Smoky Dawson was one of Australia’s most enduringly popular entertainers. He was a western singer before it was coupled with country and was dubbed Australia’s first cowboy. He went on to become the world’s oldest recording artist. He made his first record, I’m a Happy Go Lucky Cowhand, in 1941 and his last, Homestead of My Dreams, in 2005, when he was 92, although a DVD featuring new performances was completed just before his death.

Happy go lucky neatly captures his public persona. It was all the more remarkable given the tragic, brutal childhood he had endured growing up in suburban Melbourne and provincial Warrnambool. Herbert Henry Dawson was the fourth of five children. His mother died when he was seven, his elder brother drowned and he suffered severe and sustained beatings from his hard-drinking father, a fractured survivor of Gallipoli. Rescued by a Christian Brothers orphanage he learnt music and began to sing. He had been promised a position with the railways but ran away to the bush and learnt many of the skills he was to later deploy. He even met the last of the Kelly boys, a brother of the bushranger Ned. His unsuccessful attempt to smoke a pipe led to his being known as Smoky.

In 1937 he met a children's radio host and elocution teacher, Florence ("Dot") Cheers who became a mother figure and his muse. They married in 1944. With Dot he created an alter ego, Smoky Dawson, a yodelling, horse-riding, whip-cracking, knife-throwing, song-writing, singing cowboy.

While working in a tannery he had formed a band, The Coral Island Boys, with his younger brother, and this led to his first record. A larger band, The South Sea Islanders, followed and Smoky established a music school. He also found time for competitive cycling, riding with the legendary Olympian (Sir) Hubert Oppermann. During the war he served in the first Australian Entertainment Unit in Borneo, and once shared a concert at Balikpapan with Gracie Fields.

After the war he spent time in the United States but the wrong accent delayed any commercial recording. In New York Smoky was engaged to promote the film Kangaroo (starring Peter Lawford), but on his way to the Roxy Theatre on Broadway, Zip, the kangaroo in his care, leapt out of the hired Cadillac and disappeared into the moneyed acres of Long Island. While it took twenty-seven police from the Fifth Precinct five days to find Zip, local schools were closed and the Korean War was wiped from the front page of at least one of the papers.

He was due to play Petruccio in a Theatre in the Round production of Kiss Me Kate in New Jersey, cracking a whip around Kate, but homesickness drew the Dawsons back to Australia and to the most successful period of their lives. Smoky and his performing Palomino, Flash, featured for fifteen minutes three nights a week on Australian radio in a serial called The Adventures of Jindawarrabell, set on a fictitious Australian property. Smoky ensured the show's popularity by taking it on the road, actually performing all the circus and rodeo tricks he and Flash appeared to be executing on radio. He would split an apple with his whip and throw an axe at volunteers from the audience, always missing them by inches. Three years later the show became a half-hour drama called The Adventures of Smoky Dawson. It was transmitted to 69 stations across the country and the show's Wild West Club attracted one million members, who were encouraged to live by the Codes of the West, which included: come to the table when first called, help a neighbour in need, and honour your flag and your country.

Smoky's adventures ran for a decade but did not transfer to television. His star faded but he lost none of his pluck. He bought a ranch on the northern outskirts of Sydney and, although the Dawsons had no children of their own, they taught hundreds to ride and to care for horses. And he continued to record. In his nineties he still had an hour-long Australian country music radio show that broadcasted weekly to most of the States. He regarded his favourite tunes as The Days of Old Khancoban and Riding with a Smile and A Song, which became his theme song.

He was appointed MBE in 1978, became a Member of the Order of Australia in 1999, and received the Honor Award at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

Flash died in the 1980s aged 35. As Smoky observed, "Some people don't have their wives that long". He is survived by his 101-year-old wife, Dot.

Smoky Dawson, Australian western singer and entertainer, born 19 March 1913; died 14 February 2008, aged 94