ABSTRACT
The poems, brought into the consciousness of the general populace by being set to music, thus raise issues of Britishness and Empire as well as nationhood and unity, largely through the pointed use of imagery. The songs served the joint tasks of raising awareness of the Federation debate – a nationalistic aim – and giving vent to more patriotic notions such as honour, justice and freedom. The cover artwork clearly and literally illustrates the imagery of the opening lines of the song, with its references to a flag and to a single, federated country under it. The reference to the 'Union Flag' must surely be read as meaning the Union Jack, for the two terms were then, and remain today, interchangeable. Henry Rix was an amateur musician, a mathematics teacher who also published numerous books of mathematical tables and on mental mathematics methods, as well as a 1905 pamphlet discussing the proposed introduction of decimal coinage in Australia.
