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Who'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me? Swagies
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The creation

According to Christina Macpherson, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ was created in the sitting room of Dagworth Station in January of 1895 with the help of a young solicitor and poet, ‘Banjo’ Paterson.

Christina Macpherson was at the family’s property in Queensland for the Christmas of 1894, having travelled from Victoria with her father Ewan and sister Jean. They joined her brothers Bob, Gideon and Jack for the first family gathering since the death of their mother in early December.

Soon afterwards, the company was joined at the homestead by Christina’s old school friend Sarah Riley and Banjo Paterson, Sarah’s fiancée of eight years. Christina was able to play an auto-harp (zither), owned by station book-keeper, John Tait Wilson, then absent on leave. He later provided evidence that the song was being sung at Dagworth on his return to duty in July 1985. Banjo recorded 40 years later that Christina used to play “a little Scottish tune on a zither. I put words to the tune and called it Waltzing Matilda.”

Paterson was country-born and a horse-lover; in fact, his name ‘Banjo’ came from one of his father’s favourite horses. He enjoyed riding around Dagworth Station with Christina’s brother Bob Macpherson. During their rides, Banjo and Bob visited the scenes of a recent dispute between the shearers and their employer. Eight shearing sheds in the district, including the woolshed at Dagworth, were burned in protest at a wage agreement proposed by Queensland squatters. Later a Union swagmen-shearer who had taken part in the disturbance, Samuel ‘Frenchy’ Hoffmeister, was found dead at a nearby camp (the inquest held at Kynuna found “suicide by shooting” on 2 September 1894). Bob Macpherson and three Senior Constables later recovered Hoffmeister’s body from the billabong. The song clearly references these historical events in the district.

Christina’s memory of how Waltzing Matilda came into being was related in an undated letter to Thomas Wood:

[Banjo Paterson] was on a visit to Winton, North Queensland, and I was staying with my brothers about 80 miles from Winton. We went in to Winton for a week or so & one day I played (from ear) a tune which I had heard played by a band at the Races in Warnambool [sic], a country town in the Western District of Victoria. Mr Patterson [sic] asked what it was—I could not tell him, & he then said he thought he could write some lines to it. He then and there wrote the first verse. We tried it and thought it went well, so he then wrote the other verses. I might add that in a short time everyone in the District was singing it...When Mr Patterson returned to Sydney he wrote and asked me to send him the tune. I am no musician but did my best: & later on he told me he had sent it on to a musical friend of his who thought it would make a good bush song. It was included in the Student’s Song Book and was frequently sung at the Community.

Origins of the Christina Macpherson tune >

 

Who’ll Come A Waltzing Matilda With Me?  1957

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Making it a Political Matter’

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