Swagman
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A swagman was a transient labourer who travelled by foot from farm to farm carrying his belongings in a swag. The term originated in Australia in the 19th century and was later used in New Zealand.
Photograph of a swagman, c. 1901
Swagman, n.d.
Down on His Luck, painted by Frederick McCubbin in 1889, depicts a melancholic swagman "on the Wallaby"
'The Shiner', a South Island swagman from the 1870s to the 1920s
Banjo Paterson
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Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author, widely considered one of the greatest writers of Australia's colonial period.
Swagman
…work was available, would provide food and shelter in return for some menial task. The figure of the "jolly swagman", represented most famously in Banjo Paterson's bush poem "Waltzing Matilda", became a folk hero in 19th-century Australia, and is still seen today as a symbol of anti-authoritarian values that…
Banjo Paterson, c. 1890
Paterson as a baby with his nanny, Wiradjuri girl Fanny Hopkins, mid-1860s
The Gladesville cottage Rockend, where Paterson lived in the 1870s and 1880s
This portrait of Paterson is reproduced on the Australian ten-dollar note.