Banjo

by Paul Terry

  Muzzle flashes punctured the darkness. A voice rang out from the creek bed: ‘Come out with your hands up, you bastards, or die!’ Then, as bullets whistled overheard, one of the raiders dashed from the creek with a tin of kerosene and a handful of wax matches. Moments later, the oily smell of the kerosene wafted through the shed and then a match flared. With a whump!, flames erupted and quickly took hold of the dry timbers, incinerating about 140 lambs that had been brought into the shed the night before. The Macphersons tried to douse the flames but could do little in the face of the gunfire from the creek. It began to rain lightly, but it was too late. The shed was now a wall of orange flame.

  Mission accomplished, the attackers melted into the darkness and retraced their steps up the bed of the river. In the glaring light of the fire, Bob Macpherson could only watch as a big part of his livelihood went up in smoke.

  A manhunt began the next day. The attackers were quickly traced back to the strike camp at nearby Kynuna. But that day, before the police could close in, ‘Frenchy’ Hoffmeister died of a bullet wound in controversial circumstances. He escaped the squatters’ justice, but the strange manner of his death ensured his name lived on in history.

  Earlier on that rainy morning, Hoffmeister had put his swag in a tent at the camp and after lunch he was seen burning some papers on a camp fire. A fellow striker heard him mutter: ‘That done, I am satisfied.’ Then Hoffmeister wandered away and moments later at least one gunshot rang out. Hoffmeister was found lying on the wet ground with a bullet wound to his head. One of the most dangerous unionists in the battle against the pastoralists was dead. It seemed clear that the man who had been responsible for violent, armed raids on multiple shearing sheds had taken his own life. But some of his fellow strikers did not believe it was suicide and, today, some still believe the real cause of the striking swagman’s death—supposedly at the hands of the squatters—was covered up.

  Those who believe Hoffmeister did not take his own life cite the absence of a suicide note and his actions in the hours before his death. Even with the police closing in, he had shown no sign of distress. Shortly before his death, he had asked a mate to cover his two saddles so they would not get wet in the rain—a strange precaution for a man who intended to kill himself. And, crucially, one of his mates swore that he had heard more than one shot ring out when Hoffmeister died. Yet the striking swagman had been shot just once. It was enough to fan suspicions of a sinister secret.

  An inquest was held later that month and the findings were very clear. Hoffmeister had committed suicide. The cause of death was indisputable—a single bullet wound to the head. If any other shots were fired then none hit their target. But the bullet that killed Hoffmeister entered his head through the roof of his mouth. If he was killed by a second party then he can only have been overpowered and the muzzle of the gun forced into his mouth before the fatal shot was fired. It seems highly unlikely that the tough shearer could have been so easily overwhelmed so close to his mates and it is hard to disagree with the inquest’s findings. Strange, radical Samuel Hoffmeister—a man described even by his friends as ‘a bit barmy’—can only have died by his own hand.

  *

  There was no sign of these traumatic events as Barty Paterson travelled towards Dagworth in 1895. He was well aware of the attack on the shearing shed and of the death of Hoffmeister, but as he completed his journey—probably finishing the last leg in a station coach pulled by four horses—he was impressed by the positive sights he saw around him. Aware that thousands of sheep were lost during a previous drought, he was pleased to note that ‘there was grass everywhere, beautiful blue grass and Mitchell grass with the sheep all fat and the buyers all busy’. It was an encouraging sight as his coach rolled through a landscape of red-brown earth, stunted mulga and tall coolibahs framed against ‘ jump-ups’—flat-topped rocky outcrops that grew out from the flatlands.

  Paterson arrived at Dagworth to find a square homestead of stone with an iron roof and wide verandahs. Surrounded by cottages and sheds, it was the thriving centre of its own little community. It was either here at Dagworth Station, or at Vindex Station to the south-east, that he would be reunited with Sarah Riley. Soon it would be time to commit to marriage or call it off.

  In the meantime, however, Paterson was keen to see his new surroundings. He rode the grassy plains with Bob Macpherson, listening intently to stories about the shearers’ strike and the death of Hoffmeister. Macpherson also showed his guest stone weirs that had been built across the bed of the Diamantina to the north of the homestead. It might have been this visit to the water-giving weirs—known locally as ‘overshots’—that prompted Macpherson to recount an incident that had occurred some five years earlier, when a swagman killed a Dagworth sheep near one of the waterholes. When the swagman was seen with the sheep, he leapt into the waterhole to escape, but drowned.

  Perhaps this sad story created a little spark in Paterson’s mind, and maybe a conversation a few days later triggered a flash of inspiration that completed the picture. That conversation was said to have been held when the Macphersons hosted a house party at the homestead for Paterson and their other guests, who included Christina Macpherson and probably Sarah Riley. According to several accounts, including one published by Peter and Sheila Forrest in Banjo and Christina, when the station overseer, a man named Carter, joined the guests at the dinner table, Bob Macpherson asked: ‘Well, Carter, what did you see today?’

  Carter is said to have replied: ‘Oh, nothing much, only a swagman waltzing matilda [carrying his swag] down by the river.’

  It was a throwaway remark, a casual observation that could have been uttered on any station across the land, but as Bob Macpherson later recalled, Barty Paterson’s reaction to these simple words was remarkable:

  A few minutes later Banjo repeated the words ‘waltzing matilda’ and became very animated. He reckoned he could write a poem about it. Everyone gathered around him and he wrote it then and there. Christina was a good musician and she set it to music that same night. A few days later we all went to Winton. We called at the old Aryshire pub and we sang the song there.

  The words that Paterson penned that day were marginally different to those known to Australians today, but the song clearly tells the familiar story of the swagman camping by the waterhole:

  Oh, there once was a swagman camped in the billabongs,

  Under the shade of a Coolibah tree;

  And he sang as he looked at the old billy boiling,

  Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.

  The light-fingered swagman soon grabs a thirsty ‘jumbuck’—a sheep—that has wandered down to the waterhole and ‘put him away in his tucker bag’, but then the squatter arrives on his thoroughbred with three troopers in tow:

  Up sprang the swagman and jumped in the waterhole,

  Drowning himself by the Coolibah tree;

  And his voice can be heard as it sings in the billabongs,

  Who’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.

  The music that Christina Macpherson played as Barty Paterson wrote the words alongside her was based on her memory of a tune she had heard at the Warrnambool Races in Victoria’s Western District more than a year earlier. It was 25 April 1894 when the Warrnambool Brass Band played the melody, a ‘march’ version of old Scottish folk tune, ‘Thou Bonnie Wood of Craigielea’, at that country race meeting. Christina did not know the name of the piece, but she had no problem playing it from ear.

  Paterson later said Christina played the zither while the Dagworth party was taking a journey in a ‘four-in-hand coach’, but this seems unlikely. At the same time, Paterson also claimed that Christina later married her father’s business partner, Samuel McCall McCowan. In fact, it was her sister who married McCall McCowan and Christina never married at all, so Paterson’s recollection of the creation of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ must be taken with some scepticism. It is possible that his memory was clouded by a lingering prick of conscience. After all, his collaborati
on with Christina may have been the final, cruellest blow to his relationship with Sarah Riley.

  Whatever happened between Barty and Christina at Dagworth remains unknown, but it is easy to imagine the musician and writer huddled over the zither, their heads almost touching as the words and music began to meld together. Barty was handsome and charming, and he knew how to flatter a young lady. Shy and naïve Christina had little experience of men and she welcomed the attention from the suave Sydney poet. They might have laughed together at the joy of creating something special. Perhaps they touched hands and shared smiles as the notes tinkled out into the quiet Queensland night, and, for Christina, who was still mourning her mother, it would have been a moving moment.

  All of this might have happened, or none of it, but at some stage during the composition of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ a line was crossed, sensibilities were outraged and Paterson’s visit to Dagworth came to an abrupt end. So, too, did his engagement to Sarah Riley.

  Paterson perhaps saw his collaboration with Christina as harmless and may have meant nothing by it. But Christina’s brothers saw it very differently. In fact, family history strongly suggests the ill-feeling created was so intense that Paterson was angrily ordered to leave Dagworth in disgrace.

  There is no evidence to show that Sarah Riley was at Dagworth when the song was written but it seems likely that she was there, on the invitation of her friend Christina. If so, it must have been tremendously humiliating to witness the closeness between her fiancé and best friend. And even if she was absent from Dagworth, it would not have taken long for the news to reach her at Vindex. Either way, it was the final straw that ended a strained relationship. After seeing her fiancé enjoying the attentions of other women for seven years, Sarah had had enough.

  In September 2006, Christina’s niece, Diana Ballieu, recorded an interview at her home in Toorak, Melbourne, with the National Library of Australia’s Robyn Holmes. As a young woman, ninety-three-year-old Mrs Baillieu had been very close to Christina, whom she described as ‘a very sweet aunt . . . [and] rather a shy little lady in a lot of ways’. Diana Baillieu believed that shy, unworldly Christina fell under Paterson’s spell, leading to the bitter confrontation with the Macpherson brothers. She said:

  He [Paterson] was obviously a lady’s man and he not only sort of cast an eye upon, a flirty eye upon Aunty Chris, and she’d been so lonely and innocent, it’s no wonder she sort of fell for him. He was obviously a very, very attractive man . . .

  Although Christina never discussed the incident at Dagworth, Diana Baillieu never doubted that her aunt was devastated by the misunderstanding with Paterson, who was ‘probably the only bloke that ever made eyes at her’. Nor did she doubt that the Macpherson brothers angrily told Paterson to leave their property and never return. If so, how humiliating it must have been for the well-bred Paterson and the two fine ladies, Christina and Sarah.

  Poor Sarah suddenly found herself single at the age thirty-two, with little hope of finding a new husband. Her long wait was over and her patience had gone unrewarded. Regardless of whether anything had happened between Barty and Christina, Sarah had been treated poorly. In the words of Diana Baillieu more than a century later, Paterson’s ‘seven-year engagement to Sarah Riley was a touch much, wasn’t it?’

  Nonetheless, Sarah soon rallied. She remained in Queensland for several months, visiting some of the colony’s best families. In early February 1896, she stayed at Emu Park near Rockhampton and, on the twentieth, she was listed as a passenger on the mail train from Rockhampton ‘to the west’. By then, the scorching heat of January had given way to torrential rain, causing widespread flooding in central Queensland. Sarah probably spent the next three weeks with her family at Vindex. Perhaps she even returned to Dagworth to make whatever amends she could with the Macphersons. Sarah, of course, was blameless in the Dagworth incident, but her friendship with Christina never recovered. On 11 March Sarah was back in Rockhampton, where she boarded the Arawatta for Sydney then Melbourne. That strange encounter at Dagworth Station ended in mystery and sadness—but it also left Australia with its greatest folk song, ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

  Australians have wondered about the origins of the song ever since. Was it simply a little ditty based on a station yarn about a sheep-stealing swagman? Or did it have deeper political roots, springing from the violence of the shearers’ strike and the mysterious death of the rebellious Samuel Hoffmeister?

  In later years, the theory of ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as an allegory of class struggle gained traction. It is true that Paterson usually wrote about ordinary folk and Hoffmeister’s story might well have caught his fancy. But the poet’s radical youth was now behind him and he was already a man of the establishment. It is hard to imagine him eulogising a red-ragger like Hoffmeister. In fact, Paterson only ever referred briefly to Hoffmeister, saying in a wireless broadcast in the 1930s that the ‘woolshed at Dagworth was burnt down and a man was picked up dead’. He went on to say that the Macphersons held no malice towards the strikers and that he, Paterson, had seen the Macphersons ‘handing out champagne through pub windows to these very shearers’. These are not the memories of a man who had supposedly written a protest song based on violence, arson and death.

  Just as there was no one Man from Snowy River, and Clancy of the Overflow was based on an anonymous bushman with an unpaid debt, there was no sole swagman who ‘waltzed matilda’ for Paterson at Dagworth. The swagman of the song probably owed at least part of his creation to the sheep thief who drowned at Dagworth and was otherwise an amalgamation of the countless men who walked from station to station in search of work. It is likely that Paterson only ever saw ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as another bush tale, partly based perhaps on the stories he heard and the sights he saw during his sad, eventful visit to western Queensland in 1895.

  Like many great works, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ tells the story that the listener wants to hear. For those who see its roots deeply embedded in the striking shearers’ bitter fight for justice, it sums up the Australian value of a fair go for all, regardless of class or creed. But even those who see it only as a merry little tune with no real meaning sing it with the same pride as those who believe it is a war cry for equality. Some dislike the song, believing it to be a celebration of crime and cowardice, but more than any other it is Australia’s song and is recognised around the world. Such is the legacy of a chance comment at a dinner table, an emotional connection between two women and a man, and the memory of countless swaggies who once waltzed matilda across every corner of the wide, brown land.

  *

  Intriguingly, passenger records show that an A.B. Paterson travelled by mail train from New South Wales into Queensland, crossing the border at Wallangarra on 3 January 1896. Five weeks later, on 8 February, the same traveller was on the train crossing back into New South Wales. If this traveller was indeed Banjo Paterson, then it leaves open the prospect that ‘Waltzing Matilda’ was actually created in the Queensland summer of 1896. Certainly the other main players in the saga—Christina Macpherson and Sarah Riley—were there at that time. Sarah did not leave Queensland until March, while Christina attended the wedding of her sister Jean at Dagworth Station in April. It is possible that the ill-fated party at Dagworth was actually held early in January 1896—but like much of the ‘Waltzing Matilda’ story it remains no more than speculation.

  What can be said with certainty is that the song was created by Barty Paterson and Christina Macpherson. In about 1934, Christina removed any doubt when she wrote to the music historian Thomas Wood:

  Dear Sir

  In reading your impressions about music in Australia I was interested to note that you had mentioned the song ‘Waltzing Matilda’, and thought it might interest you to hear how ‘Banjo’ Paterson came to write it. He 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 Race
s 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.

  In the letter, Christina remembered that men were always travelling across western Queensland, some riding and some on foot. These travellers were usually given rations at stations but, because of the vast distances they had to cover, some helped themselves to stock or other goods. Christina remembered an occasion when Paterson and her brother Bob discovered the skin of a recently killed sheep at a waterhole. The way Christina remembered it, the remains of the unknown swagman’s stolen meal became the basis for ‘Waltzing Matilda’.

  Paterson confirmed his authorship of the song in 1939—two years before his death—when he wrote a one-page letter on Australian Club notepaper to a school headmaster, Laurie Copping of Hall, near Canberra: ‘A Miss Macpherson . . . used to play a tune which she believed was an old Scottish tune but she did not know the name of it. I put words to it.’

  But for all its importance, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ brought little reward to its author. In 1902, Paterson sold the verse, along with some other ‘old junk’ to Angus & Robertson. The publishers then sold the rights to James Inglis & Co—the makers of Billy Tea, a company with the far-sighted idea of using the song to promote its product. The words were put to sheet music arranged by Marie Cowan, the wife of the company’s general manager, using the tune first played by Christina Macpherson. In the process, the words were slightly changed.

  Copies of the music were given away in every packet of tea sold. The tea company sent a copy to Paterson, who praised Mrs Cowan’s work and wished her well. It is thought the sale earned Paterson just £5.