1834 - 1916

The lasting legacy Waverley resident and Scotsman Peter Dodds McCormick left his adopted country was its national anthem. Born in Glasgow in 1833, the joiner turned schoolteacher and musician arrived in Sydney in 1855.

McCormick worked at his trade and performed with musical societies for eight years before being appointed teacher-in-charge of a school at St Mary’s in 1863, then a Woolloomooloo school (1867-78), where he became an St Andrew's Presbyterian Church elder.

A decade later, McCormick moved to Waverley, becoming an elder at the Grahame Memorial Church on Victoria St. His first house was at 5 Virgil St (now 20 Yanko Avenue, Bronte).

Music was his great love and as precentor of the Presbyterian Church’s General Assembly he energetically organised vast church choirs. He published 30 patriotic and Scottish songs including the popular 'The Bonnie Banks o' Clyde'.

A 'bold and stirring' and ‘decidedly patriotic’ rendition of 'Advance Australia Fair' - as a Sydney newspaper described it - was first sung at the Highland Society’s St Andrew's Day concert in 1878.

In 1913, McCormick revealed how he came to write the song: after attending a concert at which national anthems were sung he 'felt very aggravated that there was not one note for Australia. On the way home in a bus, I concocted the first verse of my song and when I got home I set it to music. … It seemed to me to be like an inspiration, and I wrote the words and music with the greatest ease.' He registered his copyright in 1915.

His composition was sung by a choir of 10,000 voices at Federation in Centennial Park on 1 January 1901, when Australia became a self-governing nation, and was played by massed bands at celebrations for the naming of the federal capital in Canberra.

In 1902, McCormick moved to 103 Birrell St (now No. 87). He died at his Waverley home in 1916 aged 83. After his death, attempts were made to have 'Advance Australia Fair' proclaimed the national anthem, but did not succeed until 1984 when prime minister Bob Hawke declared it so.

Courtesy NSW State Archive.