In 1877 the "professional" swagman - those who were swagmen by choice - formed their own "union". The inaugural meeting was held on the Lachlan River near Forbes in NSW and a collection of "frowsy deadbeats, loony hatters and aggressive cadgers" got together to vote office beaders and draw up regulations:
1. No member to be over 100 years old.
2. Each member to pay one pannikin of flour entrance fee. Members who don't care about paying will be admitted free.
3. No member to carry swags weighing over 10lb.
4. Each member to possess three complete sets of tucker-bags, each set to consist on nine bags.
5. No member to pass any station, farm, boundary-rider's hut, camp or private house without 'tapping' and obtaining rations and hand-outs.
6. No member to allow himself to be bitten by a sheep. If a sheep bites a member he must immediately turn it into mutton.
7. Members who defame a 'good' cook or pay a fine when run in shall be expelled from the Union.
8. No member is allowed to hum baking powder, tea, flour, sugar, or tobacco from a fellow-unionist.
9. Non-smoking members must 'whisper' for tobacco on every possible occassion, the same as other smokers.
10. At general or branch meetings non-smokers must ante up their whispered tobacco nuggets to be distributed amongst the officers of the Union.
11. Any member found without having at least two sets of bags filled with tucker will be fined.
12. No members to own more that one creek, river, or billabong bendd. To sell bends for old boots or 'sinkers' is prohibited.
13. No member to look for or accept work of any description. Members found working will be at once expelled.
14. No member to walk more than five miles per day if rations can be hummed.
15. No member to tramp on Sundays at any price.

A further effort to give swagmen some kind of offical status was a strange publication that appeared in 1900 entitled "The Swag: The Unoffical Flute of the Sundowners and Other ColonialVagrants; with which is enfurcated the Bush Marconi and the Whaler's Telegraph".

The publication was aimed at the Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun, in the hope that he would obtain a better deal for the wanderers of the bush.

Amongst other things, the author reckoned that swaggies and their ilk, being true blue Aussies, should be represented at the functions celebrating the inauguration of the Commonwealth!