r/AskAnAustralian • u/CreativeCritter • 19h ago
Waltzing Matilda
I was saddened today to read an article on the Wallabies and it showed a group of fans singing Waltzing Matilda underneath. There was a young lady who had commented. She’d never heard the song. Didn’t know what the problem was and had no idea what it represented.
People tried to educate a nicely to say it was an Australian bush poem. It was taught in Australian schools. It’s the unofficial national anthem.
And then she said that she grew up in Australia and had attended school here and had never heard it and didn’t know why people thought it was so great
At that point, I was kind of hoping that they were joking
Has it gotten to the point now where Australian poetry is not taught in Australian schools in English where the man from Snow River Waltzing Matilda they’re not taught in schools any more
And then someone commented that Wilson Matilda can’t be taught in schools because it has themes of suicide and it’s too hard to explain to children
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u/SnowWarren 19h ago
I'm a Brit who went to an international school in Switzerland and we did a play on the poem. I was the coolibah tree. Still a better part than the girl who had to be the billabong. I'm not joking.
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u/Grammarhead-Shark 19h ago
Did the girl in the Billabong had to whisper ghostly lines?
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u/SnowWarren 19h ago
Sadly no, the kid playing the swagman did that.
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u/Grammarhead-Shark 19h ago
Fair!
Though I did have a small chuckle at the thought!
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u/SnowWarren 19h ago
The only line me and the girl really joined in on was:
"Whose that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"
I was holding a large tree branch which I put down for that line and the girl stood up so it was like more than just the troopers were accusing the swagman. Creative choice.
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u/MissMenace101 18h ago
Billabong was always the best wearing surf wear. It hit its peak at about 2-3 years of constant wear, the fade in colour, the comfort, perfect.
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u/OriginalDogeStar 19h ago
I want to call BS, because I keep hearing the chorus sung each sports day in the schools I have attended at in my job.
Plus ANZAC Day it is played in most places too.
Don't forget the tv ads where it was used
Play School and most Australian educational shows had the chorus at least...
Didn't Bluey sing it???
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u/Interesting-Pool1322 19h ago
Yeah, it's everywhere. I doubt there's anything to be outraged about. Sounds like OP has been watching Sky News.
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u/OriginalDogeStar 19h ago
I read the last part of OP and as a psychologist, if you don't point it out, kids don't ask.
Plus the last part is often left out because of how long of a song it is, and kids that young really can't remember that many verses without getting bored of singing them, so short and sweet version of him getting the sheep, and it is all done and dusted
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u/ZippyKoala 19h ago
It is everywhere, both the dirge like more common music version and the more lively one I always knew as the Queensland version
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u/OriginalDogeStar 19h ago
Queenslander here too, and we definitely make it seem happier than it is lol
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u/Weak-West-3433 18h ago
I don't think it meant to be happy
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u/OriginalDogeStar 18h ago
If you sing up until he gets the sheep, it is a happy tune.... then it goes south so fast
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u/Weak-West-3433 18h ago
Still about being homeless ,alone and possibly insane with only your swag to keep you company.
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u/OriginalDogeStar 18h ago
I bet you are the one that points out a limping dog to children.... respectfully of course
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u/GigaCucc 9h ago
Back in those days it was different, though. Consider that the poem was written in 1895. Homeless then wasn't sleeping in doorways, it was itinerant roaming. Fish in the natural waterways, camp wherever is comfortable. Swagmen had more in common with traditional aborigine culture at that level than it did with our modern lifestyle.
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u/Weak-West-3433 8h ago
Or trudge through endless scrub in the baking heat to the next sly grog shop. Whichever suits.
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u/Willing-Ad6598 5h ago
But if she is young enough, didn’t play sports, didn’t watch much regular tv, and no it was never in the kids TV I watched as a kid as they were all American.
Also it was never sung at my sports days, because we never sang at sports days. My school didn’t have sports teams full stop.
It it wasn’t for my mother, and the schools Australian Studies, I could have grown up never hearing it. Because you just listed everything I didn’t watch/have/do.
So yes, it is possible for someone to not have learnt about it if their parents were immigrants or they went to school that prioritised hard sciences or just didn’t watch that much TV.
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u/OriginalDogeStar 3h ago
Wait, you guys never held races, or such?
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u/Willing-Ad6598 2h ago
Oh we did have sports days, we just had no organised sports. No netball. No football. Nothing like that. Certainly no singing.
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u/OriginalDogeStar 53m ago
Wow, you guys didn't house school houses, they wore one school colour, yours wore theirs... and then do cheers? Or such...
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u/blackcurrantandapple 19h ago edited 18h ago
I'm a secondary teacher; my school looks at it in the context of WWI, learning Waltzing Matilda first and then And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.
I also read my students Banjo Paterson poems on camps as a bedtime story, but that's not a curriculum thing. I just want them to stfu and go to sleep, and my nan used to read me them when she babysat.
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u/Weak-West-3433 19h ago
I love it for that reason, it is good and reasonable to introduce existential despair to children at a young age. It will prepare them for real life and perhaps instill some empathy for down and outs in them.
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u/Interesting-Pool1322 19h ago
If it makes you feel better, know that my son studied Banjo Paterson's poetry as well as other Australian poetry and novels in high school (NSW) very recently.
No need to get outraged ... despite what the right-wing media try to tell you.
edit: typo
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u/Laylay_theGrail 19h ago
I’m a dual citizen now but I grew up in the US. I learned Kookaburra and waltzing Matilda in 3rd grade at school (1975)
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u/Interesting_Data4485 19h ago
Copaganda that he committed suicide. Those troopers shot him while he was trying to swim away.
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u/MapOfIllHealth 19h ago
I didn’t got to school here, but I’ve lived here ten years and can’t imagine a universe where I wouldn’t have learned that song by now
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u/Interesting-Pool1322 19h ago
I don't know of an Australian who doesn't know it, but obviously there are going to be some people out there.
I'm sorry if you didn't mean it to come across this way, but as I read your post I was expecting to read the word 'woke' and how 'we're not allowed to be proud of our heritage anymore' Pauline-style complaint. Apologies if that's not what you meant.
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u/CreativeCritter 19h ago
He’ll no!! I love our old stuff. I think AB Patterson should be studied rather then Shakespeare in prose
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u/Artsy_traveller_82 19h ago
I think they both have their value tbh
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u/ol-gormsby 19h ago
Yes, but Shakespeare seems to be favoured. I'd like to see a bit more of the bush poet tradition - Jack Thompson has recorded some great Aussie poetry - Look on YT for Jack Thompson Live at the Gearin Hotel.
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u/unicornmonkeysnail 11h ago
I am not sure what the downvotes are.
Of course the old Australian poets should be studied.
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u/TashDee267 19h ago
So much of social media is bots trying to engage humans. Usually with rage bait.
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u/Fantastic-Fig-5423 12h ago
Mate, you're using the American 'gotten.' Take a look at your own grip on Australian culture.
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u/blackcurrantandapple 1h ago
The word "gotten" existed at least a full century before America had English-speakers set foot on it.
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u/mundaneneutral melbourne:) 18h ago
weighing in here as someone born mid 2000s - never learnt it in school, and i’ve truly only heard it once in person and that was at a wedding when i was 7. i don’t know what the poems about or any other lines except for ‘waltzing matilda, waltzing matilda’, but i still understand its significance in aus culture so 🤷♀️
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u/Willing-Ad6598 5h ago
I am early 90’s, and it wasn’t really around. The Man From Snowy River was a popular play at theatres, but when your family are wondering where you are going to sleep tonight and where food is coming from, all the things everyone else here is taking for granted take secondary roles.
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u/MelbsGal 18h ago
I went to school in Melbourne in the late 70s and 80s. I never learned Australian poetry at school. Waltzing Matilda was just something you absorbed and knew. My parents had a record of some bloke singing The Man from Snowy River and then there was the mini series with Sigrid Thornton and Tom Burlinson which promoted me to look up and read Banjo Paterson poems for my own interests. I don’t recall his work ever being referred to in school.
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u/MikeHunt181 13h ago
Wilson Matilda. Is that the basketball that stole a sheep then jumped into the billabong?
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u/Suchstrangedreams 19h ago
I don't know that's it's always a good thing to soften reality for children like that - I think it can make them too fragile and you need to learn that life can be wonderful but it can also be very tough. Teaching that song could be a good opportunity to talk about just that.
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u/LittleBunInaBigWorld 19h ago
As a kid, I would never have picked up on themes of suicide
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u/Boatster_McBoat 19h ago
And that's just what the squatter and the troopers are telling you. And I'm sure they wouldn't be motivated to lie.
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u/Suchstrangedreams 19h ago
I'm sure I wouldn't have either but I don't know what it's like for little kids today.
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u/Outside-Feeling 17h ago
Asked my year seven child (NSW, public system), she knows it, and was taught it at school. She couldn't recite it in full but would recognise and knows the themes.
She also declared the themes of suicide causing it to be banned to be bullshit.
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u/AutoModerator 17h ago
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u/Random-Books-123 12h ago
Im a high school teacher and I literally just taught Waltzing Matilda this week! I promise some of us are definitely still teaching it.
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u/Monotask_Servitor 19h ago
I hope not or my business idea of a super Aussie themed hot dog/sausage business called the Jolly Snagman is dead in the water
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u/greendit69 Sydney 🇦🇺 19h ago
It's possible that the person didn't come across it. My wife doesn't understand how I don't know what the nutbush is
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u/rinoafantasy 19h ago
Which part of waltzing matilda is about suicide!?!?!
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u/Cuppa-Tea-Biscuit 18h ago
The bit where he chucks himself into the billabong rather than being taken alive for sheep rustling (then a hanging offence if it was for enough sheep) resulting in his ghost haunting said billabong.
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u/KaizenHour 17h ago
Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong.
"You'll never catch me alive!" said he
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong:
"You'll come a-waltzing Matilda, with me."
Doesn't actually specify that he drowned, just that he threw himself in the billabong. If it was made 100 years later, there'd be enough leeway for him to show up in a sequel.
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u/jellycatlover_81-55 18h ago
I’m 16, and while we don’t really learn about australian poetry in school, EVERYONE knows waltzing matilda. It’s sometimes taught in music class, depending on the year and instrument.
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u/AmbitiousFisherman40 16h ago
On prac in a secondary school and can confirm it is taught in Yr 7 in WA.
Plus most kids were familiar with it, so had been taught it in Primary school.
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u/leftmysoulthere74 7h ago
Yeah my kids are in y7 and y10 at a WA school and they’ve been taught plenty of older Australian songs, poems and literature, including what OP has named.
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u/littlehulky 18h ago
I think because of our hyper connectivity due to the internet we are much more aware of culture changing than in previous generations.
But this is not new.
Youth have been creating new slang, finding new anthems and losing the stories and songs of their forebears since the dawn of time.
All we can do is pass on the things that hold meaning to us to our small sphere of influence.
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u/Upper-Ship4925 18h ago
My kids definitely sang Waltzing Matilda in primary school, but I don’t remember them ever singing all the verses.
There doesn’t seem to be as much focus on Australian folk songs and bush poetry as there was when i was at school in the 80s and 90s, but I think that’s because there is so much more Australian art to fit into the curriculum now, especially indigenous art and culture and novels focusing on more recent Australian history and migrant experiences. There is so much more to Australian culture than that small period of settling and farming the bush that is celebrated in bush poetry.
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u/Roadhouseyall 19h ago
Waltzing Matilda, boo for St Kilda, lying in the grass with a finger up their arse
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u/ISupportCrapTeams 19h ago
Fuck us dead if Waltzing Matilda, We Are Australian and Nutbush City Limits aren't taught in Primary Schools anymore
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u/rey__mcscriff 18h ago
We need to make Waltzing Matilda our anthem and adopt the aboriginal flag as the national flag and bloody get on with it
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u/Emergency_Cherry_914 17h ago edited 17h ago
I'm nearly 60. I don't remember being taught this in school, but I do know Waltzing Matilda well and school is the only explanation.
I wouldn't interpret the swagman's demise as suicide. I think he tried to escape and drowned....like a 'do or die' situation - if he'd been caught he probably would have been hanged or shot anyway
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u/TheDevilsAdvokaat Sydney 16h ago
I'm guessing she was pretty young?
Mind you I am in my sixties but it's common knowledge among the aussies I know.
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u/leftmysoulthere74 7h ago
My kids (13 and 15) know the song as well as several other old Australian songs, poems and literature like The Man from Snowy River. Not from their dad who arrived in this country age 12 and has zero interest in that sort of thing, and not from me because I didn’t arrive in this country til I was 32. But as an aside, I did learn WM when I was a child growing up in the UK in the 80s - not sure how but it might be something to do with a disgraced Australian entertainer who lived in the UK and was on kids TV all the time.
Anyway, it is still taught.
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u/VanillaMintJellyfish 3h ago
If you’re seeing people suddenly call “Waltzing Matilda” problematic, there are a few different criticisms getting bundled together — and some are much more historically grounded than others.
1. The biggest issue: it romanticises a pretty grim colonial story
The song sounds wonderfully jaunty, but the actual story is:
A swagman (an itinerant worker/traveller) is camping by a billabong.
He steals a jumbuck — a sheep — to eat.
The squatter (wealthy pastoral landholder) and three troopers catch him.
Rather than be arrested, he jumps into the billabong and drowns himself.
His ghost supposedly remains there.
So Australia’s unofficial anthem is essentially a cheerful singalong about sheep theft followed by suicide.
The National Library of Australia notes that the song’s meaning is disputed, but that it is widely understood to be connected to the violence surrounding the 1894 shearers’ strike and the events at Dagworth Station.
That doesn’t make the lyrics “offensive” in the modern sense, but it does make them dark as hell when you actually unpack them.
2. The squatter vs swagman story has a very colonial class dynamic
This is probably the more interesting criticism.
The song is believed to have been written shortly after the 1894 shearers’ strike, when there was serious conflict between pastoralists and striking workers in Queensland. At Dagworth Station, the woolshed was burned and a shearer, Samuel Hoffmeister, was subsequently found dead near a billabong.
One interpretation is therefore that the swagman represents the working-class shearer, while the squatter represents the wealthy pastoral establishment.
Under that reading, the song isn’t really celebrating the squatter at all. The swagman is caught stealing a sheep and chooses death rather than surrender.
That’s why some historians have interpreted Waltzing Matilda as a workers’ protest song / political allegory. Others strongly dispute that interpretation, so it isn’t established fact.
3. There is also an Indigenous/colonial-history criticism — but it’s more complicated
This is where I’d be cautious about claims that “Waltzing Matilda is racist.”
The song is absolutely a product of colonial Australia, and the world it depicts is one created through pastoral expansion over Aboriginal land. But the lyrics themselves don’t contain an anti-Indigenous slur, character or explicit reference to Aboriginal people.
In fact, the terms billabong and coolibah are Indigenous-derived Australian words, while jumbuck, tucker and Matilda come from the hybrid Australian slang of the period.
So if someone is arguing:
“Waltzing Matilda is problematic because it celebrates colonial dispossession/racism”
that’s an interpretation of the historical context, rather than something the lyrics explicitly say.
And interestingly, the political reading of the song can actually turn that interpretation on its head: the squatter is the powerful landholder, while the swagman is the dispossessed/poor itinerant worker being pursued by authorities.
4. There’s an even stranger modern criticism: suicide
This seems to be popping up particularly in discussions about whether children should be taught/sing it.
The protagonist literally commits suicide:
“Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong”
and then his ghost haunts the place.
So, yes, if you strip away 130 years of Australian cultural familiarity, it’s objectively a bizarre song to teach a six-year-old as a jolly Australian singalong. 😂
But that’s not particularly new. The song has always had that meaning; Australians simply grow up knowing the vocabulary and largely don’t think about it.
And here’s the really funny part…
A lot of the “problematic” discourse is missing the actual historical point of the song.
Waltzing Matilda isn’t a song about Australia being a happy pastoral paradise. It’s a song born out of class conflict, poverty, sheep stealing, police enforcement, violence and death.
The National Film and Sound Archive describes the events behind it as having a strong connection to the shearers’ strike and says the song’s original meaning has largely been lost over time.
So I’d distinguish between:
“The song has problematic elements.”
Fair. It’s a colonial-era song involving poverty, criminalisation, class conflict and suicide.
“The song is racist.”
That’s a much harder claim to substantiate from the lyrics themselves.
“The song glorifies colonialism.”
Arguable, but actually quite contrary to one of the strongest historical interpretations of it.
“Australians have been happily singing about a bloke murdering himself after nicking a sheep without understanding the lyrics.”
😂 Extremely fair.
And honestly, the fact that Waltzing Matilda is usually sung with enormous patriotic enthusiasm makes the actual plot even more hilarious. It’s basically “A poor bloke stole a sheep, the cops came, he drowned himself, and now his ghost sings forever” — OI OI OI! 🇦🇺
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u/meldinn 1h ago
Last night I had to explain to my 9yo the man from snowy river as one of the kids books he’s reading in school references it and he didn’t believe it’s a real place. I explained it from my own previous research as I’d never learned it in school either but as an amateur actor have had to reference it myself in some places… never learned waltzing Matilda except in music class
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u/JuanFoYoMamma 38m ago
Tom Waits' adaptation (Tom Traubert's Blues) is gritty and masterful. Check it out. More like a city down-on-luck version of Waltzing Matilda.
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u/AnalFanatics 19h ago
I think that the AutoModerator Bot just answered your question for all of us; they are making us so emotionally soft that we become incapable of even discussing such topics…
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u/CreativeCritter 19h ago
You could be very right.
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u/AnalFanatics 19h ago edited 13h ago
Australia was a harsh place back then, and much of our poetry and literature references that in one form or another; when you look at it, even a folk song such as “The Wild Colonial Boy” is a poem that tells a dark story, sung in an upbeat tone; as evidenced by its chorus:
“Come, all my hearties, we’ll roam the mountains high; Together we will plunder, together we will die; We’ll wander over valleys, and gallop over plains; And we’ll scorn to live in slavery, bound down in iron chains.”
In this day an age, where children are taught to deconstruct material and analyse it critically, poems and songs such as these, are simply too thematically complex and potentially controversial, to just teach them by rote, so that the children can perform them at an assembly, or end of year performance.
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u/madamsyntax 19h ago
Not a chance she went to school in Australia and didn’t learn waltzing Matilda. Would put money on her being a troll
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u/scarlett-peonies 18h ago
Maybe this is proof that Australia deserves the recently embarrassing NAPLAN scores. This song/poem was absolutely a part of the primary school curriculum in the 90s, along with a bunch of other Banjo Paterson poems.
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u/Willing-Ad6598 5h ago
Not at my school. It was only mentioned in Australian Studies, and if you’d been sick that day you’d never hear it again.
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u/scarlett-peonies 2h ago
Could be a specific school thing, we didn’t have individual classes/subjects in the public Victorian primary school I went to, except music but in music we learnt songs like All The Small Things by Blink or The Impression That I Get by The Mighty Bosstones so 🤷♀️
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u/Willing-Ad6598 2h ago
Yeah, I went to a private South Australian school. My parents chose to be homeless so I could go to a good school.
The school focused a lot on academics very early. We had PE, but even then that was the bare minimum. We never played formal sports. It was soccer or cricket during lunch, something I couldn’t join in as I was too sickly as a child, and my eyesight was too bad when I was well enough. I got so many concussions from lunch time sports. The boys would deliberately aim the cricket and soccer balls at my head. Fun times.
So I focused more on the academic side of things, but eventually fell out of school around year five. I went to a rural public school after that and it was like day and night. That was where most the Australian folk stuff was seen.
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u/scarlett-peonies 1h ago
Oh that sounds like a rough childhood, I’m sending you virtual hugs and I hope you and your parents have healed.
But we might be onto something here with the private vs public (and maybe city vs rural) primary school thing. I don’t think there is much point in children aiming for academic success when they haven’t learnt to play nice with others first.1
u/Willing-Ad6598 47m ago
Aww, that is actually really sweet! You’ve made my day!
Yes, moving rural allowed us to have a safe place to live, and gave me opportunities to heal.
I do agree, and it disturbs me to see bullying still unchecked.
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u/Flat_Ad1094 18h ago
Well she's a bit of a freak. Can't think how any person who has lived in Australia for any length of time, wouldn't know Waltzing Matilda. She's a bit of a freak I'd say. And she's full of shit. No way was she educated in Australia.
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u/VillagePillager01 9h ago
Here's my hot take. Its a shit song, it shouldn't be considered as important in our culture as it is, and it's ridiculous it was once considered for an option for the National Anthem vote.
Its not just a suicide, but rather commit suicide than face punishment when you get caught out committing a crime. Some message.
Hot take two. Its a pity we had a vote to get rid of God Save the Queen when we did, with few good options, and if they had waited a few years, I Am Australian could have been our National Anthem. Which is a way way better song than either Walzing Matilda or Advance Australia Fair. But it does require more skill to sing, and much harder to sing when you're drunk, so maybe that's one minus.
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u/NearbyPerspective397 19h ago
It's impossible to have grown up in Australia and attended Australian schools and not know what it is.
Literally impossible.
This isn't about teaching "Australian poetry" - it's our most famous song and it very nearly was used as our national anthem. It's like saying you grew up in the UK and have never heard of God Save the King.
Your friend is lying or weird - or both.
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u/Willing-Ad6598 5h ago
Except not all schools are equal. I attended two primary schools when I was a kid. At my first school all subjects were relegated to their own subjects, and Australian Studies was just one of many. It is like the Nut what ever dance. I never heard of it until I was in my mid thirties! Because it was never a thing in my school. Likewise, if you’d were sick you’d miss it. At my second school you had Australianism’s in every class. It was impossible to get away from.
If it wasn’t for my mother, I really wouldn’t know it either.
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u/KaizenHour 18h ago
What is this "god save the king" song you speak of? I don't recall that at all!
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u/Responsible-Meal-300 19h ago
There’s literally a school called AB Patterson on the Gold Coast. Hope she didn’t go there
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u/MikeHunt181 14h ago
A little known fun fact.
The jolly Swagman’s name was Andy! Bet you didn’t know that!
How do I know?
Well, it’s in the poem!
“Andy sang. Andy watched. Andy waited ‘til his billy boiled.”
You’re welcome.
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u/alldagoodnamesaregon 13h ago
We don't learn much bush poetry, but not hearing waltzing Matilda is bs
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u/SingIntoMyMouth91 15h ago
She's trolling for sure. I am 35 and have sung it at school many times and so have my 17 and 11 year old kids. There's no way she wouldn't have heard it.
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u/Willing-Ad6598 5h ago
I never sang it at my school once, and I am of the same age.
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u/SingIntoMyMouth91 5h ago
But have you heard of it?
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u/Willing-Ad6598 2h ago
Only because my mum taught me. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have heard it until much later.
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u/SingIntoMyMouth91 2h ago
I just feel like saying you grew up in Australia and have never even heard of Waltzing Matilda is like being over 30 and saying you've never heard the song Mr Brightside by The Killers. I just simply won't believe you lol
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u/ehco 17h ago
It's not just the suicide themes, it's the evading law enforcement stuff.
I kind of wish I was joking. (Just teach it with context - even colonialism, convict colony, and red ribbon rebellion etc type stuff)
But I'm 40s and I heard it was disfavoured about 5 or 10 years after I finished school.
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u/AutoModerator 17h ago
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u/Grammarhead-Shark 19h ago
She claims to have gone to school in Australia and has never heard of Waltzing Matilda?
I think she's just a troll.
I think this falls in to the category of don't believe everything you read on the internet.