AustLit

Well known in country music circles, Ashe composed the music and lyrics of many songs, including I Lost My Heart on Hayman Island (1957) and Sunny Queensland (1959). He cites his love of poetry as having been sparked by Palgrave's Golden Treasury, which he won as a maths prize at the Townsville Grammar School in 1923. Over time, he found that he had 'acquired the facility of writing musical verse' which he wrote until the advent of World War II. An interest in music was also being honed and after some time he found he had an ability for composing melodies, and went on to become a 'comparatively well-known Australian songwriter'. Ashe states that the influence of the English poets was so strong upon him that nothing of his early works - such as Songs of Sentiment - revealed that their author was Australian. However, he claims that 'the Australian in me later asserted itself in my country songs and The Great Barrier Reef Island Songs'.