The Heritage of Australian Children’s Play and Oral Traditions

The oral traditions of children are rich and varied, and encompass the songs, chants, rhymes, stories, riddles, insults, and lore of the playground. In Australia, though the collection of children’s folklore dates from the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1950s that this field of inquiry attracted serious scholarly attention. Since then, there has been an increasingly vigorous interest in the collection and electronic recording of Australian children’s verbal and performative play culture by academics, folklorists, and major collecting institutions (Davey 2011; Factor 2011; Darian-Smith 2012). Between 2007 and 2011, the Childhood, Tradition and Change research project conducted the largest nation-wide study of children’s games and playground culture to date, resulting in a substantial archive of visual, oral, and written data. A significant amount of this research data is available on an open-access website (http:// ctac.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/index.html), where it has much to offer with respect to scholarly and community interest in exploring the dynamic heritage of Australian children’s play.