1890s recording studio. Thomas Rome Collection. Courtesy the Arts Centre, Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne.
This is the earliest known Australian sound recording, made by Thomas Rome of Warnambool, Victoria, some time in early 1897. It captures a novelty song featuring imitations of a chook sung by performer John James Villiers. Rome’s display stand at the Warrnambool Industrial and Art Exhibition in 1896 to1897 featured an Edison cylinder recorder which Rome had imported from the USA.
1899Fanny Cochrane Smith's Tasmanian Aboriginal songs – Fanny Cochrane Smith
Fanny Cochrane Smith recording with Horace Watson. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Tasmania.
These songs are the only recorded example of Tasmanian Aboriginal songs and the only recorded example of any Tasmanian Aboriginal language. In late 1899 and again in 1903, Horace Watson recorded Fanny Cochrane-Smith on six wax cylinders for the Royal Society in Hobart. She sang all the Tasmanian songs she knew, some in Aboriginal languages, others in English.
Dame Nellie Melba making her famous broadcast in 1920. Courtesy of Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Gramophone ‘Melba’ Record GC3575
This performance, in London in 1904 was among the first commercial recording sessions for the Gramophone Co. made by Nellie Melba. She recognised the gramophone’s potential as a way of bringing her music into the homes of ordinary people. Melba had a great natural advantage in that the quality and timbre of her voice was ideally suited for the acoustic recording techniques of the time.
1910My South Polar Expedition – Sir Ernest Shackleton
Frank Wild, Ernest Shackleton, Eric Marshall and Jameson Adams aboard the Nimrod, 4 or 5 March, 1909. National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an24648174.
This is a cylinder recording made in 1910 by Shackleton on his return from the British Antarctic Expedition (190709), also known as the Nimrod Expedition, after the name of Shackleton’s ship. In this recorded recollection, Shackleton relates the loss of one of the party’s horses, one of the reasons the group turned back before reaching the Pole. In the days before radio, public appearances or recordings of this kind were often used as fund raising efforts for future expeditions.
The landing of Australian troops in Egypt. AWM Collections Search CO 2588.
Zonophone 3068
Its actual origins obscure, this recording is a fascinating concoction, probably made in London around the time of the Australian landing in Gallipoli in April 1915. It captures that Kiplingesque spirit of ‘boy’s own adventure’ that accompanied the early years of the Great War and it is an early example of the use of sound recording for the dramatisation of historic events, as far removed from reality as such inventions often were!
Percy Grainger supervising the editing of a Duo-Art Music Roll – New York, c1915.
This piano roll was issued by the Duo-Art Company in May 1919 shortly after the music was published by Schott, London. These 'Aeolian' Duo-Art rolls (Aeolian catalogue number 6149) were made in real time by a perforator punching holes as Grainger played the piano. Dynamics were added simultaneously by a producer using two rotary controls. Grainger was one of the 'Aeolian' Company of New York's most popular artists: between 1920 and 1933, he cut 12 piano rolls for the company.
1924The London recordings – Newcastle Steelworks Band
Jack Greaves Collection.
The earliest disc recordings by an Australian brass band were made by the Newcastle Steelworks Band during their year-long visit to Great Britain in 1924. Altogether the band had a repertoire of some 500 pieces. From these they made the equivalent of 18 double-sided recordings for the Aeolian Company in London conducted by Albert Baile.
This is its first known recording, probably recorded by the Queensland-born tenor John Collinson in London in 1927. It was released on with My Old Home Town (Mildura) on the B side but sold very few copies. At the time, the recording industry barely existed in Australia and the few releases by Australian artists were recorded and manufactured overseas. The same recording was released as Vocalion X 10021 in 1927 with The Maori Flute on the flip side.
1928Hinkler's Message to Australia / Incidents of My Flight – Bert Hinkler
Courtesy John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland Negative number: 16290
Columbia 0970
Bert Hinkler made the first solo flight from England to Australia in 1928 in a single engine, open cockpit Avro Avian biplane, taking just over 15 days to do so. Less than a month after he landed he recorded this disc in Sydney, inscribing his signature on the master disc. On the first side he encourages Australia to embrace aviation; on the other he recounts anecdotes about the flight. Such spoken recordings by celebrities were common in the early days of the Australian recording industry. Charles Kingsford-Smith and Charles Ulm recorded similar discs shortly afterwards.
The 21-year-old Don Bradman photographed in London in 1930. Courtesy State Library of South Australia (Mortlock Library).
HMV EB52
This recording contains the voices of Don Bradman, Bill Woodfull, Clarrie Grimmett, Alan Kippax, Stan McCabe and Tom Wall recorded in London just before their triumphant return to Australia following Australia's draw with England in the 33rd cricket Test series in June-August 1930. Recording the voices of famous people, such as the touring Kangaroos cricket team and the transoceanic pilots of the day such as (Sir) Charles Kingsford-Smith and Bert Hinkler was quite common at this time.
Jack O’Hagan wrote his popular ballad in 1922, even though he had never been near the town! It sold over 50,000 copies in the first three months after publication and was taken up by almost every singer, choir and band of note. The great Australian baritone Peter Dawson first sang it in 1924, and recorded it in London in 1931.
1936Wrap Me Up In My Stockwhip and Blanket – Tex Morton
Courtesy State Library of Victoria H92.20/453-458 Image No: a18356
Regal Zonophone G22904
Tex Morton (born Robert Lane in New Zealand in 1916) made his first commercial records for Regal Zonophone in Sydney in 1936. This side was recorded during his fourth recording session in August that year. While his earlier recordings were of American hillbilly style songs, this one (and another recorded in the same session) marked the start of a shift to performing more distinctively Australian material. This was a stylistic link back to the bush ballads of the late 19th and early 20th century Australian poets and provided the basis for the ‘bush ballad’ in later Australian country music.
1937Dad and Dave from Snake Gully – George Edwards Players
Cast of Dad and Dave discuss the script. NFSA Title No: 356408.
Dad and Dave from Snake Gully began its marathon run on Radio 2UW in Sydney on 31 May 1937. In 2,276 fifteenminute episodes, it was broadcast four nights a week and ran for 15 years. The show originated when Wrigleys, the chewing gum manufacturer, asked its advertising agent to create a serial that was Australian in character and would appeal to a national audience. Thus Dad and Dave from Snake Gully became compulsory listening, an absorbing part of daily life for many Australians, an antidote for the stresses of the War years.
The words of the Aeroplane Jelly jingle were written by Albert Francis Lenertz (aka 'Frank Leonard of Marrickville', 1891-1943), a wholesale grocery and wines-and-spirits merchant in Sydney, who was co-partner in a company which manufactured and marketed the 'Aeroplane' brand of jellies and other products. The best known recording was made in 1938 by the seven-year-old Joy King (later Joy Wigglesworth) and broadcast for many years as part of a very effective advertising campaign for the jelly crystals, a song which has remained one of Australia's most endearing 'sing-along' favourites over the decades.
1939The announcement of the declaration of World War II – Prime Minister Hon. Robert Menzies
National Library of Australia nla.pic-an23217367
Menzies chilling speech, with its well known opening, 'It is my melancholy duty…', committed Australia to participation in the second great conflict of the 20th century. During the full speech, almost 20 minutes long, Menzies explains the political background over the previous year that lead up to the declaration of war by Britain on Germany which, by the conventions of the time, also included Australia. He broadcast the speech from the Federal government offices at 4 Treasury Place, Melbourne, and the best copy the NFSA holds is on a 20n inch acetate disc.
1939Give A Little Credit To Your Dad; Lonesome For You Mother Dear – Buddy Williams
Courtesy of the Williams family.
Regal Zonophone G 23855
Buddy Williams was the first Australian-born country singer to write and record songs with a distinctive Australian flavour. These songs come from his first recording session, on 7 September 1939 with the Regal Zonophone Company. Buddy was 21 years old and continued to make records until shortly before his death in 1986. Australian country music today owes much of its character to Williams’ whistling, songs and singing.
1941The announcement of war with Japan – Prime Minister Hon. John Curtin
National Library of Australia nla.pic-an12267621
Australia’s reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbour on Sunday 7 December 1941, was swift. The attack took place on early Monday morning Australian time, and by that evening Curtin had made this broadcast to the nation. It is a much angrier speech than Menzies’ a little over two years earlier with the war a lot closer to home. Curtin’s location when he made the speech is uncertain, either the Commonwealth offices in the city or perhaps from the Victoria Barracks in St Kilda Rd, Sydney.
1943The Majestic Fanfare (ABC radio news theme) – Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra
Martin Royal reading the ABC News. Photo courtesy of ABC Archives
Music by Charles Williams
This instantly recognisable Australian icon was actually composed by an Englishman, Charles Williams, a composer of Polish extraction. Williams had written scores for several of the earlier English films of Alfred Hitchcock. He had also composed music for the BBC and various television networks in the UK. Williams composed The Majestic Fanfare in 1935 and recorded it in London in 1945 with the Queens Hall Light (Music) Orchestra.
The original music was just under a minute long, but in 1952 the ABC opted for a compressed version of 18 seconds as the theme music for its radio news broadcasts.
For over sixty years, Graeme Bell has been central to the history and development of Australian jazz. In the late 1930s pianist Graeme Bell and other Australian musicians were inspired by the jazz of New Orleans, and this music provided inspiration for such Bell jazz tunes as Swanston Street Shamble and Two Day Jag, the titles referring to traffic conditions and celebratory hangovers in war-time Melbourne. These track were among the first recordings made by the band and the first to be commercially released.
Pick A Box is best remembered as a television quiz show, but it ran for 10 years on the radio before becoming a TV program in 1957. As far as the NFSA can tell it was the only regular program broadcast on both radio and TV, which continued until 1962. Bob Dyer was one of the few radio stars of the pre-television era to successfully make the shift to TV and Pick A Box continued its popularity until Dyer’s retirement in 1971.
A publicity photo from Blue Hills, Gwen Meredith's long running serial (1949 – 1976). ABC archives
There are few pieces of music in Australia as instantly recognisable as Ronald Hanmer's Pastorale - the theme music to ABC radio's serial Blue Hills, by Gwen Meredith, which ran for 5,795 episodes from 1949 to 1976. Best known for his light orchestral and brass band compositions, Hanmer was an English composer who emigrated to Australia in 1975. The original recording of his Pastorale was made by the New Century Orchestra, conducted by Sidney Torch, and was released on a 10" 78rpm disc (FDH023) by the mood-music company Francis Day and Hunter.
Harold Blair, Australian Aboriginal tenor, in his studio at the Melba Memorial Conservatorium of Music, Melbourne. NAA, A1200, L26000
Traditional Aboriginal song, arranged by Arthur Steadman Loam (18981976)
Tenor Harold Blair was the first Aboriginal Australian to achieve international recognition as a singer on the opera and concert stage. This recording is one of two unreleased songs on a lacquer disc and is perhaps an early version of a fivesong EP disc that Blair recorded in 1950. This comprises Westernised settings for voice and piano of five traditional Australian Aboriginal Songs: Melodies, Rhythms and Words Truly and Authentically Aboriginal.
1950Corroboree (Suite from the ballet) – Sydney Symphony Orchestra
At the Sydney Symphony Orchestra's recording of the ballet suite Corroboree in 1950, from left, R.V. Southey (Recording Manager), John Antill (Composer) and Eugene Goossens (Conductor of the SSO). Photo courtesy ABC Archives
HMV ED1193-4
This is the first of several recordings of John Antill’s Corroboree Suite, the first Australian ballet work by an Australian composer and on an Australian subject to become internationally performed and recorded. It was also the first Australian recorded orchestral work to draw on Indigenous reference/meaning, and first work performed by an Australian orchestra to be released internationally.
Image courtesy National Library of Australia nla.pic-an12538999
This song is one of three captured in the 1953 recording of Jack Luscombe which was the formative item in the John Meredith Folklore Collection housed with the National Library of Australia. The collection, by pioneering oral and folk historian John Meredith (19202001), is the most important of its kind in Australia.
This LP was the first publicly available LP recording of traditional Aboriginal music, released by the Ethnic Folkways label in the United State. It consisted of recordings made by Dr A.P. Elkin between 1949 and 1952 in Arnhem Land. And contained a wide variety of previously unheard material: sacred songs, corroboree music, even several versions of the same songtext.
The first radio jingle for Vegemite appeared in 1954, performed by the Happy Little Vegemites. With the advent of television in 1956, the jingle became a television commercial and has been used in advertising campaigns for Vegemite ever since.
1955Smoky Dawson and the Adventure of the Singing Bullet – Smoky Dawson
Smoky and Flash. NFSA Title No. 358518
Columbia KO 1026
In a career spanning six decades, Smoky Dawson was Australia’s first cowboy musician and a pioneer of Australian country music. Smoky and his horse Flash were legendary figures to an entire generation of young Australians who grew up listening to his radio show, The Adventures of Smoky Dawson from 1952 to 1962. Around 1955, Smoky produced a series of 10” 78pm recordings for Columbia Children’s Records including Smoky Dawson and the Adventure of the Singing Bullet.
Slim and Joy in their caravan with the gold record in 1958. NFSA Title No. 750546.
Regal Zonophone G25498
This is perhaps Slim Dusty's best known song and one that created several milestones in Australian recordings. It was the first Gold Record awarded to an Australian performer and the biggest selling Australian record to that time. Released on a single 78rpm side at a time when that format was rapidly disappearing, this recording effectively marks the end of the 78rpm era in the Australian music industry.
State Library of NSW Photograph P1/Mackellar, Dorothea, ca. 1918 (BM)
Dorothea Mackellar’s My Country was created by a homesick 19 year old Australian girl travelling through Europe with her father, Sir Charles Mackellar, the noted parliamentarian and physician. She had laboured over her poem for almost three years before it was published in The London Spectator in 1908 with the title Core of My Heart. Reprinted in several Australian newspapers, it was warmly greeted as the quintessential evocation of post-colonial rural Australia. In 1958 Mackellar recorded a reading of three of her poems with oral historian, Hazel de Berg.
Col Joye was Australia’s first home grown rock ‘n’ roll star and Bye Bye Baby was his first big hit. It reached number one on the Sydney charts after first entering the charts in May 1959 and number three nationally. In 1959 Col had three songs in the listing of the top 25 national hits that year, a feat not repeated until 1965 by the Seekers. For the next few years Col Joye was a major star in Australia, promoting live shows and appearing on numerous TV shows such as Bandstand where he appeared regularly, though he was not able to repeat his early chart success.
Johnny O'Keefe on stage in 1959 with his band The Delltones.
Leedon / Lee Gordon LS 582
She’s My Baby was the first number one hit for Australia’s first big rock’n’roll star, Johnny O’Keefe. While on an Australian tour with Tommy Sands in March 1959, American Scotty Turner (aka Graham Turnbull) played the newly written song to Johnny O’Keefe. Touring the USA in late 1959, O’Keefe recorded the song in Los Angeles with Scotty Turner playing lead guitar and the legendary Barney Kessell on rhythm guitar. It was released on 7 January 1960 on Lee Gordon’s own label, and remained at number one in Australia for an unprecedented 19 weeks.
1962Georgia Lee Sings the Blues Down Under – Georgia Lee
Courtesy Dulcie Pitt and Karl Neuenfelt.
Crest CRT 12-LP004
After a career that started entertaining troop in Cairns in the 1940s and included fronting Geraldo and his Orchestra in London clubs, Georgia Lee recorded Georgia Lee Sings the Blues Down Under for the Crest label in melbourne, becoming only the second female artist to release an LP in Australia and the first Indigenous female singer to do so. The album was also one of the first Australian albums to be recorded in stereo.
The Easybeats. L–R: George Young, Stevie Wright, Harry Vanda, Dick Diamonde, Tony Cahill. Courtesy J. Albert and Son. NFSA Title No. 492436
Parlophone A8234
The Easybeats are widely regarded as the greatest Australian pop band of the 1960s and were the first Australian rock and roll act to score an international pop hit with their classic 1966 single Friday On My Mind. The songwriting team of Harry Vanda and George Young went on to become one of the most successful songwriting forces in Australian music, later writing hits for John Paul Young and the early AC/DC, who included two of Young’s brothers.
Nigel Butterley receiving the Prix Italia in 1966. Courtesy Nigel Butterley
WRC S/2495 In 1966, the ABC entered Nigel Butterley’s radiophonic work In the Head the Fire in the Italia Prize, the pre-eminent international competition amongst broadcasting organisations. One of 16 entries, it won the award against some stiff competition. Over several months, nearly 100 separate recordings were made in Sydney and Adelaide, supervised by conductor John Hopkins and the cream of the ABC’s technical engineers at the time. Although scored for vocal soloists, a small chorus and 23 instrumentalists, the effect of vast multitudes is achieved by multi-layering of tapes. Although originally released in mono, the tape was re-mastered in stereo and issued for commercial release in 1968.
Audio: Courtesy of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
1967Irkanda IV – Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Peter Sculthorpe writing Irkanda IV in Launceston. Courtesy Peter Sculthorpe.
WRC A 601 / Odyssey 32 16 0150
Irkanda IV is the first major work by Australia's leading composer Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929) to be commercially recorded and to reach a national and international audience. The fourth in a series of works sharing the title Irkanda (which the composer explains as "a remote and lonely place"), it is scored for solo violin, string orchestra and percussion. The Melbourne Symphony was conducted by John Hopkins with Leonard Dommett the violin soloist
Audio: Courtesy of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
1968Bird and Animal Calls of Australia – Harold J Pollock
Cover of booklet issued with the original disc. NFSA Title No. 362382.
Harold J Pollock was a well known film maker and nature photographer in Australia during the 50s and 60s. The NFSA holds numerous Pollock films of Australia fauna as well as this 7” EP, released by Jacaranda Press, which came in a 24 page book with detailed information and photographs of each bird and animal. This recording is one of only a few to be commercially released.
Lionel Rose shadowboxing with Goofy and Pluto. Courtesy Channel 7
In Tokyo, on 26 February 1968, the twenty year old Indigenous boxer Lionel Rose took the World Bantamweight Championship from defending champion, Japanese boxer Masahiko ‘Fighting’ Harada. The fight was broadcast in Australia from ringside in Tokyo via telephone by 3DB broadcaster Ron Casey.
Just the Beginning was the first Australian jazz recording to earn a Gold Record. Burrows was performing from the 1940s around the Sydney jazz scene, but his combination with guitarist George Golla in the Don Burrows Quartet in the 1960s and 1970s defined a cool, Latin influenced Australian jazz built around Burrow’s flute and Golla’s electric guitar. Cherry Pie Records was set up by Burrows and Graeme Rule to act as an outlet for Australian jazz musicians.
Eagle Rock hit the charts in May 1971 and stayed at number one in Melbourne for 13 weeks and for 6 weeks in Sydney. It was the best selling single ever in Melbourne. Its infectious guitar riff and the cheery, good natured feel of the record, harking back to the doo-wop bands of the 1950s has ensured its enduring popularity. It provided an entry to the US market for the band, which had eluded Australian acts until then. While not a major hit, the band toured the West Coast three times over the next year and perhaps laid the groundwork for Australian performers later in the decade.
1972Most People I Know (Think That I'm Crazy) – Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs
Thorpie at Sunbury '72, from CD cover. Courtesy Lynn Thorpe and Gil Matthews.
Havoc H1012
Billy Thorpe (29 March 1946 - 28 February 2008) was a major pop star in the mid 60s, but reinvented himself a few years later by embracing a more hard-edged British blues/rock style. Most People I Know (Think That I'm Crazy) became what Thorpe called his 'personal anthem', reaching no. 2 on the national charts. This recording of Thorpie's live performance at the 1972 Sunbury Festival in Victoria captures one of the most powerful moments in Australian music.
I Am Woman has become the enduring anthem of the women’s liberation movement. It was written by Helen Reddy and Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist Ray Burton. In December 1972, it reached the top of the Billboard charts, the first song by an Australian artist or composer to do so. It was also the first Australian song to win a Grammy Award.
1973Opening concert Sydney Opera House – Sir Charles Mackerras / Sydney Symphony Orchestra / Birgit Nilsson
Courtesy Askonas Holt Ltd photo Z Chrapek
ABC Classics 476 6440
On 29 September 1973 the first public concert was held in the Sydney Opera House with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras with soprano Birgit Nilsson, the program featured Wagner orchestral and vocal works. Mackerras was an Australian conductor with an international reputation and returned home to conduct the orchestra he had started with (as an oboist) many years before. The concert, and the concert hall, was judged a great success. The choice of an all-Wagner program, with a visiting Swedish soprano, is curious and one might wonder how such a concert might be conceived of today.
The Loner has been described as Australia’s great lost classic album of black protest music. Vic Simms guitar and vocals of ten songs were recorded while Simms was a prisoner in Bathurst Jail with the rhythm section and other backing added in a Sydney studio. The original LP is exceedingly rare and few copies are known to exist.
Gough Whitlam on the steps of Parliament House, 11 November, 1975.
On 11 November 1975 Gough Whitlam’s Labor government was dismissed by Sir John Kerr, the Governor-General. On the steps of Parliament House Whitlam gave this brief, but empassioned speech to the media. Press photographs of the moment show at least seven microphones recording the official announcement by David (now Sir David) Smith, the GovernorGeneral’s official secretary, of what has come to be known as ‘the dismissal’, and Whitlam’s outraged riposte, so it is nigh on impossible to know the precise origins of this particular recording.
The Saints. L-R: Ivor Hay, Kym Bradshaw, Chris Bailey, Ed Kuepper. Copyright Ed Kuepper
Fatal Records MA7186 / EMI 11346
This song has been cited in The Rough Guide to Punk as ‘one of the iconic singles of the era’, and predated most of the English punk recordings. Written by guitarist Ed Kuepper and vocalist Chris Bailey, the track was originally released on the band’s own Fatal Records label, with an initial pressing of 500 copies; on the strength of this first release the band was signed to EMI Records. In a survey conducted by APRA in 2001, it was voted among the top 30 Australian songs of all time.
1980The 4x100 Individual Medley final at the Moscow Olympics – Norman May
Courtesy ABC
Norman May has described this as the highlight of his broadcasting career. The Australian Olympic team had not done well at the previous Olympics in Montreal, and the Moscow games were clouded by boycotts due to the recent Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There was national pride on the line for the Australian Olympians and May’s excitement comes through in the final lap of the Men’s Medley Relay. And, he doesn’t say 'Gold, Gold, Gold'!
Men At Work’s first single release was a number one single in Australia (1981), the USA (1982) and the UK (1983), making Men At Work one of only five groups to achieve simultaneous number one chart success on both sides of the Atlantic. The song’s catchy melody and cheeky lyrics attracted worldwide attention when Australia won the America’s Cup in 1983 and when the song featured in the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Signed publicity photo of No Fixed Address. NFSA Title No. 456191.
Rough Diamond Records RDS 3511
Aboriginal rock-reggae band No Fixed Address came together at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies (CASM) in Adelaide in 1978. Composed by Bart Willoughby, We Have Survived appeared initially on the sound track album for the award winning film Wrong Side of the Road. In 1982 the track appeared on the EP From My Eyes. This composition is viewed by many as an anthem of the Aboriginal land rights movement in the 1980s and since that time it has grown in significance as an iconic Aboriginal protest song. Bart went on to become the first Aboriginal musician to score a feature film and the first to sign a record deal. He was also leader of the first overseas tour by an Aboriginal rock band.
The Warumpi Band originated in the Aboriginal settlement of Papunya in the Central Desert region of the Northern Territory They toured the Northern Territory and Kimberley region playing to communities, outback stations and isolated townships and developed their distinctive sound whilst writing much of their material on the road. Jailanguru Pakarnu (Out from Jail), the first rock song in an Aboriginal language – Luritja - was written, recorded and released by the band in 1983.
1986We Are Going – Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker)
Courtesy National Archives of Australia NAA Image no. : A6135, K23/1/87/18
Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920-1993) is one of Australia’s most respected poets. We Are Going was published in her first collection in 1964, which was the first book of poetry published by an Aboriginal writer. This rare example of Oodgeroo reading her own work was recorded by the ABC in 1986 at the Harold Park Hotel in Sydney.
Rebetika is a music which became popular in the urban underclass of Athens and Piraeus from the 1930s through to the ‘50s. A revival in Greece started in the early 1970s and was taken up by a group of young musicians of Greek decent in Melbourne, who became Apodimi Compania. Their first LP, Rebetika Songs, was recorded in Melbourne in 1987. In recent years they have based themselves in Greece where they play an important role in the continuity of Rebetika music
From Little Things (Big Things Grow) was written by Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody to honour the work of Vincent Lingiari (1908-1988) who led the strike by Gurindji stockmen at Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory. The strike began in 1966, lasted eight years and was the catalyst for the Aboriginal land rights movement. While Kelly had recorded the song in 1991, Carmody had held off doing so in respect for the mourning period after Lingiari’s death. This version, from Carmody’s CD Bloodlines, was never meant to be on the album and was recorded very basically (in mono) as a demo for the soundtrack of a film documentary about Carmody’s life and music.
1992Paul Keating’s ‘Redfern Address’ - Paul Keating
The Redfern Address was given by Prime Minister Paul Keating at the launch of Australia’s celebration of the 1993 International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples, in Redfern Park on 10 December 1992. In the wake of the Mabo case in the High Court, which specifically recognised prior Indigenous ownership of land in Australia, Keating used this speech to call for reconciliation with Indigenous Australians. In 2007, ABC listeners voted it the third most unforgettable speech of all time (behind Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a Dream’ and Jesus’ ‘Sermon on the Mount’). Don Watson is acknowledged as speech writer for Paul Keating.
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