PRIME MINISTER:
Citizens of Winton it is wonderful to be here. It is really wonderful to be here knowing that the secured funding will enable you to watch the rebuild of the Waltzing Matilda Centre here.
As David said, it’s Australia’s most loved song. It’s a romantic song, it’s a cheerful song, it’s a sad song, it’s a mysterious song - but it is more than anything else a thoroughly Australian song. It stirs the heart of every Australian whenever it is sung, whenever it is heard, wherever it is read.
It is as though Banjo Paterson distilled the very essence of everything that is best about our wonderful country in those words that he wrote here in Winton at Dagworth Station so long ago.
Of course for Paterson, a city person, Queensland had a special romance. Remember the great hero Clancy of the Overflow – you know: ‘The great drover who lent a hand to find the colt from Old Regret that got away, to come and help the man from Snowy River’. And of course his other great poem called Clancy of the Overflow – Paterson writes about the misery or working in the city, working in Sydney and he talks about being bound to the round eternal of the cashbook and the journal and he dreams of Clancy. And he writes a letter to his old friend Clancy who is down, who he last saw droving on the Lachlan River. And the note comes back, written by one of Clancy’s shearing mates, you remember the poem: ‘It appears to be in a thumbnail dipped in tar’. What does it say: ‘Clancy’s gone to Queensland droving and we don’t know where he are.’
Paterson rhapsodises about the romance and the space, the vast space of Queensland. He was entranced with this country and he sung about it, he wrote about it. He a city clerk normally bound for the cashbook and the journal as he complained came to Winton and he was filled with an inspiration for everything, the best and vast and optimistic and possible about Australia.
So right here our finest song, our most Australian song.
And you are the very best of us. You have been through the toughest times - beautiful and green there now, not so long ago, very tough, very bleak. The drought looked like it would never end. But filled with hope, led well, led by optimists, by men and women who believe that anything is possible as long as you kept on plugging away. The rain came, the Centre will be rebuilt and Paterson’s romance will be restored.
It is wonderful to be here, it is wonderful to be here at Winton, surrounded by romance, history and the vast possibility of Queensland.
Thank you very much – it is a great day. Thank you.
[ENDS]