the lyrics of the original “Waltzing Matilda”. Some of the stories that may have inspired the lyrics of “Waltzing Matilda” are below. In Queensland, in 1891, the Great Shearers' Strike brought the colony close to civil war and was broken only after the Premier of Queensland, Samuel Griffith, called in the military. In July and August 1894, as the shearing season approached, the strike broke out again in protest at a wage and contract agreement proposed by the ‘squatters'. During July and August, seven shearing sheds in central Queensland were burned by striking union shearers before shearing could begin with ‘scab’ labour. Early on the morning of September 2, a group of striking union shearers, firing rifles and pistols, set fire to the shearing shed at Dagworth. The fire killed over a hundred sheep. The shed was defended by Constable Michael Daly, Bob Macpherson and his brothers and employees. In the early afternoon of the same day, Senior Constable Austin Cafferty, in Kyuna, was informed that a man had shot himself at a striking shearers’ camp in a billabong 4 miles from Kyuna and about 15 miles from Dagworth. When he arrived at the camp, S/C Cafferty found the body of Samuel Hoffmeister, also known as “Frenchy”, with a bullet wound through the mouth in an apparent suicide. Hoffmeister was a known leader of the striking unionists and suspected of being involved in the arson attack at Dagworth on the night before. Later S/C Cafferty was joined by Constable Michael Daley who had travelled from Dagworth. Three days later an inquest into his death was conducted with very limited police resources. The coroner, police magistrate, Ernest Eglington, gave the controversial but convenient verdict of suicide. Bob Macpherson (the brother of Christina) and Paterson are said to have taken rides together at Dagworth. Here they would probably have passed the Combo Waterhole, where Macpherson is purported to have told this story to Paterson. Although not remaining in close contact, Paterson and Christina Macpherson had different recollections of where the song was first composed- Christina said it was composed "in Winton" while Paterson said it was at "Dick's Creek" on the road to Winton. Amongst Macpherson's belongings, found after her death in 1936, was an unsent letter to a music researcher that read "... one day I played (from ear) a tune, which I had heard played by a band at the