Expatriate Scots, often under the aegis of Vice-Regal Scots, conducted various activities to keep fresh the old traditions in the somewhat different surroundings of Australia.
Pipe bands appear in the last part of the nineteenth century.
Initially as Scottish interest groups were brought into association by such bodies as the Victorian Scottish Union, the pipe bands joined with the dancers and the other groups. From time to time there was a desire to have control of pipe band affairs, and to shake free of the interference of other groups, however well meant it was. By the 1920s there was, in Victoria, a surge of feeling within the bands that the time had come. This was crystallised by Drum Major Lew Zilles, later Maj. L. L. Zilles, OAM, ED, at the Maryborough Highland Gathering in 1924, using a platform made available by the promoters. Its first tasks were the establishment of uniform contest rules, and the use of qualified judges, not the gentlemen friends of the various organisers as tended to be the case beforehand.