Martin-Wyndham Read, Warren Fahey, Eric Bogle
Trinity Church
Sat 14 Mar, 2026

Bushwhacked, Bewidered and Bothered: Celebrating the Golden Years of the Bush through songs, yarns and verse.

Eric Bogle referred to himself and two other musical colleagues for the night, Martin Wyndham-Read and Warwick Faye, as old codgers – fair enough as they all tip the scales at eighty plus. But they are all still in remarkably good voice.

A guitar-less Bogle began the evening singing a few of his own songs accompanied by Emma Luker on fiddle and Pete Tichener on guitar. As he always has, he once again had me close to tears. His song about saying goodbye to his mother on the station platform in 1969 is still a heartbreaker. Bogle himself is clearly still deeply moved by it. “That’s the wonderful thing about music” he said. “It brings people back.”

I was surprised that he chose to play And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda – maybe he feels he has to. Maybe his audiences expect it. In any event, I’m glad he did. It is of course a beautiful, incisive ballad that deconstructs the ANZAC myth. As he was singing I remembered seeing him play this song as a young man at the height of his career. There was a sentimental sadness in the air as you realise you will probably never hear him sing it live again.

When Fahey and Martin Wyndham-Reade came on stage the mood got quite a bit lighter. Again quoting Bogle: “Warren Fahey. He’s the real deal. He’s written books and everything!” Together with Wyndham-Reade he has dedicated years of his life uncovering, preserving, and singing and telling tales of the Australian outback.  So we were of course treated to a few. Some songs were familiar (eg Flash Jack from Gundagai); others less so. Loved the story about the chess playing dog and the children who fainted when they saw rain! Faye still has a lot of energy left in him and obvious love for his cause and the characters of outback Australia. He’s quite a vibrant and engaging presence on stage.

Wyndham-Reade was born in the UK but has spent extended periods in both England and Australia collecting and singing traditional folk songs. He also did a stint as a jackaroo in SA back in the day. There he learnt an old Aboriginal method of measuring the size of properties. Apparently the Australian call of cooee! can travel quite a distance so properties would be measured in cooee units. A property might be regarded as 5 cooees wide!

Wyndham-Reade, like Bogle, still has a singing voice that handles unaccompanied vocals with ease, and still reaches the high notes with accuracy and feeling – quite unusual for older blokes. His original music to the lyrics of a Henry Lawson poem was quite haunting.

I have never been a big fan of bush ballads or Australian folk songs but you have to acknowledge that the work of people like Wyndham-Reade and Fahey is enormously important to ensure that the songs, poetry, and stories that make up our oral tradition are recorded and passed on as part of the historical record. Our current internet saturated culture won’t need such archivists but that’s another story.

Bogle and co returned to the stage to close the show. Wyndham-Read’s comment about Bogle’s contribution to Australian culture in song was greeted with warm and fitting applause. Eric Bogle is a national treasure – and he’s not even one of us!

What was already a special evening became even more special when Bogle announced this would be the last time he and Emma Luker and Pete Tichener would play together. To close the show Tichener had requested they play his favourite Bogle song: If I Should Wake. Gorgeous harmonies from Luker and Tichener brought a beautiful conclusion to a special night courtesy of three old codgers and their musical friends.