Sound

A Radio Sound Effects Operator at Work

NFSA title no. 358792. Rights Agreement no. 1089 (Internet Viewing)

Sounds of Australia

Sounds of Australia was launched in 2007 with the announcement of 10 foundation sounds for the registry.

Each year, the Australian public nominates new sounds to be added with final selections determined by a panel of industry experts.
Australian Jazz Archive

The Australian Jazz Archive is a part of the national audiovisual collection held by the NFSAA.
Waltzing Matilda

The entire history of Australian recorded music can be traced through versions of Waltzing Matilda. Just about every craze, fad and fashion in popular music has generated a recording of the song.
Women in early radio

Oral histories and early radio plays written, directed, produced and performed by women in the first years of Australia’s radio broadcasting.
The art of the early record sleeve

There are some 334,000 audio recordings in the NFSA sound collection. They include Australia’s earliest surviving recorded sound – The Hen Convention from 1897 – and span our recorded sound history right through to more recent works like AC/DC’s soundtrack album to the film Iron Man 2 and new music from the Sound Travellers touring project, as well as contemporary radio from coverage of the 2010 Federal Election to a community radio simulcast from the final gig at Melbourne’s iconic music venue The Tote.

The collection includes a broad range of music, radio programming, famous speeches, and historical actuality.

The collection comes in an enormous range of physical formats – including discs, tapes, phonograph cylinders and wire recordings. Contemporary sound and radio productions are collected on compact disc or as digital files. The NFSA has digitised over 17,000 at-risk sound titles for preservation since 1999, and over 500 recordings are available online through our Search the Collection facility.