Just as traditional love was related to the power to ‘sing’, modern love is strongly articulated in song. During the war Gwen Molony played the accordion for the troops at Iron Range: ‘Everyone would sing songs. One fellow asked for “You’re the only star in my blue heaven”, he was a long way from home. I felt sorry for him, he was thinking of someone.’[29]
Flo Kennedy was hula dancing with an American show company based at a military camp. Her group consisted of Thursday Island men who played guitar and sang: ‘I had my own boys play for me … One day nobody turn up, I don’t know what happened.’ A white man from another band offered to play for her.
I said, ‘You don’t play guitar?’
He said, ‘No, but I play drums’…
I said ‘Alright’. So I do that and he got his band to play and I danced to his drums … I was pleased with myself, to find out that I can dance to a white man’s drum.[30]
Singing and dancing are not only romantic, they are also spiritual. Flo’s family were from Badu Island although she grew up at Lockhart River Mission and Thursday Island. Flo learnt to dance from her Polynesian grandfather.
It’s lovely, hula dancing done properly is really nice, with meaning y’know, tell stories … And it speaks lovely words, y’know the action speaks lovely words.
And it’s got to come from inside to make it really meaningful, y’know.
I guess anything has to come from inside, otherwise it means nothing.[31]
Aboriginal and Islander people came from a tradition of spiritual observance through song. John Coleman remembers how the old people used to sing while they worked,[32] and though the songs changed (Gordon Pablo fears in some cases they are lost altogether[33]) the singing continued. Church singing was important for many people; Royce Lee praises a family of singers from Hopevale,[34] Jean George recalls the fine baritone of her uncle.[35] Aboriginal people were learning ‘popular’ songs too. Peter Costello’s favourite is a sentimental tune about a man missing his mother. The boys on the trochus boat used to sing ‘When it’s spring-time in the Rockies’ and cry for their girlfriends.[36] Vivien Gostelow and Geraldine MacKenzie recall the Aboriginal stock workers singing to the cattle through the night.[37] The drovers sang, soldiers sang, men on boats sang.
The women at Weipa used to wait for their men to come home on the boats. As they arrived the men would be singing songs about the islands and the sea: ‘Every little thing they make songs about; the wind and the rain, and brother and sister.’[38] The song influences from Thursday Island incorporated Islander traditions, modern popular music and Indigenous sentiment.[39] While the expressions are diverse, the preoccupations remain the same: the main subject of these songs is love, of place, home, family and beloved. Country music is popular to this day with its concentration on rural subjects and the misfortunes of love.[40]