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'
Waltzing Matilda or recordings of bush ballads include anything to suggest it preceded Paterson. Meanwhile, handwritten manuscripts from the time the song originated indicate the song's origins with Paterson and Christina Macpherson, as do their own recollections and other pieces of evidence. There has been speculation about the relationship "Waltzing Matilda" bears to an English song, "The Bold Fusilier" (also known as "Marching through Rochester", referring to Rochester in Kent and the Duke of Marlborough), a song sung to the same tune and dated by some back to the 18th century but first printed in 1900. There is, however, no documentary proof