The Turning of the Southern Wheel stepped out into the world today, carrying with it that deep, chanty heartbeat we love – the sense that the land itself is breathing the seasons.
This song is not about borrowed calendars or distant traditions. It is about our wheel, the one that turns beneath Canberra frosts, summer storms, and the long golden afternoons that paint the walls of your home with light. The verses follow the path of the year as it is felt in Australia: leaves crisping in May, fires of connection in spring, the still pause of winter, and the bright unfurling of life as the sun grows strong again.
Apologies if you see a broken video image – Youtube is playing funny buggers with it. Once you click on the play button the image comes up.
What makes this piece special is the way it listens rather than shouts. No people fill the imagery—only animals, plants, land, and weather. The choir is the magpies at dawn, the tired koalas in shaded boughs, the slow crawl of jade waves, and the ochre dust that holds stories older than any of us. The music has captured that haunting reverence beautifully, and the visuals were designed to echo it: gentle light, textured fur, glowing moons, and evergreen spirits of place.
If you close your eyes while it plays, you can almost feel the wheel moving – like standing in the doorway of the workshop while machines hum quietly nearby, knowing that every season has its hour. The structure flows from verse to chorus as naturally as breath, inviting children and grown-ups alike to sense where they are in the year and in the land.
This launch marks another step in the Waratah and Wood journey: songs rooted in home soil, wrapped in the super-cute Gumleaf Gang style, but holding a core that is sincere and steady. The Southern Wheel has begun to turn, and we get to walk beside it ever so gently.
You’ll find the full song on YouTube as part of the Aussie Songbook, and I hope this page helps you share what words alone sometimes struggle to hold—the goosebump kind of magic that isn’t magical at all, just beautifully Australian.
