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 a Remembrance Day parade in Canberra and the song was the result of that event. The song was written in the space of two weeks. Interviewed in 2009 for "The Scotsman", he said: I wrote it as an oblique comment on the Vietnam War which was in full swing… but while boys from Australia were dying there, people had hardly any idea where Vietnam was. Gallipoli was a lot closer to the Australian ethos – every schoolkid knew the story, so I set the song there. ... At first the Returned Service League and all these people didn't accept it