Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree/Merry, merry king of the bush is he/Laugh Kookaburra, Laugh Kookaburra/Gay your life must be.
Anyone who sat round Girl Guide campfires will remember that (and just in case there’s a young reader out there, gay in that context just meant happy).
It must be decades since I sang it, but it all came back when I read that lawyers reckon that the classic Aussie pop song Land Down Under by Men at Work is a rip-off of the Kookaburra song.
Similar maybe, but it would take someone with much better grasp of melody and rhythm than I’ve got to argue whether or not it’s a rip-off.
Homepaddock 
It took them THIS long to complain? What a riff-off. You don’t see Thomas Pynchon suing Irvine Welsh for ripping off the Dirtiest Toilet in Scotland experience from Slothrop’s similar trip in Gravity’s Rainbow. Harden up, Girl Guides.
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It never occurred to me but of course Welsh took this from Pynchon. As Picasso allegedly said, “Bad artists copy. Great artists steal.”
Let’s not get started on Oasis, eh?
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I’m currently singing Haydn’s Creation (1796) and notice that one of the tenor parts is almost exactly the same as a country & western song. Wonder who gets the royalties there.
Thing is there are NO new tunes … it’s all been written before.
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