Waltzing Matilda in 1926 as performed by John Collinson and Russell Callow. In 2008, this recording of "Waltzing Matilda" was added to the Sounds of Australia registry in the National Film and Sound Archive which says that there are more recordings of "Waltzing Matilda" than any other Australian song. The Australian poet Banjo Paterson wrote the words to "Waltzing Matilda" in January 1895 while staying at Dagworth Station, a sheep and cattle station near Winton in Central West Queensland owned by the Macpherson family. The words were written to a tune played on a zither or autoharp by 31‑year‑old Christina Macpherson, one
And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda "I’d got involved in Australia shortly after I got off the boat in the moratorium movement against the Vietnam War, and that’s when I wrote "And the band played Waltzing Matilda", which was the earliest of my anti-war stuff... Even then, before I visited the Western Front, I felt an empathy and a sympathy for the ordinary soldiers who died in their millions to preserve a dubious future." The line "they gave me a tin hat" is anachronistic, as steel helmets were not issued to British and Empire troops at Gallipoli. Walsh (2018) suggests that the line ". . .