Alexander Stewart Ferguson "Alex" Hood (born 1935) is an Australian folk singer, writer, actor, children's entertainer/educator and folklorist. Biography Early life Hood was born in Sydney and attended Homebush Boys High School, where he gained his Intermediate Certificate. As a teenager he was a keen cricketer but left school at age 15 to take up an apprenticeship as an electrician. He joined the Eureka Youth League, a communist youth association, meeting Bill Berry and Chris Kempster. Kempster, along with the older singer and folklorist John Meredith, a founding member of the (original) Bushwhackers (Australia's first revivalist bush band), were members of the Unity Singers, a Sydney left-wing choir formed in 1951. Initial musical influences and career In 1953 Reedy River, a new Australian musical play based around the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, was created, opening first at the Melbourne New Theatre and then subsequently in Sydney's New Theatre, also in 1953. For the Sydney production, Meredith's Bushwhackers group were selected to provide the musical accompaniment; Hood spent some time "hanging around backstage" and, when Kempster had to take three months leave to perform his national service, the nineteen year old Hood, then known as Alec, deputised for him playing the part of "Snowy". (Hood also later took on the part of "Bob the Swagman" for a time, otherwise played by Cecil Grivas). As a result of this involvement, Hood acquired a love of traditional Australian "bush" music and both he and Kempster became accepted members of the band, which however eventually led to friction between them (as the younger members) and Meredith, who decided that the best course of action was to disband the group in 1957, telling the various members that if they wanted to carry on performing, it would be under the auspices of the Sydney "Bush Music Club" (still in existence as at 2020) with which they had all been associated, but no longer under the "Bushwhackers" band name. Hood, together with Kempster on guitar and banjo and Harry Kay on harmonica then formed "The Rambleers", utilizing their preference to sing in harmony as opposed to the unison singing style of the Bushwhackers. The group toured and released a 10-inch LP The Old Bark Hut followed with a 7-inch 33 rpm record Waltzing Matilda, both 1958, and also appeared in a 1960 stage production Fisher's Ghost, a play by Douglas Stewart based on the Fisher's Ghost legend,