I am Australian – VOCABULARY

Australian history through the vocabulary from the song of “I am Australian”

I came from the dream time, from the dusty red soil plains,
I am the ancient heart - the keeper of the flame,
I stood upon the rocky shore, I watched the tall ships come,
For forty thousand years I'd been the first Australian.

I came upon the prison ship bound down by iron chains

I cleared the land, endured the lash and waited for the rains.
I'm a settler, I'm a farmer's wife on a dry and barren run
A convict then a free man, I became Australian.

I'm the daughter of a digger who sought the mother lode

The girl became a woman on the long and dusty road
I'm a child of the depression, I saw the good times come
I'm a bushy, I'm a battler, I am Australian.

I'm a teller of stories, I'm a singer of songs

I am Albert Namatjira, and I paint the ghostly gums
I am Clancy on his horse, I'm Ned Kelly on the run
I'm the one who waltzed Matilda, I am Australian.

I'm the hot wind from the desert, I'm the black soil of the plains
I'm the mountains and the valleys, I'm the drought and flooding rains
I am the Rock, I am the sky, the rivers when they run
The spirit of this great land, I am Australian.

Chorus:
We are one but we are many
And from all the lands on earth we come,
we share a dream and sing with one voice,
I am, you are, we are Australian.

Vocabulary
sources from www.wikipedia.org and http://www.culture.gov.au

Dream time
In Australian Aboriginal mythology, The Dreamtime is a sacred 'once upon a time' in which ancestral Totemic
Spirit Beings formed The Creation. The Dreamtime for Australian Indigenous people is when the Ancestral Beings
moved across the land and created life and significant geographic features.
The Dreaming also means to 'see and understand the law'. Dreaming stories pass on important knowledge,
cultural values and belief systems to later generations. Through song, dance, painting and storytelling which
express the dreaming stories, Aborigines have maintained a link with the Dreaming from ancient times to today,
creating a rich cultural heritage.
Once the ancestor spirits had created the world, they changed into trees, the stars, rocks, watering holes or other
objects. These are the sacred places of Aboriginal culture and have special properties. Because the ancestors
did not disappear at the end of the Dreaming, but remained in these sacred sites, the Dreaming is never-ending,
linking the past and the present, the people and the land.
The Creation or Dreaming stories, which describe the travels of the spiritual ancestors, are integral to Aboriginal
spirituality. In many areas there are separate spheres of men's and women's stories. Knowledge of the law and of
the Dreaming stories is acquired progressively as people proceed through life. Ceremonies, such as initiation
ceremonies, are avenues for the passing on of knowledge.
Traditional knowledge, law and religion relies heavily on the Dreaming stories with its rich explanations of land
formations, animal behaviour and plant remedies.
Aboriginal - adjective: 1 inhabiting or existing in a land from the earliest times or from before the arrival of colonists;
indigenous. 2 (Aboriginal) relating to the Australian Aboriginals. noun: 1 an aboriginal inhabitant. 2 (Aboriginal) a member of
one of the indigenous peoples of Australia.

I watched the tall ships come

On 13 May 1787, a fleet of 11 ships, which came to be known
as the First Fleet, was sent by the British Admiralty from
England to Australia. Under the command of Captain Arthur
Phillip, the fleet sought to establish a penal colony at Botany
Bay on the coast of New South Wales, which had been
explored and claimed by Captain James Cook in 1770. The
settlement was seen as necessary because of the loss of the
colonies in North America. The Fleet arrived between 18 and
20 January 1788.
tall ship - a sailing ship with a high mast or masts (schooner)

John Allcot (1888-1973) , The First Fleet in Sydney Cove, January 27, 1788, 1938, art reproduction.

For forty thousand years I'd been the first Australian.

Aborigines have the longest continuous cultural history of any group of people on Earth. Estimates date this
history between 50,000 and 65,000 years.
Aborigines probably landed on Cape York, in northern Australia, between - and this is hotly contested at present -
24,000 and 60,000 years ago, forming about 500 tribes with different languages and customs, and numbering
between 250,000 and 750,000 at the time of the British arrival, or invasion, in 1788. These first Australians may
have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians; they may have arrived via land bridges and short sea-
crossings from what is now Southeast Asia. Most of these people were hunter-gatherers, with a complex oral
culture and spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime.

I came upon the prison ship

In 1788, the eleven ships of the First Fleet landed their 'cargo' of around 780 British convicts at Botany Bay in
New South Wales. Two more convict fleets arrived in 1790 and 1791, and the first free settlers arrived in 1793.
From 1788 to 1823, the Colony of New South Wales was officially a penal colony comprised mainly of convicts,
marines and the wives of the marines. The early convicts were all sent to Botany Bay, but by the early 1800s they
were also being sent directly to destinations such as Norfolk Island, Van Diemen's Land, Port Macquarie and
Moreton Bay.
When the last shipment of convicts disembarked in Western Australia in 1868, the total number of transported
convicts stood at around 162,000 men and women. They were transported here on 806 ships.

endured the lash

convicts were often subject to cruelties such as leg-irons and the lash.

a convict then a free man

Good behavior of convicts meant that convicts rarely served their full term and could qualify for a Ticket of Leave,
Certificate of Freedom, Conditional Pardon or even an Absolute Pardon. This allowed convicts to earn their own
living and live independently.

a digger who sought the mother lode

A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s. In the mid-1800s, gold was discovered in Australia. The stories
and experiences of the culturally diverse goldfield workers have become part of Australian folklore. Gold diggers
were portrayed as romantic heroes who embraced the socialism and mateship already adopted by pastoral
workers. This experience is celebrated and remembered by Australians as a turning point in our history for its
strong democratic impulse. The camaraderie and defiance of the diggers on the goldfields became a huge source
of national pride, just as it did with their namesakes in World War I. Their egalitarianism, mateship, and disdain for
authority were to become central to the national character.
Digger is also a New Zealand and Australian military slang term for soldiers from New Zealand and Australia. It
originated during World War I.
digger - noun 1 a person, animal, or large machine that digs earth
lode - noun 1 a vein of metal ore in the earth
sought - the past tense and past participle of SEEK

The girl became a woman on the long and dusty road

"The girl became a woman on the long and dusty road," refers to Australia's beginning as a small convict colony,
and growing up as a nation. The other explanation could concern to the European woman in a long layered dress
in the Australian landscape has become one of the iconic images of Australian folklore. The encounters of
European women with Australian Aborigines are a familiar theme in many of the folk stories of their lives.
From 1793 onwards, women arrived as free settlers. A government bounty encouraged the migration of young
married couples and single women. Other immigrant women often followed the lives their fathers and husbands
led. As outback pioneers on selections, as squatters and drovers wives, they shaped and created Australia's rural
towns just as much as men did, working alongside them, managing homes, raising children and educating
families. Drovers were a disparate group of people, including Europeans and Aborigines, who herded stock in
search of fertile grazing plains, water, or to take the fattened cattle or sheep to sale yards.

I'm a child of the depression

The Great Depression (1929–32) was a time of extreme hardship for people in Australia. Even before the
devastating stock market crash on Wall Street (the centre of stock market trading in New York, United States of
America), unemployment in Australia was already at ten per cent. The Wall Street crash in October 1929
signalled the beginning of a severe depression for the whole industrialised world.
After the crash unemployment in Australia more than doubled to twenty-one per cent in mid-1930, and reached its
peak in mid-1932 when almost thirty-two per cent of Australians were out of work.

a bushy
Bushrangers were often escaped convicts or those unwilling or unable to fit in with mainstream society. Jack
Doolan is remembered in the folk song The Wild Colonial Boy. The legend of Ned Kelly and his gang of
bushrangers is one of Australia's most famous stories.
Bush searches quickly became recognised as a feature of Australian colonial life and were frequently represented
in literature that tried to be distinctly Australian. Works by Henry Kingsley, Marcus Clarke, Henry Lawson and
Tom Collins all use the theme of lost children. Searches for children lost in the bush involved communities on a
large scale and the frequent use of 'black trackers'. Quiet often searches yielded no result.

a battler
The term "Aussie Battler" generally refers to working class Australians, specifically, those who feel they must
work hard at a low paying job to earn enough money, is actually well respected by Australian society at large as
they stoically face financial hardships. The Aussie battler is at the core of the Australian national myth and is an
indelible part of the national psyche. The battler is more than merely a hard-working bloke who never earns his
due; the battler is the salt of the earth, the foundation of a frontier society. The battler is not resigned to the hard
grind of life but unaware of it, considering it his due without a trace of bitterness. Trundling forward with
unstoppable force and strength coupled with humility and a blood, sweat, and beer approach to life. The battler is
the quintessential "little guy" with an indomitable spirit and a bottomless well of "fight".

Albert Namatjira, and I paint the ghostly gums

Albert Namatjira was the first indigenous artist to paint and exhibit professionally in Western style. He painted his
country and was both prodigious and successful, producing approximately two thousand pictures and founding
a school of painting that continues today.
Namatjira, an Arrernte man, was born on 28th July 1902 near Ntaria (site of the
Hermannsburg Mission, about 120 kilometres from Alice Springs). Visiting artist Rex
Battarbee first taught him the technique of watercolour painting. Namatjira’s first solo
exhibition of 41 works was held in Melbourne in 1938. All works were sold quickly. Over
the next ten years exhibitions were held in various capital cities of Australia and
Namatjira became a celebrity. He was awarded the Queen’s Coronation medal in 1953;
was flown to Canberra to meet the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in 1954; his
portrait, by William Dargie, won the Archibald prize in 1956; and in 1957 he was
granted citizenship (a status denied to most Aboriginal people at the time). Before his
death on 8 August 1959 at least three films had been made about him.
I am Clancy on his horse
In the late 1800s, A B 'Banjo' Patterson wrote "Clancy of The Overflow". The poem is typical of Paterson, offering
a romantic view of rural life, and is one of his best-known works. The poem tells the story of Clancy, a drover, and
a city office worker who longs for the bush, and a life like Clancy's. Drovers were a disparate group of people,
including Europeans and Aborigines, who herded stock in search of fertile grazing plains, water, or to take the
fattened cattle or sheep to sale yards.
The poem is written from the point of view of a city-dweller who once met the title
character, a shearer and drover, and now envies the imagined pleasures of
Clancy's lifestyle, which he compares favourably to life in "the dusty, dirty city" and
"the round eternal of the cashbook and the journal". The title comes from the
address of a letter the city-dweller sends, "The Overflow" being the name of the
sheep station where Clancy was working when they met.
The poem is based on a true story that was experienced by Banjo Paterson. He
was working as a lawyer when someone asked him to send a letter to a man
named Thomas Gerald Clancy, asking for a payment that was never received.
Banjo sent the letter to "The Overflow" and soon received a reply that read:
“Clancy's gone to Queensland droving and we don't know where he are.” The
letter looked as though it had been written with a thumbnail dipped in tar and it is
from this that Banjo Paterson found the inspiration for the poem, along with the
meter. Thomas Gerald Clancy wrote a poem to reply to Banjo Paterson's, named "Clancy's Reply".
Clancy himself makes a brief appearance in another popular Banjo Paterson poem, "The Man from Snowy River",
which was first published the following year.

I'm Ned Kelly on the run

Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish-Australian bushranger, and, to some, a folk hero for his defiance of the colonial
authorities. He is one of Australia's greatest folk heroes. He grew up with the tales of bushrangers. At the age of
14, Ned was arrested for stealing 10 shillings from a Chinese man and
reportedly to have announced that he 'was going to be a bushranger'. There
are many stories about him and his life; the last film was made in the 2003,
directed by Gregor Jordan and Ned Kelly was starred by Heath Ledger.
Ned Kelly in his armour came to symbolise a fight by a flawed hero,
a convicted criminal, for 'justice and liberty' and 'innocent people'. This
captured the imagination of writers, authors and the general public alike.
Sidney Nolan, Kelly and horse, 1946, enamel on composition board. Image courtesy
of the Nolan Gallery

I'm the one who waltzed Matilda

To waltz Matilda means to travel usually in the bush looking for some job.
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad, a country folk song, and has been referred to as
"the unofficial national anthem of Australia”. The title is Australian slang for travelling by foot with one's goods in a
"Matilda" (bag) slung over one's back. The song narrates the story of an itinerant worker or swagman making a
drink of tea at a bush camp and capturing a sheep to eat. When the sheep's ostensible owner arrives with three
police officers to arrest the worker for the theft (a crime punishable by hanging), the worker drowns himself in a
small watering hole (billabong) and goes on to haunt the site.
I'm the hot wind from the desert, I'm the black soil of
the plains, I'm the mountains and the valleys, I'm the
drought and flooding rains, I am the Rock, I am the
sky, the rivers when they run - description of the
Australian countryside

And from all the lands on earth we come

This refers to Australia diversity of people who came to Australia to find their new home
there and are proud of their new homeland.