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Return to home pageThis should be our National Anthem!
Absolutely wonderful Kaye … and I agree Rosemary – National Anthem.
Happy day in Australia to you both.
Been a while Kaye, RUOK?
Happy Gondwanaland day. How many more will we achieve before we find success in the destruction of life on planet earth?
Cheers, KL.
Take care, all.
Life intrudes sometimes David. I am ok. Thanks for asking. I’ve been back a couple of weeks and written a few things. Today, I just wanted to hug everyone.
I agree with others. This should be our National Anthem.
I’d never seen the words to that song. Wow. They were brilliant. Would love to have it as our national anthem.
But I would change one word: change 40,000 (years the First Australians have lived on this land) to 60,000.
(For decades the oldest archaeological remains in Australia were consistently dated at 40,000 years, so logically it was assumed that Aborigines came here 40,000 years ago. But then in the 1990s it was discovered that the dating method – carbon dating – had a limit of 40,000 years).
The song was written in 1987. I sometimes feel we have gone backwards.
The day the Mabo land rights decision was passed down?
I am Australian songwriter ‘brought undone’ as tune becomes an isolation anthem
When Bruce Woodley hopped in the shower back in the mid-1980s, he had no idea the little ditty he belted out would become a national source of comfort amidst a global pandemic. Read the full story.
ABC app.
And a shortened version of the song by The Seekers in 2000
Sent from my iPad
And the link to Bruce Woodley
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-18/i-am-australian-songwriter-bruce-woodley-on-song-and-coronavirus/12156548
It makes me cry. We have such potential if we truly hear each other.
I have this fantasy of us all joining hands and singing as the crowd at the MCG did back in 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDCiNGYfhPY
An extraordinary happening at the MCG in 2013, KL. Thanks for sharing this clip. And yes, we do have such potential as a nation to be accepting and generous with one another.
Curiously and ironically, the pandemic seems to have revealed and to have actualised a little of that potential. Music of course moves people emotionally. As a national culture, it seems we have few musical pieces that bind us, in our cultural diversity and across our age bands.
Thus the ABC’s use of the song ‘I am Australian ‘ is inspired, having a potential to address a cultural space that is almost a void. The Seekers who first gave this Bruce Woodley song a life, I think provide a very moving rendition of the song, particularly when they sing all the verses.
I Am Australian has been the natural successor to the AAF dirge since The Seekers first performed it back in the 1980s.
Thank you Kaye for this eloquent posting. The song was very moving. I am sending everyone greetings and all best wishes for health and harmony from Penang, Malaysia.
Do away with the dirge : that’s our national anthem right there !
Would have to agree, a great song. This is a beauty too…
From little things, big things grow
Yes, a wonderful story of hope in song CL. A fine addition. Thanks.
The main thing that struck me with ‘I am Australian’ was the inclusivity. Australia is now mix of people from of all parts of the globe, and we need an anthem to reflect that. A song that defines all of us, not just us anglo mob that have ransacked this place. Chinese people were here mining the goldfields in the 1860’s making up to 3.3% of the population at the time. They were banned from coming into Melbourne, so ships dropped them at Robe and they walked to the goldfields. Just another tiny piece of our history.
I’ll settle for Waltzing Matilda as long as it’s the Queensland version.
Waltzing Matilda is a bit pass’e for my liking. Even the Queensland version.
I don’t want to be too bipartisan here, but how about “Bound for South Australia”?
I’m sure that Jack, wam and Roswell would agree. 😁
haha michael, spot on. when I was a D3F at uni, we would play badminton friday night and at about 11pm we would squash 6 of us, bench seats, into george’s small (that was also his name) ford prefect a charge off to elizabeth where we would drink. except george he was a coke addict at least 6 a day(his mum offered us a keg if we could get him on a date so we tried but his mum didn’t know none of us had been on a date so it was the blind leading the blind). We only played two albums harry belefonte at carnegie hall(1959) and return (1960) with miriam mikaba the kingston trio and a magnificent singer odetta(my darling and I met her outside the town after a concert). George would drop us off on the way to brighten where he lived and I was the last drop off at woodville west our song for the home trip was a screamingly loud tuneless, each with our own key. “In South Australia I was born, heave away, haul away In South Australia, ’round Cape Horn, we’re bound for South Australia” Just about every sat I would get home just as dad got up for work and I’d cook him eggs on toast. What memories????? I can still croak many of the songs and my kids and grandkids all loved being odetta in there’s a hole in the bucket.