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Versions > The Queensland version

Buderim variant

The Buderim tune was collected from an oral source by John Manifold in 1955 and discussed in Who Wrote the Ballads: Notes on Australian Folksong. Manifold’s informant was John O’Neill from Buderim in south-east Queensland, thus lending the names ‘buderim’ or ‘O’Neill’ to this variant of the Queensland version. This tune seems to have been widely disseminated not long after ‘Waltzing Matilda’ had become well known in the Winton district. O’Neill remembered his father singing this version when he was a boy under ten years old, some time between 1912 and 1917.

In a letter of 7 August 1956, O’Neill wrote to Harry Pearce speculating on how the song had been transmitted to his father:

Where did my father pick it up? That’s a hard one. He was no bush worker, perambulating or otherwise. He was a solicitor in that small farming township of Laidley, situated between Brisbane and Toowoomba. Well, he couldn’t have heard it in Court, or his office, but he did associate with some people, horsemen who could have passed it on to him. He was an officer in the local troop of Light Horsemen before the First World War. The unit was composed of farmers and stockmen and I don’t doubt that they would have sing-songs etc around the camp-fires or on training bivouacs. Then again he used to go up into the mountains shooting and often stayed with the stockmen up there. Many of these made droving trips out in the West. They could have brought the song to our valley. I never remember hearing the song from any other person, until it became popular again, when was it? About 1935 or so. Then I was shocked by the tune which struck me as not being authentic, because it was not the one I had known and, to me, not in keeping with the theme of the song

After his contact with Manifold, O’Neill also handed down the tune to a Mrs Joy Durst, who played in the Melbourne Billabong Band in 1956 (Harry Pearce Papers, NLA MS2765 Box 13). From there it passed into the hands of other folk revival bands and took on a new performance life (listen to audio).

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Cover of the original manuscript for On the Origins of Waltzing Matilda

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‘Waltzing Matilda’—the ‘O’Neill Melody’, or the ‘Queensland Version’

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Paverty Bush Band sing 'Waltzing Matilda'

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