beside a campfire, boiling his billy--and that’s just what the new song was describing. It immediately bought the rights to the song, and, in a pre-electronic era when every home had a piano as well as someone who knew how to play it, it gave away free copies of the WM sheet music with every packet of tea sold. They treated WM essentially as a company jingle, an advertising gimmick, but doing so ended up making WM nationally famous.

But an odd story gets odder still. The Billy Tea Company didn’t necessarily agree with everything Banjo Patterson put in the song, or how he said it. WM, they felt, needed some rewriting so that it would enhance their product and sell more tea. Ponder that for a moment, as well as commercialism in general. Compare Patterson’s original in the illustration with what we have today, and note the following changes in particular.

Some changes were minor; most were self-serving; yet one was particularly significant. Patterson’s opening had been “Oh, there once was a swagman”, which Billy Tea changed to the current “Once a jolly swagman”. Perhaps a swagman would have too gruff an image, and “jolly” (although it’s really a meaningless word here) might convey a more jovial image to sell tea. Perhaps.

There was also a change from Patterson’s “And he sang as he looked at the old billy boiling”. Maybe they felt that didn’t show enough interest and involvement, so Billy Tea made it into “And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled”. Maybe “his billy” showed more interest on the part of the swaggie.

But the most significant change is one that altered the tenor of the song. Patterson had written: “Up sprang the swagman and jumped into the waterhole / Drowning himself by the coolibah tree.” Billy Tea felt that such direct mention of suicide created a negative image for selling tea, and certainly the word “drowning” had to go. This is where Billy Tea changed it into:

The phrase they had the swagman say changed the tenor from a simple suicide to a defiant statement of Aussie fighting sprit. They made the change for venal, commercial reasons, but it changed the whole tenor of the song, and most likely added significantly to its fame, making it a “feel-good” song that imparts both nostalgia and defiance. But do we not have to say that “Australia’s national song”, written by Banjo Patterson, had as a collaborator the Billy Tea Company?

Gallipoli   Now why would a very popular song, a bush ballad, a folk song, country music, even if it was known throughout Australia, become associated in a way as to define the country? I think to understand that we have to make sure we’re all on the same page about Gallipoli. You may know the name, but probably can’t begin to fathom it’s significance to the Australian psyche. I say, understand Gallipoli better, and you’ll understand why WM is what it is today.

We usually recognize the names of famous battles from numerous wars. When picturing WWI, many of those names are places in France and Belgium, on the Western Front. Gallipoli lies elsewhere, and in the minds of many, it’s just another of many battles. This is not the case in Australia and New Zealand.

Gallipoli is a town and a peninsula in Turkey, running south from Istanbul (then Constantinople) along the Dardanelles. The area was strategic as a route to Russia, and it was decided to land forces in Gallipoli to attack and occupy Constantinople. The entire Gallipoli Campaign was not only a colossal failure, it was mismanaged and botched, with stories of troops mistakenly being landed without adequate backup. The Gallipoli Campaign ran for eight months in 1915-1916, and there were very high casualties.

Australia had become a country only a few years earlier, in 1901. Australian and New Zealand troops were grouped together as the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, or ANZAC, and Gallipoli was ANZAC’s first major military action. Gallipoli is still remembered in many places, including Turkey, but given the defeat, and moreso the numerous casualties, the Gallipoli Campaign became a turning point in the national consciousness of Australia and New Zealand. Both celebrate to this day as ANZAC Day the day troops first landed at Gallipoli, April 25 (here, Australian troops landing on that date in what is now called ANZAC Cove. Ceremonies are conducted at dawn, such as at the King’s Park War Memorial in Perth. While ANZAC Day, as the most important national day of commemoration, today memorializes other military operations as well, the name alone brings to mind this most significant one. ANZAC biscuits, which we’ll discuss at a later time, were made without eggs due to wartime shortages and sent en masse to troops, since they lasted so well, are still common today (I had one in NZ) and are specially baked today for ANZAC Day.

A major structure in Canberra is the Australian War Memorial (1941), which forms the northern end of the land axis from Parliament House. It’s the national memorial to war dead, one of the most significant memorials of its type in the world, and contains numerous mementoes of Gallipoli.

Now given the founding of the country in 1901, the publishing of WM in 1903 and its subsequent spreading to national fame in the following years, and then, imagining WM being played as a current popular song as troops left for Gallipoli, it can be understood why a folk song has gained such national significance.

Less somberly, also consider the British use of the Colonel Bogey March in WWII.

WM Eviscerated   I said earlier I’d show the first verse of the “international version” of WM purged of Australianisms, which necessarily ends up altering the title itself. Here is just the first verse of “Knapsack A-Swinging”:

It’s a good translation and the content is understandable. But it’s also a total emasculation (coffee, indeed!), so go wash your hands after reading it. We’ll hear the real thing played and sung at the end of this next piece.

Slim Dusty   Fame is a very strange thing. There are international celebrities, such as Hugh Jackman or Elvis Presley. There are odd cases of a person becoming famous in another country, such as Josephine Baker in France, whose celebrity only trickled back to the US. And then there are those people very famous at home, but not abroad. My poster child in that case is Elaine Paige (Elaine who?). She’s the most famous actress in musicals in the UK. She did appear on Broadway for a couple of years in “Sunset Boulevard”, but most Americans, even few New Yorkers, know the name. When Susan Boyle was asked in her opening interview, before she sang, who she’d like to be like, when Boyle mentioned Elaine Paige most outsiders wondered who? Yet to all those in the UK Boyle’s making such a statement (still, before she sang) seemed particularly uppity.

We then come to Slim Dusty. (Who?) It’s Elaine Paige all over again. Slim Dusty was an iconic Australian country music singer and songwriter. Every Aussie knows his name. I saw a video on YouTube that was a memorial to Australians who had recently passed away. It said: “We’ll remember Slim . . . Heath . . . Steve”. Australians recognize all three first names. Outsiders recognize Heath Ledger and Steve Irwin and wonder--Slim?

David Gordon Kirkpatrick (1927-2003), from Kempsey, New South Wales, was interested in country music since he was a child, and it was at age 11 that he chose the stage name Slim Dusty. While the name has become iconic to Australians, it’s still worth a smile, since it just sounds like what an 11-year-old would imagine a Wild West name should sound like. Yet his name properly written should be Slim Dusty AO, MBE, since he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia and a Member of the Order of the British Empire. After a long and successful career, in 1997 the General Manager of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville invited him to perform there to recognize fifty years of contributions to country music, so Slim Dusty is a name to be reckoned with. (Talking about dialect words in titles, I think no one would consider purging the name Grand Ole Opry to read Grand Old Opera!)

Before we hear Slim Dusty sing WM--who else could we want to hear do it?--we should be a little more aware of his discography--for instance, he wrote “Indian Pacific”, about the transcontinental rail route. But we should pay particular attention to the song that made him famous, the 1957 hit A Pub With No Beer. It was the biggest-selling record by an Australian to that time, the first Aussie single to go gold, and the first and only 78 rpm record to be awarded a gold disc. (All in all, he collected more gold and platinum albums than any other Aussie artist.) Let’s first hear Slim Dusty sing A Pub With No Beer. At 1:20, listen for the swaggie entering the pub.

The pub really exists in Taylors Arm NSW, not far from Kempsey, where Dusty was born. Apparently one hot day in the 1940’s, a local man brought his thirst down to this pub, which was the only one within 30 km. There were still wartime quotas on, and the locals had used up all the beer for that pub’s monthly quota. He wrote a poem about this, which Gordon Parsons, another country singer, adapted to write the song, which Parsons then offered to Dusty. Talk about accidents--Dusty accepted it just because he happened to need a song for the B-side of a record he was about to make, an incident that reminds me of Mele Kalikimaka originally appearing by chance on the flip side of White Christmas (2008/22), and this B-side ended up his most famous song ever.

If Dusty’s name traveled internationally only to a minor extent, his song did somewhat better in a number of venues. A local singer in Texas made it regionally popular in 1960 with a slight name change as A Bar With No Beer; Johnny Cash also recorded it. It also had European appearances because of a Flemish country singer and guitarist named Bobbejaan Schoepen, who recorded it in several languages. In 1959 it appeared in Dutch as Café zonder bier (zonder=without) where it was popular in the Netherlands and became a #1 hit in Belgium. In 1960 his German version came out, where it became a #1 hit in Germany and Austria and is still popular. My only problem is that he altered the German version to Ich steh an der Bar und ich habe kein Geld (I’m Standing at the Bar and I Have no Money), which puts the fault with the customer and not the bar/pub, which loses the entire point.

Beyond that, I’m sure everyone knowing these versions associates them with Bobbejaan Schoepen and probably has no idea who Slim Dusty is, nor that it’s his song.

Nevertheless, we now finally reach the melding of two icons: Slim Dusty singing Waltzing Matilda. You will particularly enjoy understanding all the Australianisms.

And the Band PlayedWaltzing Matilda   In 1971, during the height of the antiwar movement, one Eric Bogle wrote And the Band PlayedWaltzing Matilda. It pointed out that war is futile and gruesome and should not be romanticized or glorified. It is exemplified by the memories of an old man who had been a young ANZAC, suffered through Gallipoli, and did come back home, but without his legs. He notes the passing of other vets (all veterans of Gallipoli are gone by this writing), and sees the young becoming apathetic to vets. It also seems that the old man had earlier been a swagman before marching off to Gallipoli as the band played Waltzing Matilda.

In 1974, Bogle entered another song for consideration at the National Folk Festival in Brisbane. As chance would have it, the first presenter performed two songs, so all others were then allowed to do the same, and Bogle added Band as his second. (We note the quirk of fate of Band and Pub above both having been alternate choices that became famous.) It didn’t win at the festival, although many wanted it to. Still, its fame spread abroad, and Bogle was surprised when, in 1976 on a UK visit, he was asked to perform on the basis of this song.

It has been performed by many others, including Joan Baez, but here, Slim Dusty performs And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda. Note where describing his prewar years the ANZAC says “I lived the free life of a rover (swagman)” and “waltzed my Matilda all over”, drawing weird parallels to WM.