Version 2
Words: John Wheeler, Date Unknown
Music: William Garnet James, Date Unknown
1. Out of the plains
the brolgas are dancing
Lifting their feet
like war horses prancing
Up to the sun
the woodlarks go winging
Faint in the dawn light
echoes their singing
Orana! Orana!
Orana! To Christmas Day
2. Down where the tree-ferns
grow by the river,
There where the waters
sparkle and quiver,
Deep in the gullies
Bell-birds are chiming,
Softly and sweetly their
lyric notes rhyming
Orana! Orana!
Orana! To Christmas Day.
3. Friar-birds sip the
nectar of flowers,
Currawongs chant in
wattle-tree bowers
In the blue ranges
Lorikeets calling
Carols of bushlands
rising and falling
Orana! Orana!
Orana! To Christmas Day.
Earthly Delights: Xmas Carols
This Australian carol was written by John Wheeler, born in Colac Victoria. Wheeler was a staff writer with the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Sydney, author of some highly-successful verse plays and penner of many songs. He is quoted as saying 'Just as the carols of the old world owe so much to the local colour of the countries which produced them, so it was felt that the new land of Australia - where Christmas is celebrated in high summer - should have its own carols with their distinctive background'. The tune for this carol, as for many other carols by Wheeler, was composed by William James, born in Ballarat, Victoria. After a career as a concert pianist (which began with a London Promenade Concert in 1915) James became the Australian Broadcasting Commission's first Federal Director of Music, a post he held until his retirement in 1957. Of all Wheeler and James carols this is perhaps the best known. The lyric, by reference to daily activity of half a dozen different Australian birds in their native habitat and by use of an Aboriginal word for 'welcome', offers an evocative panorama of a Christmas landscape very different to that implicit in so many wintry shepherd, king, angel or manger-centred northern hemisphere carols.