Slim Dusty saw major metropolitan music radio stations abandon support for country artists, and despite record sales in the multimillions, after the 1950s, Dusty was rarely heard on-air outside regional centres in Australia. Dusty's 1957 hit "A Pub with No Beer" was the biggest-selling record by an Australian to that time, the first Australian single to go gold and the first and only 78 rpm record to be awarded a gold disc. (The "Pub with No Beer" is a real place, in Taylors Arm, not far from Kempsey where Slim was born.) In 1959 and 1960, Dutch and German cover versions of
When the Rain Tumbles Down in July Wales in 1945. In 1947, Dusty signed his first recording contract with the Columbia Graphophone Co. for the Regal Zonophone label and recorded six titles including "When The Rain Tumbles Down In July". The song remained a standard for Dusty until his death in 2003. The song is a bush ballad, evocative of the tradition of Australian bush poetry. It concerns the flood season in the mountainous Macleay Valley where Slim Dusty grew up in the 1930s and early 1940s. When the Rain Tumbles Down in July "When the Rain Tumbles Down in July" is an Australian country music song