Gerry, but ‘Australia’s on the wallaby’ was not a traditional song, it was specifically written by people who had left Australia and were voicing there bitterness at not being able to live the way they wanted. The Lawson poem is similarly political, but about the shearer strike. If there is an earlier, non political, precursor to both songs/poems, I was hoping someone might have a link.

The phrase ‘on the wallaby’ was in common use in the early/mid 1850s, but the specific pairing with freedom or Australia seems peculiar to these two works.