So do Aussies really sing about kookaburras or was that just a song our 2nd grade teachers thought up?
Both.
Why not? Their national anthem is about a suicidal guy dancing with a sleeping bag or something like that. Living upside down makes people very strange.
It’s also a song that gets Colin Hay sued, of course.
I loved that song in school. I was first grade when we sang it. I made my sister look the bird up in an encyclopedia for me. Took awhile because I kept calling it “bookakurra” !
Can’t mention kookaburras without a kookaburra video
I sang it with my Girl Scout troop. I always like it. Along with the Girl Scout song about their Swiss building – “High UP High on a mountain we founded our chalet.”
On edit: hilarous video! Even with the lame Harry Potter joke.
Not so hilarious when two of them start belting out calls at 5 am just outside your window.
I remember the song from my school days last century and, as the wikipedia extract says, we learned to sing it in rounds.
Up-to-date urban version:
Kookaburra sits on the electric wire
Jumping up and down with his pants on fire
… and so on.
(Unfortunately most of my memory brain cells from primary school have long since waved goodbye).
It must have been in a Canadian music primer because most Canadian’s of a certain age know it well. And when “Down Under” came out we understood the reference.
I remember the kookaburra song from the Singing Together program at
primary school in the 1960s.
Okay, do you really sing about tying kangaroos down?
Not just Canadian. We Yanks learned in in elementary school also.
I certainly did!
I remember singing it in a round, as well (a la Frere Jacques).
It was a hit song for a certain popular Australian entertainer.
He ain’t quite so popular now, though.
Often referred to (esp by New Zealanders sick of sheep jokes) as a traditional Australian love song.
Yeah. Songs about three leggèd men, two little boys, and the Ladies of the Harem of the Court of King Caractacus are all off the playlist as well.