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
Waltzing Matilda waltzing Matilda with me. Up came the squatter a-riding his thoroughbred, Up rose the troopers—one, two, a and three. "Whose the jolly jumbuck you've got in the tucker-bag? You'll come a waltzing Matilda with we." Up sprang the swagman and jumped in the waterhole, Drowning himself by the Coolibah tree. And his voice can be heard as it sings in the billabongs, Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me. ("Chorus")</poem> By contrast with the original, and also with subsequent versions, the chorus of all the verses was the same in this version. This is also apparently the only version that