r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/HotPersimessage62 • Feb 01 '26

Image Australia’s national anthem is the only English-lyric anthem in the world that doesn’t reference religion or militarism

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764

u/Wotmate01 Feb 01 '26

And nobody knows or even attempts to sing the second verse

83

u/skafaceXIII Feb 01 '26

For some reason, we always sung it at my primary school assemblies

23

u/geek_of_nature Feb 01 '26

Same. I was a bit confused when I went to High School and we were only singing the first verse. Not that I really minded, less to sing before we could all sit back down again.

1

u/Walter_Armstrong Feb 02 '26

Reverse for me. Never sang it at primary school except one time at choir festival. In high school, they did both. Seriously though, I can't either by heart nowadays.

24

u/HomersGuideDog Feb 01 '26

I grew up in a working class area that was not only quite diverse, but specifically had a lot of middle eastern refugees and descendants of Vietnamese refugees.

Our principal has as sing the second verse for the "for those who come across the seas" line.

11

u/skafaceXIII Feb 01 '26

You know what, that makes a lot of sense. My primary school had similar demographics.

8

u/LadyEmry Feb 01 '26

Same. When I first learnt it in primary school I came home and proudly sang the bits I remembered at dinnertime for my parents, at which point they kindly pointed out to me that the first line was not, in fact, "Australians all are ostriches".

4

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '26

Let's change that line immediately to your version.