I must admit I have not read all the information in the Waltzing Matilda site, and the reference to the Hoffmeister suicide as a framework for the song is also new to me.

However I came to believe, during my time in Oz, that the song has a totally different meaning to the superficial one it portrays. Dave de Hugard did a sort of rambling monologue on the subject at one of his festival performances, and asked the question why should a squatter (a man who would have owned a piece of land bigger than several English counties put together) take an interest in a man stealing one sheep. There are other anomilies that I will not detail here, and some of which have been noted above.

I think its an allegory on the 1891 sheep shearers strike, and any other messages hidden in it, including the shade joke identified above, are meant to make the listener say "is there something else in this"

There is a song called the ballad of 1891, which deals with the subject more directly.

regards alan