Cirrus@Austlit

'Long before bush balladeers such as Slim Dusty gave voice to a particular Australian rural experience, Aboriginal people from across Northern and Central Australia were using song to reflect on the rapid changes that came to their worlds in late the 19th and early 20th centuries. They captured major events and details of everyday life in their compositions, incorporating new themes into existing traditional song and dance styles. There were songs about the first and second world wars, about aeroplanes (Graham 1994), trains (Dixon & Koch 1996; Hercus 1994: 91-101) and buffaloes (Marett, Barwick, & Ford 2013). Other songs, many of which were recorded by Luise Hercus, commented on the new work regimes on pastoral properties. One example is the ‘Manager’ song, known widely across northern Queensland (Alpher & Keefe 2002). Even the less spectacular aspects of the newcomers’ lives did not escape the attention of these early bards who sang about station homesteads, ‘olden-time’ lamps and girls washing doors (Hercus & Koch 1999; Hercus 1994). In south-eastern Australia too Hercus recorded similar songs chronicling intercultural histories, like the Wemba Wemba song ‘Shearing on Tulla Station’ (1969: 95). Indigenous music provided ‘a site for creative and sustaining cultural responses’ to contact history (Donaldson 1995: 143) and it continues to be an important part of the intercultural dynamics of Australia (Ottosson 2012: 182).'  (Introduction)