Hawaiian music had a burst of popularity in Australia with a string of recordings made between 1926 and 1955.

This is one of the Sydney recordings by touring Hawaiian artists David and Queenie Kaili, also known as The Hawaiian Entertainers.

Bob Farrington is another band leader of the 1950s who has disappeared from view.

The greatest song of the whole Australian Hawaiian genre has to be 'I Lost my Heart on Hayman Island'. It was written by prolific songwriter John Ashe and has been recorded at least five times.

One of the fascinating things about this music is that the Hawaiian Club performers didn’t feel any obligation to perform exclusively Hawaiian-themed material.

Over the next few years hints that the performers of Hawaiian music were actually in Australia crept in occasionally.

There were few female singers who recorded Hawaiian music in this period. Bernice Lynch was the daughter of one of the Hawaiian Club founders in the early 1930s.

What is noticeably absent in the Australian Hawaiian music recordings of the 1930s and 40s is any sense of Australianness in the songs themselves.

Working on the variety circuit at the time of Ernest Ka’ai’s second Australian show in 1926 was a young entertainer named Charles Wade, who learnt the basics of Hawaiian music and ukulele playing f

In 1950 The Royal Hayman Hotel on Hayman Island produced a double-sided 12” 78 with John O’Connor and George Watson’s Hawaiians performing 'Pack Up a Dream and Head for Hayman Island'