
Back to Croajingolong was published as Croa-jingo-long and recorded under that name by Harold Williams (as Geoffrey Spencer) for Regal in 1923. Williams was an Australian baritone who spent most of his working life after the First World War in Britain, mostly singing classical repertoire, though branching out occasionally into more popular songs. The curious thing is that Croajingolong isn’t so much a place as a district in eastern Victoria near Mallacoota. There were a succession of small gold rushes there in the late 19th century and these days the name exists as that of a National Park along the coastline. Maybe it was just the rhythm of the word which appealed to the composer.
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.