“Waltzing Matilda” was written in 1895 by the Australian bush poet Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson, who supplied the words to a tune played by Christina Macpherson while he was staying at Dagworth Station near Winton, Queensland. Paterson was born in rural New South Wales in 1864, trained and worked as a solicitor in Sydney, and became one of the best‑known balladists of the Australian outback before later moving fully into journalism and editing.wikipedia+4
Paterson came from a Scottish-descended pastoral family and spent much of his childhood on properties in the Yass district of New South Wales, experiences that fed directly into his bush imagery and sympathy for drovers, shearers, and horsemen. He adopted “The Banjo” as his pen name from a family racehorse, signaling both his rural connections and his fondness for horses.ebsco+1
After schooling in Sydney, he was articled to a law firm, admitted as a solicitor in 1886, and partnered in a city practice while publishing verse in the Bulletin and other papers under his pseudonym. Around 1900 he left law for journalism, serving as a war correspondent in the South African (Boer) War and travelling to China around the time of the Boxer Rebellion, later editing the Sydney Evening News and the Town and Country Journal.bwm+2
Paterson was long engaged—about eight years—to Sarah Riley, but that engagement ended abruptly after his 1895 visit to Dagworth Station in Queensland where she was staying with the Macpherson family. At Dagworth he met Riley’s close school friend Christina Macpherson, who played a tune she had heard at the Warrnambool races; he wrote the verses that became “Waltzing Matilda” to her music, and the sudden breakdown of his engagement plus his hurried departure from the property have led some historians to infer a romantic entanglement between Paterson and Macpherson.americansongwriter+2
During the First World War, Paterson was commissioned in the Australian Imperial Force’s remount units, serving in France and later commanding a unit in Egypt, rising to the rank of major before discharge in 1919. He married Alice Walker (who served with the Red Cross during the war), settled into a life combining pastoral interests and letters, and remained a prominent national literary figure until his death in 1941.britannica+2
“Waltzing Matilda” itself is tightly tied to Queensland pastoral society and to shearing and labour conflict; many scholars connect its story of a swagman and squatter’s men to events around the 1891 shearers’ strike and the suicide of a shearer called Hoffmeister, though the exact linkage remains debated. The song’s creation thus sits at the intersection of Paterson’s personal relationships, his bush upbringing, and the wider class and land tensions of colonial Australia.sailing-whitsundays+2