1891 Australian shearers' strike wrote his novel in 1892, T"he workingman's paradise", with two aims: to support fundraising efforts for the imprisoned unionists, and to explain unionism and socialism to those who would listen. Banjo Paterson's song Waltzing Matilda, an unofficial Australian anthem, was also written about this era of shearers' industrial disputes in Queensland. Helen Palmer's song 'The Ballad Of 1891', set to music by Doreen Jacobs, details the lead up to the strike and aftermath. The 1975 film Sunday Too Far Away, directed by Ken Hannam has been partly inspired by the events surrounding this strike. The site of the striking shearers'
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda to Gallipoli. For "ten weary weeks", he kept himself alive as "around [him] the corpses piled higher". Eventually he is wounded by a shellburst and awakens in hospital to find that both his legs have been amputated. When the ship carrying the young soldiers departs from Australia the band plays "Waltzing Matilda" while crowds wave flags and cheer. When the crippled narrator returns and "the legless, the armless, the blind, the insane" are carried down the gangway to the same popular music, the people watch in silence and turn their faces away. Interviewed by "The Sydney Morning Herald" in 2002,