Once a Jolly Swagman

Before I left Winton today I looked at bolder opals, which only come from this part of Queensland. Opalton is not far away, and Kynuna is on the road to Cloncurry. One of the other attractions in Winton is the Waltzing Matilda Centre which explores the song and its creator, Banjo Paterson. Most of the drive today was again through Mitchell grass plains. 

I stopped a bit before Kynuna to visit the Combo Waterhole, which is probably the billabong in Waltzing Matilda. Banjo Paterson was staying at the Dagworth station in 1895. I talked about the 1891 shearer’s strike, and there was another one in 1894. Things had been pretty tough as there had been drought and a rabbit plague which destroyed a lot of the soil of inland Australia. The pastoralists were desperate and they tried to reduce wages even more. Whereas, during the first strike, the strikers and the thousands of police and military had been restrained, in 1894 people were all in much worse moods. At Dagworth station the shearing shed had been burnt down and 143 sheep died, after shots were fired between the military and the owners and a group of strikers. The next day, one of the strikers probably shot himself dead. This story was told to Banjo by the owner of Dagworth Station while they were at the Combo waterhole together. It’s possible that the dead striker metamorphed into the swagman in the song, particularly as swagmen were itinerant workers, and most shearers would have been swagmen.

I stopped in Kynuna and had a delicious hamburger, but no one seemed to have their opals for sale. At McKinley I stopped to take a picture of the Crocodile Dundee Walkabout Hotel. Evidently Crocodile Dundee was filmed here, even though there wouldn’t be a crocodile anywhere nearby.

The vegetation changed before I reached Cloncurry. My accommodation is quite nice.