PRIME MINISTER
"* EMBARGOED UNTIL 8: 30PM**
SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEATING, MP
WALTZING MATILDA CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS
WINTON 6 APRIL 1995
This is a great honour. It is one to tell our grandchildren about: we were in the
North Gregory Hotel when Australia celebrated the first performance of Waltzing
Matilda 100 years ago.
And we were all in evening dress. Which is something the swagman would have
found amusing but maybe the squatter, the troopers and Banjo Paterson would
have appreciated it.
I'm sure they all would have liked the irony in it.
It is a great pleasure to be here and to see for the second time in two days the
spirit of rural Australia.
I was in Bourke yesterday another place in the romance of the swag. And
another place suffering the drought.
Yesterday in Bourke the town was gathered for an extraordinary event an
international marathon race from Bourke to Parramatta to raise money for the
Fred Hollows Foundation.
Fred Hollows is buried in Bourke and they celebrate his memory as a man who
loved the bush and the values of the people who live there.
His work was, in many ways, an extension of the old idea of mateship, and
through it he lifted all our spirits and raised our goals.
Here in Winton, in an altogether different way, these ceebrations are reminding
us of the same things.
They are reminding us of the spirit of the bush and commemorating a song which
has lifted our spirits for 100 years.
There are no limits to the power of a good song.
I read on the way up here that 10,000 people would be in Witon this weekend:
so this has to be a very considerable boost to Winton as it struggles through the
drought. You see, music has more than charms it has profound economic effects.
In times like this it is not as good as rain, but it may well be the next best thing.
Waltzing Matilda was born in a drought era of course, and it is not hard to imagine
that this might have had some effect on the melancholy theme of the song. And
there is equally no doubt that in all the varieties of hard times Waltzing Matilda
has galvanised the spirit of counless Australians.
If culture is that which defines a people, if it is the expression of their collective
sentment, Waltzing Matilda sits at the centre of gI~ culture it's a well-spring of
the national sentiment, a pool, a billabong.
I suspect there is no one here who has not at some time, somewhere in the
world, heard or remembered the tune and felt deeply affected by it
I'm sure it has brought Australians home before they intended to, and given
others the strength to stay away a bit longer. For a century it has caused
Australian hearts to beat faster.
I venture to say it has caused more smiles and tears, and more hairs to stand up
on the backs of Australian necks than any other thing of three minutes duration in
Australia's history.
It has long been our unofficial national song. Not our anthem as I've said
before, one can't sing too solemnly about a jumbuck. But Waltzing Matilda is
Australia's song and it always will be.
Think what it has withstood down the years. Wave after wave of American and
British popular music. The cultural cringe and all that post-colonial posturing.
The urbanisation of Australia which might have been expected to dilute the old
bush sentiments. Mass immigration and multicultural Australia which changed
the face and the fabric of our society.
Watzing Matilda has endured them all. It has endured through wars and
depressions, good years and bad. It has endured some terrible renditions by
both local and overseas performers.
I don't think we should make it official and issue some kind of decree; but I think
% w all know that Waltzing Matilda is at least as beloved as the anthem. It is to we
Australians what Land of Hope and Glory is to the British, or AmerIca the
Beautiful and God Bless America are to the people of the United States.
Anid, entirely without prejudice to the status of Advance Australia Fair, we might
sing Waltzing Matilda at a lot more public occasions than we presently do.
I hope these celebrations serve as a bit of a trigger for this.
I have no doubt that all through these celebrations people will be talking about
why Waltzing Matilda endures. Why ft means so much to us.
I know some will also be asking who the swagman was and what, therefore, the
song was meant to signify. I won't be buying into the historical debate, but I
suppose every Australian is entitled to say even obliged to say what the song
means to him or her.
I don't think I was the only Australian kid who wondered when he learned the
words at school what sort of swagman is this? Jolly one minute, drowning
himself the next?
These questions about the psychology of the swagman have never had the
weight of the social and political interpretations the ideological interpretations.
Paterson's words describe a class struggle, and if ever there was a class struggle
in Australia it was in the 1890s.
Its not hard to see the song as an affirmation of the idea of the fair go, which still
strikes a powerful chord in Australians. And may it always do so.
It is also about freedom. The swagman is a free spirit.
We can interpret Waltzing Matilda as a celebration of our rebellious nature, as
part of the tradition which began with the convict rebellion at Castle Hill and runs
all the way through Frank the Poet, the Eureka Stockade and Ned Kelly. We can
think of the swagman's jump into the billabong as an Australian statement of
liberty or death.
But, the truth is, none of these things come into my mind when I hear it sung.
They didn't come into my mind when the entire crowd gathered in Croke Park in
Dublin sang it before the Gaelic football final when I was there two years ago.
I don't know what came into my mind then I think the experience emptied it of all
rational thought. But afterwards I was aware of the extraordinary power of this
song on an Australian's senses.
All sorts of music can move us, but to hear Waltzing Matilda sung so fervently
and beautifully by the people of another country 12,000 miles from home is to
know that nothing can move us like our own song.
It is to know that a national song is not something to be interpreted intellectually.
When you hear it, you don't think about a political position, or social and
psychological issues. You don't think about the historical context.
What Waltzing Matilda tells us in an entirely uncomplicated way is that we are
Australian. And it tells us in a way that I think is equally Australian in character it
tells us without beating drums or waving flags, or pounding our chests. It tells us
with a simple melody and a story, and a whimsical and ironic story at that.
There is no national song I know of quite like it in the world.
I'm sure what happened with Banjo Paterson and Waltzing Matilda happened in
the realm of the spirit.
I think he wrote a story to a tune which quite mysteriously in ways we'll never
know picked up the spirit of the place as Awt as then; and, like the ghost of the
swagman, it never died.
And it touches us as a ghost might. As the spirit of the bush might.
When we were kids the other line I think we used to wonder about was the one
which says that " his ghost may be heard as you pass by the billabong". I confess
to wondering what you would hear. What sort of noise would the old swagman
make what does it sound like when you stuff a jumbuck in a tucker bag?
It took me ages to realise that this was Banjo Paterson's whole trick the son is
the ghost of the swagman, and a hundred years later we are hearing it as loud as
ever.