G'day Kathryn,
Here are a few more Australian 'jokes' … they may not fit in with your gig, but they struck me as being good illuminants of the Australian psyche.

One old chestnut:
An Australian station owner was travelling back up bush, by train, and found himself in a compartment with a Yank – who turned out to be a Texan rancher. The Texan started telling him how big his ranch was. (BTW: A 1950s list gives the 5 largest Australian cattle stations as 11,262, 5494, 5119, 5042 and 4730 square miles respectively.) He remarked; "Why, back home on my ranch, I can get on my horse and ride all day before I come to a fence!"

The station owner replied; "Yeah … I had a horse like that once."

Another that I feel reflects some basic Australian value:

An old swaggie was walking along a dusty bush road in the blazing midday heat. He hears a horse-drawn vehicle coming up the road behind him … then a nice tidy gig, driven by a local squatter, stops beside him and the squatter calls out; "G'day old bloke, hop up here and I'll give you a lift!".

The swaggie looks the squatter and his flash clothes up and down … looks down the road, with its miles of dust and endless cattle gates … and turns back to the squatter and says; "No thanks. You can open your own bloody gates!"

[You need to know that typical second class country roads used have cattle gates at every station boundary … or paddock boundary when the road ran through large properties … just dividing sections of the stock route that ran by the road. These have largely been replaced by cattle grids – boxed areas topped with rails, spaced so that the feet of stock slip down between the rails and stop them crossing, but allowing rubber-tyred vehicles to pass over easily. This now saves the constant chore of opening the gate, waiting while the vehicle passes through and then closing the gate behind it (usually assigned to the youngest kid travelling in the car – as I remember well!)]

One more from the dry country (where it may not rain for years … and stations depend on artesian water for their existence … and some kids go to school before they have ever seen rain!):

It hadn't rained for years on this western sheep station … but finally the heavens opened and one of the stationhands whooped with joy and ran out into the rain. The boss yelled at him; "Come back in here, out the rain you damned fool!".

The stationhand called back; "Don't worry boss, I'm not worried about getting wet."

The boss yelled back; "Come back here … I'm don't give a damn about you, but you're keeping the rain off the bloody ground!"

I hope these fit in with the Aussie songs in your gig.

Regards,

Bob Bolton