Conclusion

Although Australian music has largely succumbed to globalisation and a larger hegemonic global sound, songs specifically about Australia itself strive to distinguish themselves from the crowd, drawing on Australia’s short European and long Indigenous histories and Asian-Pacific location in composition. Thus composers are able to portray the Australian landscape on varying scales, whether local or national, slowly formulating an Australian sound using “purely musical means, such as particular harmonic progressions... [and] innovative use of conventional musical signifiers” (Grimley 2006, p. 109).

Australians whose music reflects not only their individual responses to landscape but, sung in very different voices, articulates a vibrant relationship with the essence of country. Each loves this land, is acutely sensitive, in different ways, to the issues surrounding white ‘invasion’ and each looks to the Australian earth as a source of live and spirit (inspiration), rest and joy (Boyd; in Richards 2007, p. 11).