The Bushwhackers, initially named "The Heathcote Bushwhackers", Australia's first "revival" bush band were arguably the catalyst for Australia's folk revival of the 1950s; prior to that revival, similar bush bands, utilizing a mixture of commercially available and sometimes home-made instruments, had performed a social function in rural areas since the late 19th century. The Bushwhackers performed from 1952 to 1957, when founder John Meredith disbanded the group and its members dispersed into other activities. (An unrelated group with a similar sounding name, "The Bushwackers", formed in Victoria, Australia in 1971 and continues to the present day). Over its relatively brief existence, the group evolved from an initial novelty act to one with a more serious mission of presenting and promoting to Australia its neglected bush song heritage, and laid the foundation for similar groups to follow through the 1960s and to the present. Its members also operated⁠—at least initially⁠—from a Marxist / Australian Communist Party ideology, attempting to embody the struggle of the working class against the ruling classes, although this may have been less than obvious to their audiences under the guise of popular entertainment.

Band formation and source of name

The group was originally formed as "The Heathcote Bushwhackers" in the outer Sydney suburb of Heathcote in 1952 by folklorist John Meredith together with his neighbours Jack Barrie and Brian Loughlin, to perform and popularise "bush music" and later, Australian songs that Meredith had started to collect in the field from traditional performers.National Library of Australia: Trove: Bushwackers Musical group.. Note, the NLA mis-spells Loughlin's surname as "Loughlan"; "Loughlin" is correct according to other sources. In Australia, the term "to bushwhack" most commonly means to make one's way through untouched native vegetation, typically scrub or forest ("the bush") by "whacking" (cutting) a trail where none currently exists; a "bushwhacker" therefore means either such a traveller, or more generally, either a person who lives in such country, that is, off the "beaten track" (a phrase of similar derivation), or simply a resident of the countryside in general (by implication, an unsophisticated person, similar to the U.S. term "hillbilly") as opposed to a resident of the city or the suburbs.The Collins English Dictionary gives several definitions of the term "bushwhacker", among which are "a person who travels around or lives in thinly populated woodlands" and "(Australian informal:) an unsophisticated person; boor", see Definition of "bushwhacker". There is no real equivalent in British English usage, since the concept of a person sustaining an existence in semi-wild country out of regular contact with wider civilization does not really exist there. Similarly, to "beat a track" (as per Australian "bushwhack") does not really exist as a practical activity in British usage, although it persists in a phrase such as "off the beaten track", denoting a locality away from main routes of transportation or centres of population. It seems likely that, at least at first, the group name was intended to be ironic, since Heathcote, although indeed a rural / "bush" area at that time, was basically a retreat for escapees from city life in search of a more rural lifestyle, who were attracted by cheap land for sale there while still with regular rail links to Sydney."Heathcote and the Birth of the Bushwhackers, 1952-1953". Chapter 9 in McKenry, Keith: More Than a Life: John Meredith and the Fight for Australian Tradition. Rosenberg Publishing, 2014. Meredith resided in Heathcote from 1952 (when he moved there to share a somewhat primitive owner-built dwelling with its builder, Eric Burnett, an ex-roommate from Sydney) up to mid 1954, when he returned to the inner Sydney suburbs, taking up lodgings in Lewisham in order to avoid the long train commute from Heathcote to his job in the city, in addition to his burgeoning city-based musical activities.

In its initial lineup, the group's instrumentation was button accordion and tin whistle (played by Meredith), "bush bass" or tea chest bass played by Barrie (actually not a traditional "bush" instrument at all, but one previously played by sailors and "wharfies"), while Loughlin played the lagerphone, a home-made percussion instrument constructed by loosely nailing bottle tops to a broom handle to make a rattling sound when struck upon the floor, this example being constructed and named by Meredith's brother Claude and copied from something he had seen played by "an old rabbitter".Mulga Wire, April 2002, p. 12. Years later, Meredith gave the following account of their formation:

"Botany Bay" and "Click Go the Shears" were in fact learned from the repertoire of the American singer Burl Ives, who had toured Australia earlier that year and had included these and some other Australian songs in his performances, having been supplied with them in advance by the Australian collector Dr. Percy Jones. (Later these formed the basis of Ives' own albums 9 Australian Folk Songs (10", Australia, 1954) and Australian Folk Songs (USA, 1958).) Of the new recruits to the band, Chris Kempster (thirteen years younger than Meredith, and a singer on occasion to his own guitar-based accompaniment) was known to him via the Sydney based left-wing organisations the Eureka Youth League and the Unity Singers, of which both were members, while Harry Kay, also from the Eureka Youth League, played excellent harmonica.

The group gave its first public performance at the Rivoli Hall in Hurstville in late 1952, deciding to shorten its name to just "The Bushwhackers" at the same time.

Reedy River In 1953 Reedy River, an Australian musical written by Dick Diamond featuring bush and Australian folk music, opened first in Melbourne and then as an amateur production at the Sydney New Theatre, and the Bushwhackers were engaged to provide the musical accompaniment for the Sydney version, which saw the addition of one song "Widgegoeera Joe" (alternate title: "The Backblocks Shearer") which Meredith had collected earlier that year from a bush singer named Jack "Hoopiron" Lee.McKenry, Keith. 2014. More than a Life: John Meredith and the Fight for Australian Tradition. Rosenberg Publishing, 488 pp. The production also included "Click Go the Shears", which although credited in the Reedy River Song Book to versions collected by Meredith in the field, actually derived mostly from the Burl Ives version that the band had originally learned. Performing as singers in the musical were Chris Kempster and Harry Kay, joined later in the season by Cecil Grivas, Alex Hood and Alan Scott, all of whom subsequently became assimilated into the band. Around this time, the group also supplied the songs and music for several historical radio features written for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) by Nancy Keesing.

Subsequent activities

In 1954 the Bushwhackers, along with other folklore enthusiasts, established the Sydney Bush Music Club to encourage members of the Club and the general public to learn about and perform Australian folk and traditional music; an additional reason was to deflect more requests from interested parties to join the band, instead encouraging them to perform at the club and/or form their own groups. The band travelled outside Sydney into rural New South Wales, and Meredith and Scott often used their performances to scout out local bush musicians and singers for field recordings. In 1955 the group played for Dame Mary Gilmore's ninetieth birthday and recorded The Drover's Dream, released as a 78 rpm record on the newly established "Wattle" label, selling thousands of copies, followed by a number of other 78 recordings, as well as two 33 rpm EP releases, Australian Bush Songs and Nine Miles from Gundagai (both 1957). Other local groups taking inspiration from the Bushwhackers and/or the Bush Music Club around that time, performing similar music, included "The Overlanders" (from Leichhardt), "The Spraggers", "The Rouseabouts", and "The Drovers".

Remembering some of the group's activities some 25 years later, member Alan Scott wrote:

Although happy to commence, and then to continue the existence of the group under the general public perception as popular entertainment, Meredith and the other members were affiliated to the Australian Communist Party, at that time very much a focal point for idealistic youth, in particular following the end of the Second World War, together with its Marxist ideology and various offshoots such as the Eureka Youth League; in this respect, his aims paralleled those of folk-song activists working in America since the 1940s such as the Almanac Singers and The Weavers. As well as representing the struggle of the working class against the capitalist system, Meredith wanted the group to be at the vanguard of a movement to regain a national cultural identity. In his own papers of the time he wrote:

As the 1950s developed, Meredith in particular, sometimes assisted by other group members, became interested in collecting Australian songs "in the field" and was able to use performances by the group as a means to reach out to otherwise unknown local singers and other persons with knowledge of local, unrecorded material that he hoped to be able to capture for posterity, the start of an activity that he was to continue on his own or with other collectors long after the demise of the group. A contemporary account of the band's activities in the Sydney Morning Herald reads as follows:

Demise of the group

With very little notice to the group members, in 1957 Meredith abruptly decided to disband the group (minus Grivas, who had departed in 1955 due to a change in location), citing in his personal notes musical and personal differences between the older and younger members of the band: for example Kempster and Hood aspired to harmony singing, occasional solo vocals and more variety in the arrangements, Meredith's conception only involved solo singing in the verses, unison singing in the choruses, plus all the instruments playing all of the time. (By contrast, group member Alan Scott stated that in his opinion, the constant touring and rehearsing had simply got too much for Meredith, who "could not cope with all his other activities and be a Bushwhacker too".) Various of its members continued to perform in bush bands: Kempster, Hood and Kay initially as "The Three Bushwhackers" and then continuing as "The Rambleers"; Grivas with his brothers Roland and Milton as "The Galahs", already formed post his 1955 departure from the Bushwhackers; while Meredith continued to collect field recordings of Australian traditional and folk music, as well as performing with "The Shearers" and the Bush Music Club's "Concert Party".

Reunions