Penned in 1980 by Australian cabaret legend Peter Allen, I Still Call Australia Home is the unofficial Australian expatriate anthem. Though an evening in, for example, any Earls Court backpacker pub might be temporarily roused with heartfelt singalongs to Cold Chisel's Khe Sanh or Men At Work's Down Under, it is this song alone which will catch each and every Aussie breath in its patriotic throat. It is even a well-regarded contender for a new Australian national anthem, once we get the whole stupid business of the republic out of the way.
The story goes that while touring his successful Broadway show Up In One through Australia, Allen liked to end his shows with an enthusiastic affirmation to his audience that "I still call Australia home". It was a suggestion by a record executive that moved Allen to put the sentiment to music; the song was written in an intermission and performed for the first time on the final night of the tour, in Melbourne. It was received so well that Allen insisted on a recording being included on his next compilation album. Consequently, it has never appeared on an 'original' Peter Allen album. It has been a necessary fixture on every compilation and retrospective since.
I am noding it because it remains the one song which, throughout my life, has made me cry.
I Still Call Australia Home
- Peter Allen -
I've been to cities that never close down
From New York to Rio and Old London Town
But no matter how far or how wide I roam
I still call Australia home.
I am not an expatriate - or I'm multiply expatriate, reformed, perhaps. Born English, relocated and Australianized early, early enough that when I returned to England, still a boy, I was already fierce in my identity as an Australian. My friends supported Aston Villa, I barracked for Essendon. They said garridge, I said geraadge, if not servo. At the age of ten, the song that made me cry was Little Heroes' One Perfect Day - "And tell me / Is it still raining there in England?" ...An Australian mourning an expat.
I'm always travelling, I love being free
And so I keep leaving the sun and the sea
But my heart lies waiting over the foam
I still call Australia home.
When I relocated again, back to Australia, it was, of course, England I missed. Fiercely. I supported Aston Villa. I said garridge for old times' sake. And, by God, I was born in England, of English stock. The last thing I wanted to be was the Australian I had tried so hard to remain. But what's an expatriate repatriate expatriated? Inside, I was a man without a country.
All the sons and daughters, spinning 'round the world
Away from their family and friends
But as the world gets older and colder
It's good to know where your journey ends
There's an institution well known to any veteran of an Australian primary school classroom: Let's Sing! - a radio program broadcast on the ABC. Every week, classes nationwide would stop, pull out their gaily-illustrated Let's Sing! songbooks and learn a song. A fun way to spend a morning hour, and not even particularly embarrassing to those of us with voices like little blocked soprano drains because, as I recall, we all did. And so, as you've guessed, we come to that morning - this song. I'm not sure that it was the first time I'd heard it, but it was certainly the first time I'd absorbed the lyrics, meshed the meaning with those shamelessly manipulative harmonies. And that was when I cried. In a roomful of my warbling prepubescent peers, I sobbed without control. It still taxes me to fathom entirely why.
And some day we'll all be together once more
When all of the ships come back to the shore
I realize something I've always known
I still call Australia home.
I'm naturalized now. I pledged my oath a few years ago, comfortable, having journeyed back to the Mother Country and beyond, that I am where and who I want to be. I still meet Australians who question my 'Australianness': I rejoice in telling them that they never chose like I did, in recounting the oath they've never said. But it's not patriotism that evokes tears when I hear Peter Allen longing for his Australian home. It's that longing. It's Australia, in the ways Australia is my home. It's home, in the ways the idea of home has tugged elusively at my mind all my life. It's the lifetime lived over oceans and kilometres and too many places to be, and calling Australia home.
No matter how far or wide I roam
I still call Australia
I still call Australia
I still call Australia
Home.
I Still Call Australia Home has now been appropriated by Qantas for use in their TV advertising. I try not to watch it.
This writeup is proudly CST Approved.
| 
