I Don't Go Shearing Now hits the stage at the National Folk Festival at Exhibition Park in Canberra

I Don't Go Shearing Now is their latest collaboration, a musical stage play that has been touring surrounding sheep towns including Braidwood, Goulburn and Gunning leading up to three performances at the National Folk Festival in Canberra this week.

It's a show celebrating the golden era of wool, when Australia "rode high on the sheep's back". And it's so evocative, you can almost smell the lanolin and hear the clatter of the hooves on wooden floors.

I Don't Go Shearing Now was devised and written by Wyndham-Read, an internationally-renowned folk singer. The show uses readings combined with old and new songs, recitations, bush tunes and humour. Listeners are transported back to the noisy days of hand-shearing and early machine shearing, where the yell of "Rouseabout - Tar Here!" and "Wool away!" resound again.

The songs include classic works from Henry Lawson such as The Shearer's Dream and Past Carin', several anonymous songs much-loved by yesterday's shearers, and a couple of recent compositions of Martyn's. Warren and Martyn are joined by longtime Bushwacker's Band and John Williamson Band singer and multi-instrumentalist Clare O'Meara.

"Martyn and I narrate the piece but also do poetry, songs, tunes. Clare plays additional music and also sings with us. It's a show that celebrates something that people have forgotten about really," Fahey said.

"It conjures up the past traditions of Australia where in our great enthusiasm to embrace multiculturalism where tend to forget about all these pioneering stories. It doesn't matter if you came came off the First Fleet or last week, this country's got something special and we should celebrate it."

It's ironic then, that such a salute to something so intrinsically Australian, was written by an Englishman. Martyn Wyndham-Read first moved to Australia in the 1950s when he worked on a sheep station in South Australia.

"When I first came to Australia I realised how vital the wool industry was and still is to the Australian story. And the songs salute that great era," he said.

"Despite the distractions of modern times these stories and ballads have a strong value and should never be lost. I have staged [the show] in England a few times and it's wonderful to bring it back home."

Wyndham-Read helped to stage the first National Folk Festival in Melbourne on a summer weekend in 1967. When asked how he feels to be 80 and still touring, Martyn says it makes him feel young.

"I made a pact when I started that I'd only sing songs I liked and therefore each song in my repertoire is a much loved favourite. I love sharing the stories," he said.

Fahey is well-known as an author, broadcaster and folklorist. He has been a frequent performer at the National Folk Festival and attended the very first one. When the folk festival travelled to Sydney, Fahey was its artistic director in 1970 and 1973.

"I think that their programming this year is more in keeping with what it should be. I do think it was going a bit off track by being too contemporary," he said.

"I think the festival always has to acknowledge the fact it was born of an interest in traditional songs and dancing, music-playing and story-telling. That doesn't mean it should be shunted into the past because I believe if you do that, it'll die. You do need new musical explorations, but it's to be balanced.

"That's the whole thing with festivals - you've got a huge audience potential and you give them what they want, but you also give them a few challenges, that's the success of the festival. Maybe there were too many challenges [in recent years]."

Fahey, who has oral histories stored at the National Library in Canberra, fears too many Australian stories fall by the wayside.

"Not only do I think we are in danger of losing these stories, I think in some cases we've lost that contact with those stories," he said. "I honestly see my responsibility, self-appointed, of the last 55 years or so, is tapping Australians on the shoulder and saying, 'Hey, don't forget that so many things about our culture came out of the bush when the majority of our population, before Federation, lived in the bush'."

Fahey and Wyndham-Read are both motivated to engage audiences in the life of pioneering Australia.

"I know that you can fire all the facts and figures about how the wool industry was the major industry in Australia in the latter part of the 19^th century, but to sing a song and communicate with an audience and give them the emotional history, you can't do it in any other way," he said "I just think these songs are extraordinary gems of history that we tend to ignore or trivialise. And that's why Martyn and I are driven, I think, the excitement of sharing the story-telling."