AFTER the rapturous response to the voice of Melba, a Queenslander born to a life on the stage would soon be delighting audiences across the country and overseas.

Gladys Moncrieff was born in Bundaberg in 1892 and toured as a child with her parents' theatrical company. She made her debut at Brisbane's Empire Theatre in 1912 before touring Australia and South Africa, establishing her reputation in Gilbert and Sullivan operas and being dubbed Australia's Queen of Song. She finally retired in 1963 and lived on the Gold Coast until her death in 1976.

Our fine operatic tradition continued with Harold Blair, Australia's first Aboriginal music star, born at Cherbourg in 1924.

He never knew his Italian father and was taken from his Aboriginal mother at two to be raised at the Purga Aboriginal settlement near Ipswich, where he developed a passion for singing.

At 18 Blair went to work in the canefields near Childers, where he made his first public appearances before being "discovered" by Australian soprano Marjorie Lawrence and studying at the Dame Nellie Conservatorium in Melbourne and later in the US.

He performed in the US and Europe to great acclaim but could never stay away from home for long, becoming a fighter for the cause of Aboriginal people. A gentle man with a beautiful voice, he died at 51.

Two other Queenslanders who received acclaim in the world's great opera houses were Bundaberg-born tenor Donald Smith, who joined the Australian Opera in 1958, and Brisbane's Margreta Elkins, who had 10 years as mezzo-soprano in the Royal Opera in the 50s and 60s.

Pride of the Islands . . . Christine Anu is part of a long line of Islander singers. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Cairns-born Torres Strait Islander Christine Anu came from the north to pop and stage stardom in the 90s, performing to a vast TV audience with her moving rendition of My Island Home at the 2000 Olympics closing ceremony in Sydney.

Anu is the latest in a line of Islander singers.

US troops in World War II brought an injection of jazz influences to the north. There was also plenty of work for local musicians in keeping up morale, including the Cairns-born Pitt Sisters, Dulcie and Heather. After the war Dulcie reinvented herself as Georgia Lee, singing jazz-blues in southern cities before working in the UK in the 50s, touring in Australia with Nat King Cole and releasing an album in 1962, Georgia Lee Sings the Blues Downunder. Many more black Queensland women would add to this tradition, including Georgia/Dulcie's sister Heather, who cracked the Sydney circuit, and Heather's daughter Wilma Reading. Others went unrecorded, recalled only in rare footage from pop TV show Bandstand.

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