Bush ballad

The bush ballad, bush song, or bush poem is a style of poetry and folk music that depicts the life, character and scenery of the Australian bush. The typical bush ballad employs a straightforward rhyme structure to narrate a story, often one of action and adventure, and uses language that is colourful, colloquial, and idiomatically Australian. Bush ballads range in tone from humorous to melancholic, and many explore themes of Australian folklore, including bushranging, droving, droughts, floods, life on the frontier, the city-country divide, and relations between Indigenous and European Australians. The tradition dates back to the beginnings of European settlement when colonists, mostly British and Irish, brought with them the folk music of their homelands.