Christmas is coming to Australia so sing a song or two

Colin Buchanan (with Greg Champion) has rewritten many favourite Christmas songs and given them a very distinct Australian flavour.  Here are five of them which originally came with an enclosed music CD (and yes they are all out of print). I should mention the illustrators you can see here - Roland Harvey; Kilmeny Niland; Nick Bland and Glen Singleton.

This one has beautiful end papers and mentions many of our gorgeous Australian native flowers such as the bottle brush, waratah, Christmas bush and of course the yellow wattle (which oddly does not flower at Christmas time). You can hear a different version of this song here (not the one included in this book).

This one was published in 2006 and I am guessing might have been the first book by the now famous illustrator Nick Bland. You may know him from books like The Wrong Book; The very noisy Bear (and others in this series); King Pig and A Monster wrote me a Letter. You can hear this song here. 

This one has illustrations by the wonderful Kilmeny Niland (she died in 2009 read this tribute by Maurice Saxby). Kilmeny illustrated There's a Hippopotamus on our roof eating Cake. This Christmas book contains ten songs by Colin Buchanan (Bucko) such as Australian's all let us Barbeque; C'mon, it's an Aussie Christmas; and He's the Aussie Santa. 

Take a look at this blog post from 2020 where I mention other Australian versions of this song. Starting with one platypus up the gum tree, then two jackaroos, three meat trays, four footy fans, five rusty utes, six snags, seven chooks, eight jumbucks, nine dingoes, ten swaggies, eleven cricket legends and twelve surfing Santas you can see this is a very different version. 

If you don't live in Australia you might need some one to translate the words in this one  - ripper, deadset; crikey; thongs (footwear); and a billabong.

My favourite Australian Christmas song is actually a carol. It is more serious and lyrical than those offered in the books I have mentioned in this post. Click the song title to hear the music.

Carol of the Birds

Out on the plains the brolgas are dancing

Lifting their feet like warhorses prancing

Up to the sun the woodlarks go winging

Faint in the dawn light echoes their singing

Crana! Orana! Orana to Christmas Day.

Down where the tree ferns grow by the river

There where the waters sparkle and quiver

Deep in the gullies bell-birds are chiming

Softly and sweetly their lyric notes rhyming

Orana! Orana! Orana to Christmas Day.

Friar birds sip the nectar of flowers

Currawongs chant in wattle tree bowers

In the blue ranges lorikeets calling

Carols of bush birds rising and falling

Orana! Orana! Orana to Christmas Day.