(Fellside Recordings, through Planet Imports)
This is such an obvious idea it's hard to explain why it wasn't done 40 years ago.
Everyone knows that Australian folk has been drawn largely from the English, Scottish and Irish folk traditions. But, up until now, only those hardy trainspotting types who like playing arcane games have been able to say: "You know that lovely Australian romantic song The Banks of the Condamine, it's nothing more than a relatively minor rewrite of a 19th-century English ballad titled The Banks of the Nile and that, in turn, was an adaptation of a ballad called The Undaunted Seaman which was published in 1690. Have a listen to this."
This project, spearheaded by 1960s Australian folkie Martyn Wyndham-Read (from England), was simple in concept but difficult in execution. Wyndham-Read, eager to demonstrate the links between the two cultures, has taken a collection of 17 traditional songs and a group of English and Australian folk singers - including The Copper Family, Shirley Collins, Martin Carthy, Nancy Kerr, Norma Waterson, Cathie O'Sullivan, Danny Spooner and Dave de Hugard - and produced a double CD (with a 75-page booklet of notes about the songs) so that it is now possible to hear what the songs sounded like (approximately) when they left England and how they were transformed thousands of kilometres from their roots.
Anyone interested in the roots of traditional white Australian musical culture can now listen to the parallel versions and try to understand how the move from the northern to the southern hemisphere, combined with dramatic changes in living conditions, converted English songs into distinctly Australian songs. And, for those who feel this was all one-way traffic, there's the fascinating situation where John Kirkpatrick (one-time member of Steeleye Span) sings The Convict's Lamentation which actually arrived in England on a journey back from Australia where it was known as Moreton Bay.
This is a genuinely fascinating cross-cultural study. Remember always that these performers belong to the old school of "finger-in-one-ear" purist folk singing. This is not David Gray or Suzanne Vega-style folk.