A Song to Forget

For nearly 150 years, Australia has been trying out--and rejecting--proposed national anthems. Among candidates of the distant past have been such forgettables as the Anthem on Queensland, The Cross and the Great White Star, Fling Out the Flag and Ave Australia. Some Aussies have jokingly suggested that the country should adopt as its national song The Australaise, a down-to-earth, Down Under version of the Marseillaise that is sung to the tune of Onward, Christian Soldiers. These are the words (and the blanks can be filled in according to taste and vocabulary):

Fellers of Australier, Blokes an 'coves an 'coots,

Shift yer carcasses,

Move yer boots,

Gird yer loins up,

Git yer gun,

Set the enermy,

An'watch the blighters run.

In the end, Australians have always returned to that reliable old import, God Save the Queen. During the 1972 election campaign, Labor Party Leader Gough Whitlam said that no self-respecting country should wave its flag to the words and music of its former colonial overlord. One of his first acts as Prime Minister was to begin still another search for a new song more befitting "our national aspirations." Although the government offered a prize of $14,850 to the winner, none of the thousands of entries was thought worthy of a kangaroo lullaby, let alone a national anthem. In desperation, the government turned to three golden oldies: Song of

Australia, Advance Australia Fair and Waltzing Matilda (an uplifting dirge about the suicide of a sheep rustler). A choice was made by a poll (in which one-half of 1% of the population was selected to represent the nation as a whole). Advance Australia Fair was chosen as the anthem by a bare majority.

Though Advance Australia Fair is now the official tune, some sour Australians would just as soon whistle Dixie. The Women's Electoral Lobby, a liberationist group, objected to the male chauvinism of the opening line: "Australia's sons, let us rejoice." Other complainers pointed out with obstinate but irrefutable logic that God Save the Queen was almost anti-British in comparison with the obsequious lyrics of Advance Australia Fair, which was written and composed by an emigrant Scottish carpenter around 1878. Sample lyrics:

Then here he [Captain William

Cook] raised old England's flag, The standard of the brave; With all her faults we love her still "Britannia rules the wave."

... Britannia then shall surely know, Beyond wide ocean's roll Her sons in fair Australia's land Still keep a British soul.

In a typical reaction, the Melbourne Herald said: "All together now, wince." Annoyed by the criticism, a spokesman for the Prime Minister stiffly replied that it was the tune that counted and the words hardly mattered. But they clearly do matter to many Australians, and the choice of the new anthem seemed to unleash the country's lyrical genius. One sardonic proposal, set to the tune of My Old Man's a Dustman, came from Phillip Adams, who writes a satirical column for a Melbourne paper:

/ love this bonzer country This land of grog and honey Of wallaby and cockatoo Of shearing shed and dunny.

Hove this bonzer country

Where the sea is full of sharks With blowies big as eagles Where your car gets booked by narks, Where your team gets trounced each

Saturday,

Where your pub runs out of beer, Where there's redbacks on the toilet

seat, And you 're nagged by Germaine

Greer.

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