Tracing both the frisson between city and outback realities and the impact of politics on the music scene, Singing Australian is not only about the intersections between folk and country music and their appropriations from a raft of other genres; it is also an insightful chronicle of Australia’s struggle for identity as a post-colonial society, the search for nationhood through song and an expansive panorama of this country’s social history.

Roaming through diverse music-making locations that include coffee bars, outback stations, ‘sticky-carpet pubs’, churches, festivals such as Woodford, Tamworth, Port Fairy, WOMADelaide and the Gympie muster, the author pushes the definitional frames of folk and country music as he parades fascinating snippets of information. ‘Folk as we have seen, is a flexible term,’ he says; whether or not the reader agrees, the arguments are plausible and thought-provoking. This capacity to invoke curiosity is one of the book’s great strengths.