[Sheet music] I'm glad to be back in Australia

Sheet music for the song titled 'I'm glad to be back in Australia', written by Hal Abbott and published by the Dunheved Publishing Company about 1918. The cover features an orange speckled background with a framed picture in the centre depicting a silhouette of gumtrees and a kookaburra in front of the rising sun. This copy of the music sold for 2/-. The back cover features an advertising preview of another Hal Abbott song titled 'Neath the light of a perfect piece'.

The lyrics of 'I'm glad to be back in Australia' evoke images of Australian country life with motifs of magpies, wattles, sunshine and southern skies. The narrator tells the story of going away to fight, subsequent bouts of homesickness, the return home to all that is familiar and how there is no place like Australia. Thus, the song emphasises some unique characteristics of Australia such as the sights and sounds of the bush, and the feelings evoked by a return to these environments.

Private Harold Daniel Abbott was born in 1887 at Launceston in Cornwall, England, and worked as a motor driver and as a salesman before enlisting on 12 October 1914. He served with the Australian Army Medical Corps, and unusually made a total of four embarkations between November 1914 and July 1917.


Towards the bottom of this page is a sound recording of this sheet music, or a parody, that was created as part of the Music and the First World War project. More information about this recording, including names of the performers, can be found on the catalogue record for the sound recording. A link to the catalogue record for the sound recording can be found at the bottom of this page, under the heading ‘Related objects’ where it can be identified with the prefix [sound recording].