I Still Call Australia Home - Australia Day

"I Still Call Australia Home" is a song written and performed by Peter Allen in 1980. In it, Allen sings of Australian expatriates' longing for home.

It has been used to suggest Australian patriotism and nostalgia for home. An example is the series of Qantas television commercials where it was sung either by individual Australian musicians or by the Australian Girls and National Boys choirs (sometimes known collectively as the 'Qantas Choir').^[1]

In the 1984 Summer Olympics' Opening Gala TV special (in Los Angeles), Olivia Newton-John performed this song from Sydney, Australia with the choir in a medley with Waltzing Matilda. Later, both songs were used in the musical The Boy from Oz, about Allen's life in which starred Hugh Jackman as Allen

Botany Bay is a song from the musical burlesque, Little Jack Sheppard, a comedy staged in London, England in 1885 and Melbourne, Australia in 1886. The show was written by Henry Pottinger Stephens and William Yardley, though the music for "Botany Bay" was written by Florian Pascal,^[1] a pseudonym for Joseph Williams, Jr. (1847-1923), a music publisher and composer.^[2] The song shares two verses with Fairwell to Judges and Juries which had been performed in 1820.^[3]

Botany Bay was the designated settlement for the first fleet when it arrived in Australia in the eighteenth century. It was a settlement intended for the transport of convicts to Australia. The song describes the period in the late late 18th and 19th centuries, when British convicts were deported to the various Australian penal colonies by the British government for seven-year terms as an alternative to incarceration in Britain.^[4] The second verse is about life on the convict ships, and the last verse is directed to English girls and boys as warning not to steal.

After the production of Little Jack Sheppard, the song became a popular folk song and has been sung and recorded by Burl Ives,^[5] and many others. It is played as a children's song on compilations, particularly in Australia.^[6]

The song is referenced in many documentaries researching the transport of convicts to Australia, a practice that had ceased before the song was made

"Advance Australia Fair" is the official national anthem of Australia. Created by the Scottish-born composer, Peter Dodds McCormick, the song was first performed in 1878, but did not gain its status as the official anthem until 1984. Until then, the song was sung in Australia as a patriotic song. In order for the song to become the anthem, it had to face a vote between the Royal anthem God Save the Queen, the "unofficial anthem" Waltzing Matilda and Song of Australia. Other songs and marches have been influenced from Advance Australia Fair, such as the Australian Vice-Regal salute.