"I Still Call Australia Home" is a song written and performed by Peter Allen in 1980. In it, Allen sings of Australian expatriates' longing for home.
Significance to Australian culture
It has been used to signify Australian patriotism and nostalgia for home. An example is the series of Qantastelevision commercials where it was sung either by individual Australian musicians or one of several Australian youth choirs. In the 1984 Summer Olympics' Opening Gala TV special, Olivia Newton-John performed this song from Sydney, Australia with the choir in a medley with "Waltzing Matilda". Later, both songs were used in the musical about Allen's life, The Boy from Oz, in which Hugh Jackman starred as Allen. "I Still Call Australia Home" was added to the National Film and Sound Archive's Sounds of Australia registry in 2013. In Australian English speech of earlier generations, "home" referred to Britain. Thus by contrast, "calling Australia home" became for a period a particularly piquant expression of Australian identity.
The song was used in the evening closing sequence for Tasmanian television station TNT and later by TVT.
In one version of the song popularly used by Qantas, "Rio" is replaced by "Rome" as Qantas does not operate flights to Rio de Janeiro, but flew to the Italian capital at the time the video was made.
* Qantas later reused the song as part of safety videos since 2018, with the 2018 safety video recorded in many parts around the world, including New York and London. In addition, "Rio" was used in this version of the song instead of "Rome". When Qantas was celebrating the centennial anniversary of its foundation, the instrumental version of the song tailored to each time period portrayed in the safety video.
The song is a popular inclusion in the repertoire of several Welsh male voice choirs, including the Australian Welsh Male Choir and Morriston Orpheus Choir. The Welsh version replaces "London" in the line "from New York, to Rome, and old London town", with "Swansea".
The song featured as pre-game entertainment at the 2009 AFL Grand Final, performed by the 'Qantas choir' and the Gondwana National Indigenous Children's Choir.
The song was performed by Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Hugh Jackman, Olivia Newton-John and Russell Crowe to close Oprah Winfrey's Australian Adventure during her final season on broadcast television. This performance originally aired on US television on Friday, 21 January 2011.
The naming ceremony for Qantas' A380, VH-OQA, the Nancy Bird Walton, the flagship of their fleet, features a choir singing this song
Australian comedian and musician Tim Minchin uploaded a parody of the song called "I Still Call Australia Homophobic" to his Facebook page in reference to the same-sex marriage debate and proposed 2017 survey in Australia.
The Australian hip hop group TLK used the song as the inspiration for their 2006 song "I still call Australia home" which referenced historical violence against Aboriginals.
