History of Australia (1851–1900) drovers, stockmen and shearers were popular during the 19th century. Convict and bushranger verses often railed against government tyranny. Classic bush songs on such themes include: The Wild Colonial Boy, Click Go The Shears, The Dying Stockman and Moreton Bay. For much of its history, Australia's bush music belonged to an oral and folkloric tradition, and was only later published in print in volumes such as Banjo Paterson's "Old Bush Songs", in the 1890s. The lyrics of Waltzing Matilda, often regarded as Australia's unofficial National anthem, and a quintessential early Australian country music song were composed by the poet Banjo
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda "I’d got involved in Australia shortly after I got off the boat in the moratorium movement against the Vietnam War, and that’s when I wrote "And the band played Waltzing Matilda", which was the earliest of my anti-war stuff... Even then, before I visited the Western Front, I felt an empathy and a sympathy for the ordinary soldiers who died in their millions to preserve a dubious future." The line "they gave me a tin hat" is anachronistic, as steel helmets were not issued to British and Empire troops at Gallipoli. Walsh (2018) suggests that the line ". . .