G'day Arkie,

John Meredith, the major author of Folksong of Australia and the Mane & Women who sang them, did a lot of his 1950s collecting in the area around the western districts (everything west of the small eastern, coastal strip where most residents of New South Wales are). This was because contacts, within districts, families and such tended to keep him following people nearby to the last musician researched.

Mudgee is a particularly interesting area because so many of the "Germans" - actually various ethnic minorities fleeing Bismarck's "Unification" of Germany - stayed in this area and many even clung to their old ways during two world wars when they were seriously persecuted. Merro always believed that the distinctive tunes if Mudgee - those with little relation to English, Irish, Scottish &c, originals may have been from the Germanic traditions.

This has been somewhat confirmed by later researchers - particularly Mark Schuster and Maria Zann, who study the various centres of Germanic heritage. A number of the traditional tunes that thay have unearthed have strong affinities with tunes well-known in Mudgee (as well as some from around Nariel Creek in Victoria, where a family band founded by Con Klippel [snr, snr?] around 1870 has existed and provided a distinctive dance tradition).

Backblocks (more study group than a band), which I now coordinate, was formed to explore a genuine collected repertoire without plundering UK/Irish tunebooks. We now play a lot of these distinctive tunes for polkas, varsoviennes, mazurkas, schottisches, waltzes, waltz mazurkas and polka mazurkas - along with a repertoire from a wide British base. This sort of mixture contributes much to whatever an Australian style is.

Regards,

Bob Bolton