A prolific composer, Scottish-born Peter Dodds McCormick was moved to compose a national anthem for Australia when, having attended a concert of the world’s anthems, there was no anthem for Australia. His original lyrics heavily emphasized Australia…
A prolific composer, Scottish-born Peter Dodds McCormick was moved to compose a national anthem for Australia when, having attended a concert of the world’s anthems, there was no anthem for Australia. His original lyrics heavily emphasized Australia’s ties to Britain (as Australia was a British colony at the time). Upon Australia’s inauguration as a separate Commonwealth on January 1, 1901, the song was performed, but the British “God Save the Queen” (as the work was then titled) was still the official anthem of Australia. At this time, the third verse of McCormick’s original work was changed.
While “Advance Australia Fair” remained popular with the people in the decades following, no official national anthem other than “God Save the Queen” was declared. In 1974 the Australian Bureau of Statistics conducted a national opinion poll of 60,000 and in 1977 a plebiscite for a national song was conducted. On each occasion, Advance Australia Fair was the preferred option (the other choices were the existing anthem “God Save the Queen” and the popular national songs “Song of Australia” (whose melody was later used for Bougainville‘s anthem) and “Waltzing Matilda”), and it was in consideration of such support that Advance Australia Fair was proclaimed as the national anthem by the Governor-General on 19 April 1984.
In the late 2010s, there was talk in Australia as to how to change the anthem to recognize the indigenous population of Australia in the anthem, at particular concern was the line “for we are young and free”, which implies a young nation from the perspective of the British colonists that have had a presence in Australia since 1788, and not from the perspective of the indigenous people, which have been in Australia for tens of thousands of years. In late 2020, it was proposed to change the phrase to “for we are one and free” and on January 1, 2021, it was officially changed.
From the original five-verse song, only the first and third verses are the official national anthem, with slight changes to make the song more gender-inclusive. The Governor-General of Australia (as the representative of the monarch) is greeted with an abbreviated version of the anthem consisting of the first four bars followed by the last four bars. (The King, as monarch of Australia, continues to use his royal anthem “God Save the King”.)
(description c/o nationalanthems.info)
