What general qualities appear in Australian songs that distinguish them from other English language songs?
That’s easier to describe by text than by melody. The big difference between the Australian native song and the British native song is that a high proportion of the Australian songs deal with the working ways and the outlook peculiar to Australia. The first thing you notice, for instance, in the body of Australian songs is the shortage of lyrical songs, particularly of lyrical songs involving women, and even more noticeably, songs that are put into a woman’s mouth. There are very few Australian folk songs proper, bush songs, in which the woman is the subject rather than the object of the song. Women’s songs are in short supply because women were in short supply, of course. The outback bush worker would lead pretty much a hermit’s life. As far as his working week was concerned, if he was lucky and the station wasn’t too far from a township, he might get into the township over the week-end. More often he would get in once a month. That’s what mostly used to happen to us – we used to ride
