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Sounds of Australia 2011

Sounds of Australia 2011

Ten sound recordings with cultural, historical and aesthetic significance were added to Sounds of Australia for 2011. 

They include the first audio recorded of Indigenous Australian songs and music; hits by The Seekers, Skyhooks and Kylie Minogue; the opera Voss; and a Melbourne Cup race call by Ken Howard. One of the entries is two recordings of maiden speeches by the first women elected to the Australian Parliament, in 1943.

Established in 2007, Sounds of Australia is the NFSA’s selection of sound recordings which inform or reflect life in Australia. Each year, the Australian public nominates new sounds to be added with final selections determined by a panel of industry experts.

See the Complete Sounds of Australia list.

The Recordings of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits by Alfred Cort Haddon and others
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
8879
Courtesy:
British Library
Year:
Year

A man, identified by British Library records as ‘Maino of Yam’, sings a traditional song entitled Yamaz Sibarud. He sings the song a capella. The recording fades out as the man continues to sing.

Summary by Rhianna Patrick

WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that the following program may contain images and/or audio of deceased persons
Living in the 70s by Skyhooks
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
263933
Year:
Year

The title track of the 'Living in the 70’s' album, recorded during June and July 1974 at the TCS Studios in Melbourne. The album, produced by Ross Wilson from the band Daddy Cool, broke all previous sales records for an Australian album.

Summary by Tamara Osicka

I’ll Never Find Another You by The Seekers
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
82220
Year:
Year

The clip is verse three, beginning with the last three words of the linking vocal bridge (with its minor modulation) from verse two.

…Be my guide

If they gave me a fortune

My pleasure would be small

I could lose it all tomorrow

And never mind at all

But if I should lose your love, dear

I don’t know what I’d do

For I know I’ll never find another you

Summary by Jenny Gall

I Should Be So Lucky by Kylie Minogue
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
318596
Year:
Year

This is a 30-second clip from I Should Be So Lucky, a pop-dance song performed by Kylie Minogue. The song features a wickedly catchy chorus, of the kind writer-producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman were famous for in the 1980s and ’90s.

In this clip from the song, Kylie is upbeat, despite the one-sided nature of her love affair with her would-be beau, singing:

I’m dreaming …
You fell in love with me
Like I’m in love with you
But dreaming’s all I do
If only they’d come true.

I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky
I should be so lucky in love.
I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky
I should be so lucky in love.

It’s a crazy situation
You always keep me waiting …

Summary by Beth Taylor

The Art of the Prima Donna by Dame Joan Sutherland
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The Art of the Prima Donna by Dame Joan Sutherland
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
321750
Year:
Year

In 1951 Joan Sutherland moved to England to pursue an operatic career after she won the Sun Aria Competition in Sydney. Based in London through the 1950s she and her husband Richard Bonynge refined her singing style to that of a dramatic coloratura soprano singing the bel canto repertoire. The recording of 'The Art of the Prima Donna' with the Royal Opera House Orchestra conducted by Francesco Molinari-Pradelli is still considered one of the great opera recordings.

Ken Howard Calls the Melbourne Cup, 1941
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
338699
Year:
Year

This is the complete radio broadcast of the 1941 Melbourne Cup, as called by commentator Ken Howard.

Summary by Martin Ford

Cyclone Tracy, Darwin
Courtesy:
ABC
Year:
Year

This excerpt of an ABC radio interview consists of a first-hand account from a survivor of Cyclone Tracy – ABC radio news journalist Mike Hayes. In it, Hayes speaks off-the-cuff to fellow journalist Bruce Grundy about the myriad of emotions and some of the immediate concerns of the people of Darwin following the cyclone: hunger, shock, relief, homelessness and evacuation. He alludes to the as yet unknown death toll and says that 'the terror of the whole thing makes it … good to just be alive.’

Summary by Beth Taylor

Voss by Richard Meale
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
230032
Year:
Year

This is an excerpt from the garden scene in Act One of Voss. Nighttime in the garden of the Sydney home of the rich merchant Mr Bonner, who will help finance Voss’s expedition to cross the country. Two of his dinner guests, Johann Ulrich Voss (Geoffrey Chard), the surly German explorer, and Bonner’s young niece Laura Trevelyan (Marilyn Richardson), wander out to catch the night air. They find much in common in their imagination and dreams: 'I will be followed across the continent by your thoughts’, Voss declares. Laura crosses into those thoughts: 'I crossed the threshold. He was there.’

Summary by Vincent Plush

Dame Enid Lyons: Maiden Speech, 1943
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
483285
Year:
Year

Dame Enid Lyons reads her maiden speech, originally presented in the House of Representatives in Canberra on 29 September 1943.

Summary Maryanne Doyle

Senator Dorothy Tangney: Maiden Speech, 1944
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
483102
Year:
Year

Recorded by the ABC in Sydney on 21 April 1944, Senator Dorothy Tangney reads the maiden speech that she originally presented in the Senate in Canberra on 24 September 1943.

Summary by Maryanne Doyle

The Sailors by Stiffy (Nat Phillips) and Mo (Roy Rene)
NFSA-ID:
NFSA ID
253375
Year:
Year

The Sailors is a recorded version of a theatrical comedy routine by vaudeville performers Stiffy (Nat Phillips) and Mo (Roy Rene). Parts one and two appear on a two sided disc.

Summary by Graham McDonald