Between 2003-2005 Warren Fahey surveyed the folklore associated with his home city of Sydney. He relates the background of the project, survey fields, procedures, outcomes and some observations on collecting in Australia including some examples of Sydney folklore.
Brash, Bold and Beautiful: The Sydney Folklore Project
Warren Fahey
Sydney, Australia's largest and oldest city is recognised as brash, bold and beautiful. It was, of course, our first European settlement and for that reason carries a certain amount of colonial baggage reinforcing older myths, superstitions, custom etc. Folklore thrives in every city and Sydney is no exception. To set the scene for this article I will draw upon some examples of Sydney folklore and explain my rationale in embarking on such a program.
Sydney's residents are referred to as Sydneysiders and, by rural people, as city slickers. Those with a country property are often called Pitt Street Farmers. The city's urban sprawl residents, some 4.4 million (1), are generically described, depending on their turf, as Westies (anyone west of Concord); Hillites (anyone from the Hills district (Baulkham Hills, Beecroft, Pennant Hills etc), and if you’re anywhere on the northern peninsular (Newport, Mona Vale, Avalon, Palm Beach etc, you’re living on the ‘insular peninsula’. If you live anywhere near Sutherland you come from the Shire, and anyone north of the Harbour Bridge lives in the 'barbecue belt' or on the North Snore - another demeaning reference to the gentrification of the northern suburbs. Some suburbs are also singled out – Paddington is ‘trendy’, Balmain ‘arty’, Darlinghurst ‘young’ and Mosman, as a further insult to suburban gentrification, is known as ‘God’s waiting Room’.
Sydney's ethnicity is reflected by the names given to various suburbs: Leichhardt is Little Italy as is Stanley Street, Darlinghurst; the Spanish Quarter consists of just two streets in the city; Chinatown, representing the oldest ethnic group, spans a whole network of streets; Double Pay (Double Bay), Bondi Junkland (Bondi Junction), Nose Bay (Rose Bay) and Belleijew Hill (Bellevue Hill) reflect the east's high-priced shopping areas and the latter two adding a racial slur related to the high concentration of Jewish life. The high percentage of Chinese residents and restaurants in Chatswood results in the leafy suburb becoming Chatswoo or Chatswong and, across the city to the west, we find Cabramatta as CabraNam or Vietnamatta, reflecting that suburb’s large Vietnamese population. Of course, ethnic ghettos are not new to Sydney. Newtown was once considered 'Little Greece' and Paddington was Little Portugal.
Suburbs with high gay and lesbian populations also cop nicknames with Oxford Street known as the Golden Mile or Pink Highway, Elizabeth Bay is Betty Bay, venerable Potts Point becomes Poof’s Point, Surry Hills is Slurry Hills and one high-rise block, situated in Paddington's so-called Vaseline Valley, is known as The Hanging Gardens of Fabulon, because of the abundance of washing hanging on the balconies. Many suburbs are abbreviated so Woolloomooloo becomes simply The Loo, La Perouse Larpy, Kings Cross the Cross, Darlinghurst becomes Darlo or, as an infamous piece of graffiti stated, DarlingItHurts, and Parramatta becomes Parra.
Oddly enough, residents of the eastern suburbs have not been ‘named’ apart from having a reputation as 'snobs' and coming from the East, as if it were a mysterious Asian port. Those of the east freely use the pejoratives yobbos, ferals and bogans to describe their neighbours, especially those living in the outer suburbs.
Sydney's landmarks also have colloquial nicknames: the Sydney Harbour Bridge is The Hanger, the Opera House is known simply asthe house, Bondi Beach is either Kiwiland (because of its large New Zealand population) or Bondage, Bondi, of course, is ...far from Manly. The next beach from Bondi is Tamarama however it is more likely to be referred to as Glamorama because of the so-called 'beautiful people' who swim there.
The Cornstalks (that's what colonial New South Welshmen were called) referred to Sydney as the 'city of three G's'- girls, glass and grog! Many would say Kings 'Bloody' Cross still represents those three G's, adding a fourth G for grass (marihuana) or, if one were to believe Underbelly, G for ‘glassings’. Jokes and stories about Kings Cross usually receive wide circulation because the place is still mysterious and edgy. A typical joke reference is Kings Cross Tennis'- when you walk down the street it's "Fifty, love. Forty, love. Sixty, love".
Sydney became known as the Emerald City after the playwright, David Williamson, used the term for his 1987 play of the same name. Mind you, considering L. Frank Baum invented the Emerald City in 1900 as the fictional capital of the Land of Oz, it was quiet a brilliant reference. In the words of the poet: "Where people go expecting their dreams to be fulfilled, only to end up with superficial substitutes and broken dreams" (Oh, so Sydney!). Some suggest the reference is linked to Sydney having a 'jewel of a harbour'. This would also explain why Sydney is often referred to as 'the harbour city' (despite the fact Australia has numerous ‘harbour cities’). The most prevalent nickname for Sydney came from early rhyming slang: “I’m going down to steak 'n' kidney”.
Colloquial expressions are popular – The Hungry Mile (1930’s dole queues stretched down Hickson Road), Some references are very old like Bay of Biscay (an old bullocky reference to the pond area corner Parramatta Road, near Sydney University, where drays would often get bogged in mud), No go zone (from the evening bell that warned residents not to go towards Paddington’s barracks at night) and Poverty Point (probably 1930s reference to the corner of Hyde Park near Park Street).
Insults are popular too: He wouldn’t know if it’s Pitt Street or Christmas, He’s a Woolloomooloo Yank (an Australian who acts like an American), She’s so ugly the Bondi tide wouldn’t take her out, He’s a dial like Luna Park, He’s up King Street (ie broke – King Street is near the Law Courts) and He’s a Hyde Park Bushman (ie knows nothing about the bush), More front that Mark Foys (or Anthony Hordern). Kings Cross is often described as having more nuts than the Harbour Bridge. Sydneysiders go up to the Cross and walk down Douche Can Alley (Darlinghurst Road).
From a folklore perspective it is obviously interesting as to why we need to create these descriptive names for our cities, suburbs, landmarks and inhabitants. Considering our love for diminutives like barbie for barbecue,Woolies for Woolworth's and the abbreviation of most first and last names where cricketer Shane Warne becomes Warnie or ABC Radio presenter Ian MacNamara becomes Macca, I guess it is not really all that surprising. Even I cop Wazza or Wocka! There is also a thought that by giving suburbs etc an affectionate colloquial name is to humanise them, make them more approachable.
Collecting and Researching Folklore.
Collecting and researching folklore in Australia can be a frustrating and expensive endeavor: vast areas to travel, costs of accommodation, food, telephone, vehicle costs, recording equipment and, of course, the necessity of having to maintain an income of sorts to pay the household bills. Australian folklore has chiefly been collected by self-financed individuals, most holding an unrelated job, undertaking collecting in their spare time. John Meredith, Norm O’Connor, Hugh Anderson, Bob Michell, Alan Scott and even A.B.Paterson all worked the nine-to-five grind. Bill Wannan managed to tie his work into journalism, and Ron Edwards into painting and book publishing. I also had to maintain a ‘real job’ – although I often look back at my ever-struggling Larrikin record company and music publishing as an intrusion into my ‘other life’. I started collecting 'part time' in 1969 and could only afford full time status in the year 2000. Oral historian, Rob Willis, is probably the only collector who has worked consistently for an institution, in his case the National Library of Australia. Rob's collection at the NLA is testament to how successful such a full time position can be.
When I got riper (I prefer not to say older!), I realised that my days of traveling the bush were limited. I was indeed fortunate to have traveled so far and so often in the sixties, seventies and eighties. Whilst my interest in folklore hasn’t diminished, my desire to stay in look-alike motels, sleep on friend’s couches and, above all, sit behind a driver’s wheel for endless days, certainly has. I like my home comforts, especially my reference library, kitchen and computer. The life of the ‘armchair collector’ can be extremely fruitful.
Having never been short of an idea, and the necessity of having to originate my own projects, it struck me in 2002 that I should look at collecting the folklore in my own backyard – Sydney. I have always been interested in city life. I am a city slicker - ‘Paddington born and Paddington bred’ – and, as my father, George Fahey, would add, ‘strong in the arm and thick in the head’. Much of my early collecting reflected this urban background and, although it was more fashionable to heed the call of the bush, I actively sought industrial, maritime and other areas of more urban folklore. Even my late-1960s song repertoire reflected this interest with my earliest recording projects being Navvy on the Line: Australian railway songs (ABC Radio), Limejuice & Vinegar: songs of the Australian rivers and seas and Man of the Earth (Larrikin’s first album release and Australia’s first collection of industrial folk songs.) (2)
Folklore can help us understand the how’s, why’s and wherefores of city life. There is little doubt we live in a rapidly changing world and folklore can help us understand these changes too. Much of what we know as urban folklore, and I am referring mainly to folklore that reflects our lives right now rather than what we would see as historical folklore, has been created and circulated for a reason. As a society we are continually rolling folklore over, adding to it, editing it. This can express itself in many varied ways: speech, story, humour, custom, myth etc. Take the now well-known urban myth regarding what has become known as the Penrith Panther or Blue Mountain’s Big Cat. Most Sydneysiders are aware of the story: a very large panther-like creature is regularly sighted in the lower Blue Mountains of western Sydney. People swear they have seen it roaming hillsides and even venturing into common property. Blurred photographic images are produced to verify claims however most claims are, of course, of the 'a friend of a friend' category. At the time of the last sighting in 2008 the then Premier of New South Wales, Nathan Rees, a parliamentary representative of the western suburbs, publicly refused to dismiss the story as myth because "so many people had told him about it." (3) Despite information that refutes the claim -including the fact that this myth has been in circulation in the area for well over a century, and the fact that similar myths occur in other states of Australia, especially the Grampians of Victoria - the big cat reappears regularly.
Folklore is often found in the most likely and unlikely places throughout our lives. Our first stories tend to be folk stories, usually handed down from family to family, including the little ditties and lullabies that send us to sleep. Later we hear more structured stories, some traditional and some improvised versions of popular children’s books such as Possum Magic. Around this time we also start to be more social, joining pre-schools where, once again, we learn simple songs and stories. When we join primary school folklore runs rife, especially in the playground where old and new action games, chants, jokes and songs proliferate. I recorded on video 23 Sydney clapping games (4). In high school we tend to become ‘tribal’ and pick up bits and pieces we feel comfortably define ‘our group’. This can express itself in clothing style, haircuts, language, humour and, nowadays, the creative ways social groups communicate with mobile telephone slanguage.
As young adults we are impressionable but usually determinedly individualistic. Once again language, humour, dress and foodways become an important part of who we are. I guess you get the message by now: as we travel on through life, relationships, work, play, custom etc all gather folklore - we ‘adopt’ and ‘adapt’ the folklore that we see as ‘our’ story.
So it goes until our final days and even then, in our dying days, folklore rituals, customs etc appear to manage and document our final journey - religious ceremony, flowers, cards, post-funeral gatherings etc are all part of ‘our’ folklore.
Of course all the above examples are common to all Australians however, my point being, that one can look at Sydneysiders for unique local variants. Who else could coin the phrase 'As crook as Rookwood!' - referring to Rookwood Cemetery (also called the dead centre of Sydney!), ‘shoot through like a Bondi tram’, ‘as busy as Pitt Street on Friday arvo’,’ he lived so far out they had to kill a man to start a cemetery’, ‘smells like a bag of prawns left on Manly Beach’, ‘he could pull a load up druid Street’, ‘he got the last ride before Blondin’ and ‘he’s gone to Gowings!’
The folklorist’s task is to identify these folkloric bits and pieces and to attempt to put them into some order so, possibly, we can learn from each other’s experiences. In many cases we simply adopt folklore, accept it, without knowing where it originated or why (if in fact one could simply dates such evolving creativity). One example of this is surely the simple mnemonic poem that reminds us of how many days are in each month. 30 days has September, April, June and November, All the rest have 31 save February, with 28 fine, ‘till leap year makes it 29. Readers will probably be surprised to find that folklore, twisty thing that it is, has produced more than 6o variations of this ditty. (5)
At the time of writing this article I lunched with some friends and the conversation turned to calendar lore and two new examples of calendar lore surprised me. One friend, a senior barrister, demonstrated how he uses his knuckles with a rhyme to show the months. Another friend, a banker, demonstrated how he used his fingers to do a similar countdown of the months. As an intrepid folklore collector I swung into action and, employing the best of modern practices, captured the impromptu demonstrations on another friend's IPhone camera. You can see the results on my site (6).
The Project.
When I made the big step to concentrate full time on folklore (ten year's ago) I realised I would also need to produce outcomes that could help pay the bills. I have always been good at what has become known as multi-tasking, and, in my case, this has meant steering my various folklore projects to some sort of usually unpredictable financial outcome. None would work financially as individual projects however a grant here, royalty payment there and a few concerts and tours seem to bring in enough to keep the dingoes from the door. I mention this because so many different organisations, especially educational, media or governmental bodies call upon my services assuming I am paid 'by someone'. I have always responded positively to most requests as I see this as part of my duty as a collector. I guess I live by the 'what goes around, comes around' karmatic rule. That said, I did apply and get two art's grants to specifically encourage me to continue the Folklore of Sydney project. The first was a grant from the City of Sydney Cultural Fund with the support of the then Lord Mayor, Lucy Turnbull, and the City Historian, Dr. Shirley Fitzgerald. The second was a grant from the Australia Council for the Arts. The latter being what the Council calls a 'matching grant' (although of a lesser amount it was dependent on an outside body, in this case the City of Sydney, being a partner. Both grants made the work viable and were (obviously) very welcome. The main point here being that there is now a precedent open to other folklorists in other cities.
One of the key factors of any grant-funded venture is the outcome. Both my funding bodies were aware of my history in producing books, radio programming, compact discs and concerts and these, of course, were my main listed outcomes. They did not place any specific conditions on the grants other than the City of Sydney requesting three performances or talks based on the results. These were eventually fulfilled with presentations to the Sydney Historical Society, Sydney Mechanic's School of Arts and the Kings Cross Library. Mind you, they were only three of hundreds I have given over the past years.
The expressed outcomes included the obvious research and documentation of a selected list of specific subjects which would be used in the preparation of a book, DVD and/or on my Australian Folklore Unit website, plus a program of concerts and talks based on the material. Because of the nature of my style of collecting some of the specified subjects were not covered simply because of lack of time and resources. Others were either noted or expanded because folklore collecting tends to be rather haphazard in that one subject can lead into another. I have stated many times that collecting and researching folklore is similar to assembling a jigsaw puzzle. I'd also suggest it's also like Snakes & Ladders as one slides in and out of research fields.
Three of the most significant outcomes were not planned. By coincidence by the time I commenced the project I had also commenced work on recording a large number of Australian songs and bush verse for a planned anthology. Although the original series contained a large number of Sydney-related songs, I was able to add new material to the mix. Many of the songs were from early newspapers and magazines and, obviously without tunes, so the challenge arose to provide appropriate musical settings to these songs. This enabled me to bring to life some songs about neglected aspects of Sydney's musical history. Examples would be 'The Flying Pieman', 'When Dally Kicked the Goal' and a song about the 1879 'Sydney International Exhibition'. See (7( for some Sydney songs. ABC Music issued the series as 'Australia: Its Folk Songs & Bush Verse' in 2009 (8), and in 2010 ABC Books will publish the accompanying book containing song verses, music notation and background notes.
The second and most unexpected outcome came in the form of an invitation to participate in the 2010 17th Biennale of Sydney. Over the years I had gathered quite a collection of maritime folklore and about Cockatoo Island in particular, and this bi-annual event proved an opportunity to put folklore, music history into action. The project, a multi screen installation used six short-throw projectors, four speakers and screened directly on to the panoramic sandstone walls of the island's convict barracks. The program, 28 minutes in length, covered 151 years of Cockatoo Island’s history: convict prison, colonial dock, industrial reform school for girls, nautical training ship for orphaned and wayward boys and, in the twentieth century, naval dockyard, engineering and shipbuilding works. (In 2003 the island became a commonwealth-controlled entity under the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust.) Whilst the installation featured a considerable amount of material sourced during my Folklore of Sydney project it also showcased Australia’s major archival institutions with photographs, maps, ephemera and film footage being contributed by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Department of Defense, National Film and Sound Archive, Charles Chauvel Archive, State Records (NSW), National Library of Australia and the State libraries of New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. The soundtrack featured recordings from the Folklore & Oral History Collection (including songs collected by John Meredith, Norm O'Connor, Bob Michell and myself) and some contemporary sound bites from Gary Shearston, Phyl Lobl, Andy Saunders and several of my Rouseabout ‘Australia’s Yesterdays vintage recordings of Barbara James, Bob Dyer and Florrie Forde. I also used some musical cuts from my ABC recording series ‘Australia: its Folk Songs and Bush Verse’ and adapted a John Dengate song (Bill from Erskinville became Lou from Cockatoo) and composed a song (The Curs’d Isle) to tell the story of the girl’s reform school. The challenge for video design collaborator, Mic Gruchy, and myself was to present such a large slice of history in an abstract yet thematic format befitting a Biennale art event. The presentation, titled Damned Souls and Turning Wheels, took ten months to devise, research and negotiate rights on a non-existent budget! It opened May 2010 and ran for three months. It was free to the public and a companion series of four Sunday afternoon concerts, performed by my ensemble, The Larrikins, highlighted the music used in the installation. It is estimated that over 100,000 people viewed the work. At the time of writing this article the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust is considering retaining the installation as a permanent feature of the island’s attractions. See (9)
The third outcome is performance related. As readers will appreciate, a good deal of my manuscript and newspaper research took place at the Mitchell Library. The State Library of New South Wales will celebrate the Mitchell's Centenary in 2010 and once again my recycling approach to collecting will be involved. Along with my ensemble, The Larrikins, I will present three themed concerts: ‘A Convict’s Tour of Hell’ (the life and work of Frank ‘The Poet’ Macnamara)), ‘True Patriots All’ (based on the 1950’s book of the same name plus newly sourced material on convict broadsides) and ‘’Billy Barlow’s Troubles in Australia’ (folk songs plus newly sourced material on emigration and pioneer settlement) (10)
The Survey Fields.
The project, the first of its kind in Australia, commenced on the 1st February 2003 and ran for two years.
The survey fields in its original draft included the following subject areas:
Early broadsides and songs about Sydney.
Pioneer migrants and their views on Sydney life.
Indigenous material – early interpretation of Aboriginality, Koori songs.
Folk poetry and recitations.
Traditional, popular and contemporary songs about Sydney.
Music Hall references to Sydney including songsters.
Word usage including colloquial sayings, slanguage.
Superstitions, customs, festivals.
Sydney humour including Sydney specific yarns and jokes.
Sydney eccentrics – a register.
Sporting folklore.
Curious history.
Labour history.
Ghost stories.
Folk craft.
Foodways.
Dance heritage in Sydney.
Children’s lore.
Oral histories.
I do not see myself as an academic folklorist having never undertaken a course in folklore nor any other university field. I often say I am a graduate of the Dingo University and the School of Hard Knocks as I certainly learnt everything I know as I traveled through life. If anything I am curious, focused and admit to an over-riding interest in most things that make us Australian. I will also use this opportunity to apologise if this article appears to be egocentric but as a folklorist working in isolation this is the nature of the beast!
In surveying the folklore of Sydney I wanted to make a broad sweep to illustrate how folklore is created and distributed. There is a general misbelief that folklore is something associated with the past, particularly our colonial bush past, and not something from the cities. In showing that dentists, bakers, butchers, bankers, secretaries, housewives and everyone else you care to nominate, all create and intentionally or unintentionally distribute folklore as part of their everyday lives, would show folklore as a 'living' tradition. The only other regional studies that I know about is an early work undertaken by John Marshall’s students at Finley High, Riverina District, 1987, (11) and Gwenda Beed Davey in Moe, Victoria, 1996, (12).
I have often described my work as being like a recycling unit - I collect, either through fieldwork or archival research - and then I 'return' it packaged up in compact discs, books, broadcasts, magazine articles and through performance. My Australian Folklore Unit website (13) also plays an important role in this ‘recycling’ and receives around 55,000 visitors every month. In taking on a project like the Folklore of Sydney it was not practical to narrow my research to the exclusion of all other material. However, if I was trawling through an early newspaper I would look for anything that I considered interesting, something that I could use in a future project, and, of course, anything particularly about Sydney. That said, I also looked for specific folklore and what I refer to as 'curious history', and in the initial stage of the project I prepared a list of subjects that I considered would reflect the project's agenda.
I probably achieved seventy percent success in collecting material in the survey field, the rest relegated to the not-enough-time basket. Of course, other subjects that I hadn't considered appeared and demanded my investigation. In truth I would have liked to have done more fieldwork, interviewing specific individuals and group, but without a team of supporters such work is extremely time-consuming and, in a grid-locked city like Sydney, extremely frustrating. Such is the journeying of the modern-era folklorist!
In surveying a city's folklore one could go in several directions and, indeed I did, usually at the same time! One could have, possibly should have, focused on several groups such as bus drivers, airport workers, publicans, gardeners, plumbers, hairdressers, secretaries, welfare workers - the list is obviously endless - my point being that every group would have folklore, obviously some more than others, but highly likely within their ranks you would find the remnants of traditional working methods, customs, stories, nicknames, apprenticeship pranks, jokes, word usage, xerox lore, superstitions and so on. For the record, much of this material is unreconisable to its users and distributors, until it is pointed out as folklore.
Folklore pops up in some surprising places. There is a small nature strip of curvy road on Barrenjoey Road from Newport to Avalon, mainly known as the Bilgola bends (after the beach suburb of Bilgola) where a custom has emerged whereby handwritten signs are festooned along the short strip. The majority of these signs relate to greeting visitors or commemorating anniversaries, weddings, engagements and birthdays. Some simply say 'Tracey - I Luv You' or 'Welcome back Matt and Bev' however one sign, of twenty-six, I recorded this past December declared 'Welcome to my big, sexy, dark-haired lover boy'. Another pleaded 'Carol - marry me!". Mind you, the signs sometimes get nasty with one reading 'Wendy B is a Slag!' The bend also contains a well-kept roadside memorial to an accident. The wreaths decorate the telegraph pole where the person was killed in a motor accident. Returning in January to photograph the current crop of signs I discovered the council had taken them down however a few new ones had been erected. One sign definitely created havoc and was the subject of a newspaper article. See (14)
As an old hand at using the media, especially my associates at ABC radio, I narrowed any interviews down to specific topics. To ask listeners to send in 'their folklore' would, not surprisingly, draw a blank. When I steered the requests to superstitions, place names, urban myths, colloquial expressions or school war cries, as examples, I usually received a flow of contributions. Richard Glover, Angela Catterns and James Valentine, all of ABC local radio Sydney, were the most fruitful interviews, especially on the subject of school songs and war cries, which appeared to produce a flood of nostalgia. In locating narrow subjects like theatre superstitions I emailed a short questionnaire to several theatrical identities, producers, directors, actors etc and this also reaped a good return. Some requests, especially for military and naval contributions from service people drew a blank.
I have a keen interest in songs and verse and although my main interest is traditional material I am also interested in other neglected forms including pioneer country music, songs written for live performance on early radio, music hall and early popular stage songs. Early newspapers have always been a fruitful search area and now that the NLA Beta project has digitized many of the main early newspapers, including the Sydney Gazette, Melbourne Argus and Sydney Morning Herald, searching is endless. A simple search for 'songs' produced some 239052 items and a further search within these findings for 'Sydney' reduced the list to a mere 108100 items. Of course most of the results did not produce an actual song about Sydney, more likely a reference to a song being sung in Sydney. What I did find were reports of events where songs were sung. Adelaide Advertiser 13/August, 1903: report on a Sydney event 'Clergyman Shocked! Nigger Songs Sung At Orange (Lodge) Celebration or, from the Hobart Mercury, 28 July 1908, a report on the Tramway Strike, Sydney: 'What The Strikers Are Doing: Singing Songs and Making Speeches'. Another, which caught my eye, referred to 'Profane Songs In The Public Streets' (Letter to Editor, SMH, 28 May 1859), which referred to a seemingly bawdy parody of The Lord's Prayer. Such references are extremely tempting for the song hunter. See (15)
Songwriters, being poets, often romanticize a city from a personal perspective and there is a fine line between schmaltz and emotional communication. Traditional songs have a way, to use a current expression, of cutting through the crap and, thankfully, so do some contemporary songs. The older songs and ditties about Sydney tend to be about significant social changing events (war, depression, federation, strikes), personalities (sportsmen, politicians, eccentrics) and newsworthy events (Sydney Exhibition, disasters, sport) and leisure time pursuits like boating, swimming etc) the newer songs (1950 onwards) tend to be about the songwriter's experiences in the city. These include songs about various suburbs, landmarks, observations on people encountered etc. Songs that comment on political situations like the general frustration with Sydney transport and State Government management are also popular, especially in the folk community. John Dengate, Bernard Bolan and John Warner are three well-known contributors to the Sydney contemporary folksong catalogue. Paul Kelly, Richard Clapton, Tim Freedman (The Whitlams) are representative of more pop-influenced songwriters. See (16)
One area of song that did surprise was the sheer number of contemporary songs written about Sydney and its suburbs. Some were quite old but many were relatively recent compositions. I included all genres of music in compiling a survey list including some rock, jazz, blues etc so as to provide the most definitive list. I also opened this one to the general public by posting requests on various websites and forums. It was interesting to see how many of the songs came from recordings I had released on my Larrikin Record label between 1974-2000. See (17).
I grew up in a very different Sydney. It rivaled Melbourne for grand buildings but, sadly, and unlike our great southern city, most of them fell to the wrecking ball and greedy development. Being in my mid-sixties allows me some perspective on the city's history although, I admit, it tends to be coloured by nostalgia. Such things obviously also colour what a collector collects! One odd thing I wrote about for the project was a nostalgic survey of Sydney 'smells' - everything from corner stores to department stores and some suburbs that had a peculiar pong about them. See (18)
The big question is whether Sydneysiders see themselves as different from the residents of other Australian cities. Folklore, in its peculiar way, can certainly provide us with some answers. Most Australians, wherever they live, tend to believe that Australia is 'God's Own Country' (Godzone), and their particular patch the best part of it. Sydneysiders are no different and, I suspect, rather snobbish about it. My research shows they characteristically see Melbourne, or as Sydneysider’s say, ‘Melboring’, as too dull, Victorians are often described as Mexicans from south of the border. Adelaide as too up itself, Perth as too far away, Brisbane as new money vulgar (referring to it as BrisVegas and nearby Sufferer’s Paradise), Darwin is Hicksville and Canberra as unnecessary. Sydney, to its inhabitants, is just right (despite the State's economy, transport, health and other vital social structures being in disarray). As ex-Prime Minister Paul Keating once declared: “If you’re not living in Sydney – you are merely camping out!”
(1) "Year Book Australia, 2008". Australian Bureau of Statistics. pp. p 194.
(2) The Larrikin Record label see
http://nla.gov.au/nla.cs-ma-ANL%3AMA~Converted-ruth-6
(3) http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/national/nsw-premier-on-panther-hunt/story-e6frf7l6-1111117531671
Premier Rees Goes Big Cat Hunting.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nathan-rees-goes-big-cat-hunting/story-0-1111117531048
(4) Sydney Children’s Clapping videos
http://warrenfahey.com/kids_clapping.htm
(5) 30 days hath September rhymes.
http://warrenfahey.com/calendar.htm
(6) calendar lore video
http://warrenfahey.com/calendar.htm
(7) A selection of songs about Sydney
http://www.warrenfahey.com/city.htm
(8) Australia: Its Folk Songs & Bush Verse. http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/searchresult.asp?SearchID=2578195&SearchRefineID=5356307&KeyWord=warren+fahey
(9) http://www.nla.gov.au/digicoll/audioprogress.html
(10) http://www.culture.gov.au/articles/davidmitchell/
(11) Barber, V et al. Blue Bags, Bloodholes & Boomanoomana. Folklore of the Southwestern Riverina. Finley High School, 1987.
(12) Gwenda Davey ‘The Moe Folklife Project’, http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1322180
(13) www.warrenfahey.com
(14) Bilgola Bends
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/is-this-sydneys-most-bizarre-lovers-break-up/story-e6freuy9-1225780879354
(15). http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/home
(16). Sydney Songs list
http://www.warrenfahey.com/entertainment.htm
http://warrenfahey.com/city.htm
(17) Larrikin LP list.
http://www.warrenfahey.com/larrikin-2.htm
(18). Smelly Old Sydney. Article.
http://www.warrenfahey.com/city-smells.htm
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