Our journal, 'Australian Folklore', is now issuing its twenty-fifth volume, and, like the world titles across our field, this publication has become - in effect - a representative, and selective, yearbook - and it is endeavouring to move far beyond its formative origins and concerns, those still seemingly in British (antiquarian) post Industrial Revolution thought. For we are now accepting much more deliberately our Pacific location in the twenty-first century, in order to re-appraise the better our non-European setting and an ever more confident sense of identity.

In this issue we have followed the more recent habit of clustering into larger groups the papers now selected for publication, and also offer now the accumulating food pieces which were referred to in 'Australian Folklore' No 20 (on p. vi of that volume.) This group is most helpfully introduced by Donna Lee Brien's reflective essay on the largely television-popularised Celebrity Chefs, whose personal presentations and influence alike constitute a most formative influence on the hitherto cautious Australian foodways. The Railway Conference report promised did not eventuate, but two Prominent figures from the Sesqui-centennial Conference have combined to offer us a provocative paper on the amazingly precious site in Sydney, certainly unique in the world, which is threatened at the present time. We are also informed that an east coast Cooperative Rail Research Centre is in the process of formation, a vital development, since so much of the lore associated with heavy industry is in danger of being forgotten without a drive to preserve as much as possible of Australia's great industrial age which has long been passing.

This volume - one issued a little belatedly for the year 2002 - has followed the format of 'Australian Folklore' Number 16, in that (1) its contents and themes are clustered more than in the past, and we have taken some note of tragic events both in Australia and worldwide occurring in later 2002 - and so of the new 'folklore of terror' that has come with the millennium; and(2) that we have also included again some materials first presented at/ offered to the National Biennial Conference held in 2000. It is also the case, with this volume, that the folkloric work currently being done in Australia has a much wider range than might have appeared possible a decade ago. In this country there is also now a much wider recognition of the role that the folklores of the southwest Pacific region can and do play in the Australian cultural continuum, and how we are at certain levels international and,perforce, global. Thus the two letters to the editor are concerned with matters that, at first sight, might seem somewhat peripheral.

This present volume, the annual scholarly publication of the Australian Folklore Association, follows the general style of earlier numbers of the journal, and it also takes up many of their more recent thematic interests, as well as those to be found in the Proceedings of earlier conferences in which the Association participated. It is the case, too, that many of the concerns of our sister national/international journals - in Canada, in the United Kingdom, for East Asia, and from various regions of the United States of America - are to be found in this volume and planned for No. 16 of 'Australian Folklore'. This latter volume, that for 2001, as well as being commemorative of the centenary of Australian Federation, is also the year of Australia's hosting in Melbourne in July of the World Congress of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research. (The preferred areas of interest and the final call for papers for the Congress are both published now.) This last focus links particularly well with the April 2000 National Library of Australia conference, 'Challenging Australian History: Discovering New Narratives', one particular purpose of which was to explore 'the place and the importance of remembering' and another 'the influence of cultural studies on the history profession'. This volume - like the earlier ones featuring the work of Russel Ward, Dal Stivens, Bill Wannan and (separately) of Alan and Bill Scott - is concerned to celebrate the work of a distinguished folklorist, John Meredith, who turned eighty this year.

This issue, one somewhat delayed, is, by its contents and thought, a living proof of the increasing dynamic of the discipline of folklore - and of the greater understanding of all folkloric matters, in this country, even as it is also a defiance of the now so fashionable MOOCS (multiple online on line courses, and their bland and yet often sweeping conclusions) as exist on this same field. And it indicates also the need for the general reader to realize, and to reflect deeply, on the mass of significant, but abrasive and temperamentally destructive issues that come under this rubric, and that are filling to overflow our once more traditional daily lives. Accordingly, we have taken the perhaps quaint step of indexing our journal's pages into the divisions of Names (personal and place), and then of Subjects / Themes as they are to be found in the articles in this issue.

'Australian Folklore' is the journal of the Australian Folklore Association, Inc. It is published yearly in the Southern Hemisphere Spring, i.e. in August/September. Prices and details of back issues available are listed inside the back cover. 'Australian Folklore' is a peer-reviewed journal, maintaining its high quality through the engagement of Australian research with the global research community. It has long been listed by the Modern Language Association, and many papers from it cited in the MLA's selective Annual Bibliography and indices. A similar treatment is accorded by the Modern Humanities Research Association in its ABELL, both in its Traditional Culture and other appropriate sections. In Australia, it is an ERA-listed journal.

This, the thirtieth issue of the annual and now both national and internationally reaching and respected publication, 'Australian Folklore', is one that marks a pleasing and most significant milestone in the recording and analysing of the customs, beliefs, and the various records of the habits and general and more particular mores of the Australian people and of the whole general society of this continent, without, however, treating of the more intimate culture of the Indigenous people. It is also a journal that has always taken due notice of the outside world folklore that interests Australians, much as has been the case with the open files of the British and folklore mothering major early journal, 'Folklore', one which allows itself a sweeping view of interesting research and significant recording, particularly across the English-speaking countries. Pleasingly, too, the Northern European e-folklore has more than one Australian scholar in its more regularly appearing authors.

This volume follows the format of recent issues in its thematic clustering of topics and in our continuing concern to cover a broad range of the folklore work now done in Australia, as well as of that fieldwork and scholarship which may be said to be more narrowly focused on Australian themes, experiences and attitudes. In this connection it is interesting that a record number of Australian universities and departments are represented in the valued and supportive contributors to this issue. As usual we endeavour to report on the work of individual scholars, collectors, performers and / or writers in our field, and we have, sadly, to record yet again the passing of several towering figures, two of whom in later 2003 were accorded state funerals by the appropriate state governments.

For many years it has been the policy of this annual journal to reflect on developments in influences impacting on Australian folk culture - from the more immediate 'Pacific' field, and so to indicate some of the ways in which our predominantly Australian research and linked interests in lore and custom are likely to acknowledge and, if appropriate embrace aspects of these different but impacting cultures. Necessarily the greater themes are then and subsequently to be indicated and duly explored by such studies as we are able to solicit, assess, and, if appropriate, publish. Thus we have a cluster of such research essays towards the beginning of the present annual volume.

The format of this volume of Australian Folklore, like some of the more recent, has been divided into several loose clusters, as is clear from the table of contents. Thus there is a grouped focus on several of the larger areas of the folklore work now being worked on in this country. Again the annual issue covers a multiple number of research approaches to the field, although almost all of the items now included have a strong link with Australia and with materials largely generated by the various regions, societies and belief systems of the continent. We have been able to reprint - with Fabula's gracious permission - a paper given to an international congress in Melbourne but which had appeared in print first in Germany, and we have also been able to publish an account of fieldwork being done in the Indian sub-continent. Significantly, we have been in scholarly contact with/ exchanged journals with various equivalent major societies and publishers in the field, including those edited in Canada, China, Estonia, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, in particular.

This volume - issued a little belatedly for the year 2001 - is somewhat different from its predecessors in that (i) its contents have been more shaped and delayed, as we have tried to take account of the intended recipient's death occurring when we were about to go to press and at that stage with much less material about her publications and manuscript collections; and (ii) the fact that it was decided to publish in 'Australian Folklore' a number of the papers given at the National Biennial Conference of 2000 in the next two issues of the journal (i.e. No. 16 and No. 17). It may also be noted that in general, as the Conference itself made very clear, it and the journal are more and more concerned with Folklore Study done in Australia and its region, and not totally focussed on Australian collecting of, and research into, material largely generated by the societies of this continent. This change or decision to include (revised) some of the 2000 Biennial Folklore conference papers was approved not least since these will, thereby, be the more easily and widely located in libraries worldwide, rather than their being published in an irregular format and circulation, as wall the earlier Proceedings of their Conference. (And, as would be noted elsewhere, the Conference title had the more Comprehensive wording Folklore/Folklife, both because of the greater international use of the last term and from its wider use in Victoria, especially, to refer to aspects beyond the verbal or printed form.)

In this last year there have been many indications that the Folklore discipline is gaining considerably in both academic and general recognition in this country, much as it is abroad. Specifically, not only have there been our own Association's members contributing to major folklore and related conferences in North America and the United Kingdom, but Graham Seal was invited to give a keynote opening address - on concepts concerned with ANZAC - to a special inaugural Folklore Conference at the Victoria University of Wellington, in the New Zealand capital. Like grand theme conferences continue to be associated with the National Library in Canberra, while more applied ones are linked with state libraries and regional festivals. Similarly, it is pleasing that a long 2005-written paper from an AFA member has more recently appeared in the electronic journal, 'Folklore' edited in Estonia. It may also be noted that Australian scholars represented in this present issue reach out to field materials in Burma, Canada, and elsewhere, while many of their themes are 'global contemporary'. We have also been interested in the way in which Folklore and Ethnography, perhaps, rather than Anthropology, may be said to be coming together. Of course, this has been the case in some sense, for many years, and the matter has been discussed in our pages.

As with the last issue of 'Australian Folklore', this volume has its contents divided into several thematic areas or clusters which reflect more or less the work on lore and persistent custom currently being done in this country. The article on the sense and evolution of 'Heritage' is, however, more focused on the British Isles, although it is possible that some of the less positive nuances of the word there may replicate themselves in the Southern Pacific countries. As is pointed out by Dr Keith McKenry in his more recent - and now gratefully reproduced and generous reflective appraisal of the journal for international readers - there are a larger number of contributions that are obviously from universities. Indeed, a careful reading of the issue will reveal that contributors come from some nine Australian universities, and from three in North America. Moreover, the journal, in its contents, has again maintained its well-established connections with academic colleagues in the U.S.A., Canada, Japan, and various other Australian universities, as well as recording fieldwork done in Indonesia, New York, the Torres Strait area and in the far extremities of both Western Australia and Tasmania. (Indeed, it is pleasing that there are two articles based on earlier work done in that too often folklorically neglected state.) Most of the other items are from (private) collectors and scholars still studying and writing, but not so formally employed. Yet many of them are remarkably observant and they are now recording their observations and recollections from decades earlier, as with Rebekah Brammer, and with some of John White's even going back to the 1920s. We are pleased to include a paper on aspects of the threat/challenge offered by the computer to certain aspects of identity, and we record that the Sesquicentennial of Rail was celebrated at Werris Creek (New South Wales) and in adjacent Tamworth, in late September of this year, and hope to publish in 2006 some reflections on the four day occasion by the Conference Convenor, Dr Andrew Piper. As always, the future of folklore will rest in the hands of children - those transmissible elements, both old and new, which help children to probe meanings and potential speech/actions within their culture will survive well. Issues of access arise in these times of much change, and the role of schools as sites of transmission, both formally and informally, may be increasing in importance. Thus it is pleasing to have several papers surveying the issues of children and folklore.

We are deeply appreciative of the range of thoughtful and even provocative and discipline-extending articles currently being made available to our journal, thus making possible a challenging selection that covers many aspects of the further development of Australia's 'more traditional' culture. Again, too, it is pleasing to be able to record now our scholars' ongoing interest in several of the more regional and ever more impinging - and distinctive - cultures, as with some engagement with New Zealand, and with various of the South Pacific island nations. Further, we now also publish a much earlier reflection on industrial lore and a timely commentary on the (possible) American influences on the commercialization of certain sectors of Australian music, and on its industrial style. In yet another perspective, it is a fruitful activity to read a further musing from David Cornelius on the folk's passing in 'Wessex', in one of our 'home' countries - both for its impact on Australian settlement, and as we reflect on similar identity-threatening events taking place in the Australian outback at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Once again we have been delighted at the richness of both biographical and evaluative materials being offered to 'Australian Folklore' for possible publication, even as we note the steady increase in the number of private scholars,particularly women, who are now working in the field. These individuals and their several organisations are regularly offering for consideration both articles and reports on significant aspects of the traditional culture of Australia and also on its relations, past and current, with: neighbouring societies, antecedent ones, and those which offer contrasts to things Australian. To anticipate, we wish to record now the likelihood soon of significant material on the South Pacific and also from New Zealand. Readers will also notice that our sister journal, 'Asian Folklore Studies', has changed its focus somewhat and is now called 'Asian Ethnology', with a special focus on the folk culture of Viet Nam in its first issue. Pleasingly one of its former editors is continuing working from the Research Institute in Nagoya, Japan. In the case of Australia itself, there would appear to be a stronger wish to record and evaluate the work of earlier folklorists, as is obvious from the range of pieces now included on some of the key figures of the folk renaissance from the 1950s. In this connection, it is intended that the 2009 issue will contain a number of the papers from the forthcoming seminar on the lives and writings/ contributions of the late Keith Garvey and the more recently deceased Col Newsome, both of whom were anachronistic in many ways, not the least of which was: their style of 'publication', of revisiting in their writings the regional frontier of northern New South Wales', of their recensions of the traditional pastoral history of the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, in particular.

This paper treats of a milestone book that is a already sensational text in many countries. It is concerned with the process of conducting /appraising 'writing classes', these being a powerful /revelatory experience for all class members and for the instructor, for (s)he may well not have the training in psychology that may be appropriate in this area. The thrust of the argument is towards the subtlety required in the guidance of such 'thinking /speaking /writing)' - something linked to the classic text of C.E.M. Joad, as well as to the most sensitive learning theory.

The overall East African literary landscape is dominated by oral literature, and the two cited languages, English and Swahili, must stand out. Today their most dynamic contact zones are located in Kenya and Tanzania. Swahili studies and Anglophone African literary studies have long dominated the formal study of literature in East Africa, and are now extending into two new contact languages, Sheng and Engsh, and the literature emerging from these language masses. Prominent features are code-switching, issues of translation, and the mix of narrative and public health knowledge on the topic of HIV/AIDS. This article surveys these issues, with one eye to the South Pacific parallel, and amongst the cultural lament finds much wry humour expressed.

This issue, one somewhat delayed, is, by its contents and thought, a living proof of the increasing dynamic of the discipline of folklore - and of the greater understanding of all folkloric matters, in this country, even as it is also a defiance of the now so fashionable MOOCS (multiple online on line courses, and their bland and yet often sweeping conclusions) as exist on this same field. And it indicates also the need for the general reader to realize, and to reflect deeply, on the mass of significant, but abrasive and temperamentally destructive issues that come under this rubric, and that are filling to overflow our once more traditional daily lives. Accordingly, we have taken the perhaps quaint step of indexing our journal's pages into the divisions of Names (personal and place), and then of Subjects / Themes as they are to be found in the articles in this issue. In a very real sense, too, we have made the decision to expand, even more assertively, the area of our field, it now to consider general and proximate fields of study, as highly significant areas for our research, analysis, and scholarly reporting and interpreting. Thus we have continued with our very natural existing interest in Indonesia and so in its religious / mental climate, and the forms of extremism that have so tragically occurred.

In more recent issues of Australian Folklore, the longer - and so folk discipline-surveying editorials as included therein - have elected to take stock of the larger international field of research and publication of both folklore, and of more obviously of other presentation of folkloric materials; and they have sought, quite regularly, to comment on trends, interests, and re-visitings beyond the more localised / focussed research 'Australian' work as was largely the main focus for our journal, as of earlier years. This present and somewhat delayed issue for 2013 is, therefore, notable in its contents for several such reasons.

For many years it has been the policy of this annual journal to reflect on developments in influences impacting on Australian folk culture - from the more immediate 'Pacific' field, and so to indicate some of the ways in which our predominantly Australian research and linked interests in lore and custom are likely to acknowledge and, if appropriate embrace aspects of these different but impacting cultures. Necessarily the greater themes are then and subsequently to be indicated and duly explored by such studies as we are able to solicit, assess, and, if appropriate, publish. Thus we have a cluster of such research essays towards the beginning of the present annual volume. Pleasingly these external fields are deemed significant in many research/ tertiary Schools and Departments, from whence an ever greater proportion of our investigative pieces come. Accordingly we have recorded a number of folkloric exercises from the immediate north of Australia, and, variously from Indonesia, and South East Asia, even as we had an unexpected paper from South Africa. However, this work will not drown out the research voices handling our more traditional lore and language. As the present issue indicates at several points, one of the most obvious features of our research, our publishing and of the teaching in our field in Australia has been a developing concern for the proximate countries; those of the South Pacific, and of the south east of Asia, rather than with the regions of the British Isles and so the less emphasis on the legacies of / issues here coming here up to the 1930s, and so, to consider rather, a turning to the European and other countries so heavily represented in the post 1945 migration to Australia, or those in East Asia impacting on Australia in the second third of the twentieth century. As it stated some way ahead in the present volume, the 'The New Net goes Fishing' in other waters - a nice Maori idiom for stories and writings from the era after 1945, when New Zealand, too, had a world view of other peoples than the traditional British settlers, enforced or free.