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Versions > The Queensland version

Cloncurry variant

Richard Magoffin claims to have learned this variant of the Queensland version from his father at Cloncurry in the 1940s.

Transmission of the song probably took place through Josephine Péné, with whom Bob Macpherson of Dagworth Station had a romance, when she was a dressmaker and the music teacher at Winton. Certainly, when she lived in the district, she played the piano at the coffee room at the North Gregory Hotel, though the exact dates are unclear. In 1900, a birth notice in the Marathon District Register records that she had a son, Robert, who was baptised at St Patrick’s Parish, Winton, on 6 May 1903 as ‘Péné, Robert Dagworth Macpherson’ (later known as ‘Daggie’ for short), almost certainly Bob Macpherson’s son.

Arthur Wood and John Sewell were resident in Winton at this time. In interviews for the National Library’s Oral History Collection with the folklore collector Ron Edwards, they observed that Josephine was ‘a great pianist’. Arthur Wood, who claimed he knew Josephine well, recalled: ‘everybody in Winton knew that Jo Peney [sic] wrote the [‘Waltzing Matilda’] music.’

Harry Pearce was the main proponent of the idea that the Cloncurry tune—perhaps Josephine’s version—was the original tune sung and spread in the district around Winton. In his book On the Origins of Waltzing Matilda: Expression, Lyric, Melody (Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1971) Pearce argued that the Cloncurry tune was a transformation of the ‘Craigielee’ tune. He goes so far as to claim that Josephine Péné was the ‘composer’ of this version and, because she could sing and play it so well, was primarily responsible for the initial rapid dissemination of the song.

The Harry Pearce Papers (MS2765) are in the National Library of Australia. They contain his research notes and extensive correspondence and clippings about ‘Waltzing Matilda’, covering the years 1944 to 1983, as well as documenting his lifelong interests in Australian poetry and literature, folklore, book collecting and rationalist and free thought movements in Australia.

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The Cloncurry Version of ‘Waltzing Matilda’

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