Waltzing Matilda nearby billabong (watering hole), after which his ghost haunts the site. The original lyrics were written in 1895 by Australian poet Banjo Paterson, and were first published as sheet music in 1903. Extensive folklore surrounds the song and the process of its creation, to the extent that it has its own museum, the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton, in the Queensland outback, where Paterson wrote the lyrics. In 2012, to remind Australians of the song's significance, Winton organised the inaugural Waltzing Matilda Day to be held on 6 April, the anniversary of its first performance. The song was first recorded
Waltzing Matilda record and comment on the events of the shearers' strike." A number of alternative theories for the origins or meaning of "Waltzing Matilda" have been proposed since the time it was written; however, most experts now essentially agree on the details outlined above. Some oral stories collected during the twentieth century claimed that Paterson had merely modified a preexisting bush song, but there is no evidence for this. In 1905 Paterson himself published a book of bush ballads he had collected from around Australia entitled "Old Bush Songs", with nothing resembling "Waltzing Matilda" in it. Nor do any other publications