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
Matilda (chicken) Tonight Show". Two dogs, Gucci and Muffin, were also inducted. Matilda (chicken) Matilda (1990 – February 11, 2006) was a fourteen-ounce hen, and the first chicken to receive the title of World's Oldest Living Chicken from Guinness World Records. She is thought to have been descended from the Red Pyle color variation of the Old English Game breed. She was a pet of Keith and Donna Barton of Bessemer, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. Matilda's name was taken from "Waltzing Matilda", an old Australian folk song, and given to her as a result of her penchant for stepping side