The Song of Australia

The story

"The Song of Australia" was the result of a competition for a "patriotic song" held by the Gawler Institute in 1859. On 1 October the South Australian Register announced a prize of ten guineas, open to South Australia, for the words of a song to be entitled "The Song of Australia", the copyright of the winning words to pass to the Institute; entries were to be sent unsigned, under a motto, to George Isaacs at Gawler. On 20 October the judges gave the prize to "Mrs. C. J. Carleton, Adelaide", the English-born poet Caroline Carleton, and her poem was printed in the Register on 21 October. A second prize of ten guineas was then offered for the music, an air in the treble clef with a chorus for three or four voices and a piano accompaniment. On 4 November the judges examined twenty-three settings and unanimously chose the one under the motto "One of the Quantity"; three others came so close that they had great difficulty deciding. Its composer was the German-born Carl Linger (1810–1862), a prominent member of the Australian Forty-Eighters.

The poem was criticised as soon as it appeared, mostly as pleasant verse that was "too tame". One reader regretted that nothing more inspiring than the colour of the sky and the prettiness of the scenery could be found; another complained that it could just as well describe California; others regretted that the contest had been open only to South Australians, that the prize was so small and that the poem said nothing of sheep. The Advertiser of 24 October defended the judges and the poem, and printed several parodies offered as the "real Song of Australia".

One of its first public performances was given by the Adelaide Liedertafel, conducted by Linger, at a soirée of the South Australian Institute in White's Rooms, King William Street, Adelaide, on 14 December 1859. Sung by orchestra and chorus under Professor Joshua Ives, it was a feature of the opening of the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition in 1887. The Australian baritone Peter Dawson, who called it "the finest national anthem ever written", sang it in London as a duet with Richard Nitschke in 1905 and with Clara Serena at Wembley on 24 July 1924, then Australia Day, and recorded it with a vocal quartet for His Master's Voice in 1932. In June 1936, during the German-Australian Centenary celebrations, a memorial to Linger was unveiled at the West Terrace Cemetery, and its chairman, Heinrich Krawinkel, announced that the song would soon be broadcast from the short-wave transmitters of Radio Berlin.

In 1924 George Edwin Yates, the federal member for Adelaide, proposed in parliament that it be made the national anthem, and sang its first verse despite the objections of other members. In the national plebiscite of 1977 it was one of four choices for Australia's national song, with "Waltzing Matilda", the then anthem "God Save the Queen" and "Advance Australia Fair". It was the least popular of the four across the country but the most popular in South Australia, which is explained by schooling: "Advance Australia Fair" was taught to children in the more populous states, while "The Song of Australia" was sung in schools only in South Australia and, to a lesser extent, in Western Australia and Tasmania. "Advance Australia Fair" became the anthem. The tune lives on in "My Bougainville", the anthem of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, and Dawson's recording is heard in the television series ANZAC Girls.

What it says

A patriotic song of praise for the land, verse by verse: its bright skies and green hills, its harvests and vineyards, the gold and gems hidden in its mines, its farmsteads full of children's voices, and a free people under a proud flag, Britain's fairest daughter, where no slave can live. Each verse ends on the country's name. The mood is calm and pastoral rather than martial, which is what its first critics held against it.

The words