Australian country music link Australia's vast distances. Isolation and loneliness of life in the Australian bush has been another theme. 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. Waltzing Matilda, often regarded as Australia's unofficial National anthem, is a quintessential early Australian country song, influenced more by Celtic folk ballads than by American Country and Western music. The lyrics were composed by the poet Banjo Paterson in 1895. This strain of Australian country music, with lyrics focusing
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda he was surprised to be asked to perform at a local folk club on the strength of the song. Bogle was born in Peebles, Scotland, in 1944; "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" was his first anti-war, which he composed after movng to Australia in 1969, and seeing his first Anzac Day march, while working as an accountant in Canberra in 1971. "The Vietnam War was still going on at the time, so there were lots of protests going on and it wasn’t nearly as well covered and as well attended and well regarded as it is today," he said.