For the last five years I have been regularly exploring early Australian digitised newspapers looking for the earliest publications of lyrical material about working life.
In doing so I have poached material from something like 150 different newspaper titles
and added about 400 songs and poems to my Australian Folk Songs collection which joined the infant internet in with 101 songs in late 1994.

As an example of the newest discoveries added to the site please visit the using following dozen links:

The Shearing Time (1909)
Bound For Darling Harbour (1956)
The Song of the Bullocky (1913)
Ballad Of The Unemployed (1932)
The Sardine Box (1887)
Haynau And The Southwark Brewers (1850)
I Don't Go Shearing Now (1885)
Eight-Hour Day--1915 (1915)
The Spirit of the Bushmen (1891)
The Dying Stockman (1882)
The Rabbit-Buyer's Lament (1904)
Your Tool Box Will Be Raffled By-And-Bye (1899)

Millions of pages of Australian newspapers are searched every day using the
National Library of Australia TROVE Project.

Guess What - This wonderful innovative world class access project is now under threat from the Federal Government's razor gang.

cheers

Mark