Australian Folklore was established in 1987 by Professor Graham Seal and David S Hults. It was originally published through the Centre for Australian Studies at Curtain University, Perth. At the time of the first edition being published Professor Graham Seal was teaching at Curtain University, in conjunction with the Centre for Australian Studies, and David S. Hults, a then past-Chairman of the Australian Folk Trust, was a graduate student at Curtain University.
In 1992, following an Armidale-based Australian national Folklore Association Conference, Australian Folklore became the official journal of the Australian Folklore Association. At that time the journal also moved east to Armidale, and began to be edited by Emeritus Professor John S. Ryan at the University of New England.
In analyzing the content of past issues of Australian Folklore the Australian Folklore Association explained that:
'Past issues have included papers on such topics as Italian traditional music in Adelaide, folklore generated by the Azaria Chamberlain case, contemporary folklore and racism, folklore in literature, collection issues, roaming gnomes, bushranger outlaw traditions, contemporary legends about AIDS and human organ thefts, folk speech, Victorian goldfields songs, copyright protection for Aboriginal folklore, food rioting, convict vocabulary, regional oral history projects, folk tales, the Australian bush, changing religious traditions, the debutante ceremony, the Republican controversy, Aboriginal myths, bush hospitality, plant lore, the functions of immigrant Korean churches, and changing life in Australian country towns. There is a well-established tradition that the journal includes studies regarding the other nations of the immediate region - such as New Zealand, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and the broader Pacific.'
Readers who are interested in the development of Folklore in Australasia may wish to consider:
- 'Australian Folklore: An American Folklorist’s Appraisal' by the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Professor James Leary (published in Tradition Today).
- 'Australian Folklore Yesterday and Today' by the University of New England's Emeritus Professor John S. Ryan (published in the Estonian online journal, Folklore: An Electronic Journal of Folklore).
- '"Earnest Spade Work": The New Zealand Folklore Society, 1966-1975' by Victoria University of Wellington's Dr. Michael Brown (published in the Journal of Folklore Research).
- Davey, Gwenda Beed, and Graham Seal. (Editors.) The Oxford Companion to Australian Folklore (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993).
- Ell, Gordon. New Zealand traditions & folklore (Auckland: The Bush Press, 1994).