The Settlers

The official site for 'The Settlers', the group that wrote the 'Songs of the Snowy Mountains', part of Australia's music and pioneering heritage.

 
The Settlers first album, Songs of the Snowy Mountains, was recorded in 1966. Over the next thirty years Ulick O'Boyle, the lynchpin of the band, was to produce five more Snowy albums – More Songs of the Snowy Mountains, West of Cooma, Snowy Rambler, Mountain Tracks, and Kiandra and Beyond.

These songs have become part of our national heritage and as such should be preserved for future generations. Ulick's songs and poems contain that special lilt and use of words that, somehow, seem to come almost uniquely to the Irish. The CD 'Songs of the Snowy Mountains' includes all the songs from the first and the second albums and 'The Songs of the Snowy Mountains Songbook' which includes those songs are both available for purchase through this website.
 
The SettlersThis website is an interactive historical journey where people's memories and reminiscences can be recorded. We welcome visitors to contact us to share their images, songs, stories, letters and memorabilia.
 
By sharing our stories we will create a site which will contribute to the: history of Australian music: the history of early multiculturalism; the history of hardship and struggle - along with joy and laughter: and the magnificent engineering achievement in the building of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme.

The Settlers, which was formed in the mid sixties, was brought together by the very talented Ulick O'Boyle. Ulick was a prolific writer of songs, poems and ballads. His most endearing and significant compositions were his songs about the mighty Snowy Mountains Scheme.
 
The enormity of the achievement of the Snowy scheme remains one of the world’s greatest engineering feats. Through his experience working on the scheme in the 1960s, combined with his extraordinary songwriting talents, Ulick captured the atmosphere of the life of Snowy workers – the diverse nationalities, the loves and heartaches, the dangers and terrors, the comedies and tragedies. 

 


 

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