THE SWAGMAN

He would be considered dangerous by Australian authorities today. If he were not their national symbol of the past, the government agents would sock him away in prison.

When someone shows too much individuality, he must be watched. He may well be a terrorist or illegal immigrant. The USA Homeland Security also watches anyone who is a bit weird.

In past days in Texas, Arizona, and the Outback or Australia, life was spiced up and made colorful by these odd fellows.

In Australia, it was the Swagman.

A swagman, also called a swaggie, sundowner or tussocker, is an old Australian and New Zealand term describing an underclass of transient temporary workers, who travelled by foot from farm to farm carrying the traditional swag (bedroll). Also characteristic of swagman attire was a hat strung with corks to ward off flies.

Particularly during the Depression of the 1890s and the Great Depression of the 1930s, unemployed men travelled the rural areas of Australia on foot, their few meagre possessions rolled up and carried in their swag. Typically, they would seek work in farms and towns they travelled through, and in many cases the farmers, if no permanent work was available, would provide food and shelter in return for some menial task.

Another form of the swagman was the "pack horse bagman" who rode a horse and led one or two pack horses in his travels, typically in the Northern Territory. The pack horse bagman called in at stations where he would work shoeing horses, mustering, repairing bores, etc.

In the USA the same exact era produced the Ho Bo. He did the same thing. In the 1970s I pastored a small church in the California desert on the Union Pacific Railroad. Our town station was a shift change point, so all trains stopped for a while. Ho Bo's would get off the train, and ours was the only church in town where the parsonage was occupied all the time. So, I had many visits. 

Most of the men "riding the rails" were not Ho Bo's anymore. They were basically down and out beggars. But, I knew a genuine Ho Bo because they would always insist on working before I fed them. It has always been a point of honor in that profession. You must give the Swagman of Australia and the Ho Bo or the USA high credit today for not accepting entitlement. They had an ethic that many millionaires don't have.

The following discussion of the Swagman is uncanny, for it describes the American Ho Bo in all details. There must be some sort of quirk in human social behavior which produces these odd fellows. The following is from Wikipedia:

Swagmen were often victims of circumstance who had found themselves homeless. Others were rovers by choice, or else they were on the run from police (bushrangers). Many were European or Asian migrants seeking fortune on the goldfields. One such swagman was Welshman Joseph Jenkins, who travelled throughout Victoria between 1869 and 1894, documenting his experiences in daily diary entries and through poetry.^[11] Swagmen ranged in age from teenagers to the elderly. Socialist leaderJohn A. Lee's time as a swagman while a teenager informed his political writing,^[12] and also featured directly in some of his other books. Novelist Donald Stuart also began his life as a swagman at age 14. Several of his novels follow the lives of swagmen and aborigines in the Kimbereley and Pilbara regions of Western Australia. Many swagmen interacted with aborigines along their travels; bushwear designer R.M. Williams spent his latter teen years as a swagman travelling across the Nullarbor Plain, picking up bushcraft and survival skills from local aboriginal tribes such as cutting mulga, tracking kangaroos and finding water.

At times they would have been seen in and around urban areas looking for work or a handout. Most eyewitness descriptions of swagmen were written during the period when the country was 'riding on the sheep's back'. At this time, rovers were offered rations at police stations as an early form of the dole payment. They roamed the countryside finding work as sheep shearers or as farm hands. Not all were hard workers. Some swagmen known as sundowners would arrive at homesteads or stations at sundown when it was too late to work, taking in a meal and disappearing before work started the next morning. The New Zealand equivalent of a sundowner was known as a tussocker.^[8]

Most existed with few possessions as they were limited by what they could carry. Generally they had a swag (canvas bedroll), a tucker bag (bag for carrying food) and some cooking implements which may have included a billy can (tea pot or stewing pot). They carried flour for making damper and sometimes some meat for a stew. They traveled with fellow 'swaggies' for periods, walking where they had to go, hitch hiking or stowing aboard cargo trains to get around. They slept on the ground next to a campfire, in hollowed out trees or under bridges.

And, we could not leave this topic without giving you the most famous literary story about a Swagman.
Waltzing Matilda.

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a coolibah tree,
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Down came a jumbuck to drink at that billabong,
Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee,
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker bag,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred,
Down came the troopers, one, two, three,
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?"
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
"Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker bag?",
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into the billabong,
"You'll never take me alive", said he,
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me".

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me"
And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,
"You'll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me."

And Rolf Harris captures it all:

Have any of our readers known a Swagman from long ago? Also, what is the equivalent of a Swagman in your corner of the Empire? Leave comments please.