The Martin/Molloy program – named for its star comedians, Tony Martin and Mick Molloy – ran on Australian radio from 1995–98. 

The show cleverly juggled smart political satire with low-brow humour, sometimes in the same segment. In 'Mick Molloy’s Celebrity Corner', Mick interviewed Tony impersonating a celebrity, often a politician.

When the show began in 1995, a frequent target was then-Prime Minister Paul Keating; by the time this segment aired in 1997, Martin had a new prime minister to impersonate, John Howard.

Produced at Austereo's Fox FM in Melbourne, Martin/Molloy was broadcast live on up to 54 radio stations across Australia during this time. The fast-paced, sketch-based format had previously been restricted to breakfast radio; the idea of such a show working in late afternoons (4–6pm weekdays) seemed far-fetched to some radio insiders. 

However, Martin/Molloy was a ratings success, and quickly grew from being broadcast only on Austereo's metropolitan stations to airing around Australia. Martin/Molloy spawned three ARIA award-winning albums: The Brown Album (1995), Poop Chute (1996) and Eat Your Peas (1998). 

An entire generation of drivetime radio comedy-talk shows followed and this format remains the backbone of the major commercial FM networks in Australia to this day. Tony Martin gifted the original recordings of Martin/Molloy to the NFSA in 2013.   

Image: Mick Molloy and Tony Martin. Publicity still, 1998.

In August 1972 Alison McCallum provided lead vocals for ‘It's Time’, the campaign song for Gough Whitlam’s 1972 election campaign for the Australian Labor Party (ALP).

The song was written by campaign director Paul Jones and advertising jingle writer Mike Shirley and arranged and produced by Pat Aulton. Lead singer Alison MacCallum laid down the foundation track at ATA Studios, Sydney.

The chorus comprised a who's who of Australian entertainment and sporting personalities of the time, including Tony Barber, Barry Crocker, Lynette Curran, Chuck Faulkner, Jimmy Hannan, Brian Henderson, Col Joye, Graham Kennedy, Little Pattie, Bert Newton, Maggie Tabberer, Jack Thompson and more. 

The ALP used ‘It’s Time’ as the theme on campaign ads, making McCallum a famous name through saturation radio and TV airplay, despite the single failing to chart.  

Image: Alison McCallum, c.1970.

‘Because I Love You’ was the lead single from The Master’s Apprentices’ third studio album, The Master's Apprentices (re-titled Choice Cuts in Australia). 

In mid-1969, The Master’s Apprentices won a boat trip to England in the Hoadley's Battle of the Sounds competition. They were determined to break into the UK market, and they recorded at the famous Abbey Road Studios while in the UK.

‘Because I Love You’ is a song of love, separation and independence, and became a popular and enduring recording for the band. 

To promote it, they asked Australian filmmaker Timothy Fisher to make a music video. The simple but effective clip was filmed on a chilly autumn morning on Hampstead Heath.

While black-and-white prints were shown many times on Australian TV, where colour was not widely introduced until 1975, the video was actually shot in colour (as were several other clips for tracks from the LP). 

The band returned to Australia at the end of December 1970, just as ‘Because I Love You’ was released. It was their fourth consecutive Top 20 hit, reaching No. 12 nationally, and became one of the key songs of the new era of Australian rock.  

‘Tomorrow’ was the breakthrough hit single for Silverchair, with a demo of the song winning them the national Pick Me band competition in April 1994.

It was initially released on their debut EP in September 1994 and appeared on the band's first full-length album, Frogstomp, in March 1995. 

Band members Daniel Johns and Ben Gillies wrote the track, drawing on the Seattle grunge style. Sung with adolescent intensity and energy (Johns had just turned 15 when it was recorded), the lyrics were inspired by a TV documentary about a rich man experiencing the losses of those less fortunate. 

The single spent six weeks at No. 1 on the ARIA singles chart and propelled Frogstomp to nine-times platinum status in Australia. 

At the 1995 ARIA Awards, ‘Tomorrow’ won Single of the Year, Highest Selling Single and Breakthrough Artist – Single, and Frogstomp picked up an additional two awards.

Re-recorded for the US market, and with a new music video, the song became a hit across the USA, hitting No. 1 on both the Billboard modern rock tracks and album rock tracks charts and becoming the most-played song on American modern rock radio in 1995.   

In a career that lasted just shy of 20 years, Silverchair (key line-up: Johns, Gillies and Chris Joannou) had five No. 1 albums, received six APRA Awards for songwriting and won more ARIA Awards than any other artists to date (21 awards from 49 nominations).

Image: Silverchair, publicity still. Courtesy Murmur Music, 1995.

Arnhem Land Popular Classics was the first record to bring widespread attention to the didjeridu (didgeridoo or dijeridoo), also known as the yidaki in Yolgnu. 

The recording features several senior Aboriginal men playing didjeridu and singing. It was recorded by USA linguist La Mont West Jr at Beswick Creek Welfare Branch Settlement, near Katherine, Northern Territory in 1961–62.

Pioneering folk music label Wattle Records released the recording, which includes musical genres from Arnhem Land, Wonga from the west, Gunborg from the north-central region and Bunggul from the north-east. The tracks were recorded in an improvised studio, with the didjeridu featuring prominently.

This excerpt comes from track 1, 'A Bungalin-Bungalin Gunborg', which features didjeridu by David Bylanadii (Blanasi) and songman Jolly Lajwonga (Djoli Laiwanga). 

Blanasi (c.1930–c.2001), an Aboriginal man of the Mialili language group of west Arnhem Land, subsequently went on to promote the didjeridu internationally, performing on The Rolf Harris Show in England in 1967 and touring with a traditional dance troupe including songmaster Djoi Laiwanga and dancer-actor David Gulpilil. Blanasi later co-founded the White Cockatoo Performing Group. 

This recording includes highlights from the ABC Radio broadcast of the opening ceremony of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the first to be held in the Southern Hemisphere and the first Australian event to be covered extensively on radio and television. 

The recordings include speeches by Prime Minister RG Menzies, President of the International Olympic Committee Avery Brundage and Governor of Victoria Sir Dallas Brooks, with music provided by the Victorian Symphony Orchestra and a massed choir conducted by Sir Bernard Heinze. 

While the Melbourne Olympics are often highlighted as heralding the arrival of TV in Australia, television set ownership at the time was very low.

It was the ABC radio broadcasts which brought the Olympics to Australian homes and helped shift local and international perceptions of Australia. 

This recording includes highlights from the ABC Radio broadcast of the closing ceremony of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the first to be held in the Southern Hemisphere and the first Australian event to be covered extensively on radio and television. 

The recordings include speeches by Prime Minister RG Menzies, President of the International Olympic Committee Avery Brundage and Governor of Victoria Sir Dallas Brooks, with music provided by the Victorian Symphony Orchestra and a massed choir conducted by Sir Bernard Heinze. 

While the Melbourne Olympics are often highlighted as heralding the arrival of TV in Australia, television set ownership at the time was very low.

It was the ABC radio broadcasts which brought the Olympics to Australian homes and helped shift local and international perceptions of Australia. 

‘True Blue’ is an Australian folk country song written and performed by singer-songwriter John Williamson.

The lyrics draw heavily on Australian slang, with the title meaning authentically Australian. The song was released in March 1982 as a single from the album True Blue – The Best of John Williamson but initially failed to chart. 

In 1986, Williamson re-recorded the song for his sixth studio album Mallee Boy, and it became the lead single. This version of the song was used for the Australian Made campaign; it peaked at No. 43 on the Kent Music Report chart and was later awarded the Most Performed Australasian Country Work at the 1988 APRA Awards (Australia). 

The Australian national cricket and rugby union teams later adopted ‘True Blue’ as an unofficial theme song.   

Since 1970, Williamson has released over 50 albums, sold more than 4,000,000 albums in Australia, been inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, and won dozens of trophies including three ARIA Awards and 26 Golden Guitars (at the CMAA Country Music Awards of Australia).

John Williamson was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1992 ('for service to Australian country music and in stimulating awareness of conservation issues').

Image: John Williamson. Courtesy Festival Records, 1986.

The Martin/Molloy program – named for its star comedians, Tony Martin and Mick Molloy – ran on Australian radio from 1995–98. 

This sketch features New Zealand-born Tony Martin voicing recurring characters 'Tum and Phul', two breakfast show radio hosts from across the Tasman whose 'choice' patter includes a preponderance of words with a flattened 'i' sound.

Produced at Austereo's Fox FM in Melbourne, Martin/Molloy was broadcast live on up to 54 radio stations across Australia during this time. The fast-paced, sketch-based format had previously been restricted to breakfast radio; the idea of such a show working in late afternoons (4–6pm weekdays) seemed far-fetched to some radio insiders. 

However, Martin/Molloy was a ratings success, and quickly grew from being broadcast only on Austereo's metropolitan stations to airing around Australia. Martin/Molloy spawned three ARIA award-winning albums: The Brown Album (1995), Poop Chute (1996) and Eat Your Peas (1998). 

An entire generation of drivetime radio comedy-talk shows followed and this format remains the backbone of the major commercial FM networks in Australia to this day. Tony Martin gifted the original recordings of Martin/Molloy to the NFSA in 2013.   

Image: Tony Martin and Mick Molloy. Publicity still, 1998.

Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912–1990) was an Australian composer with an accomplished overseas career. The opera Nausicaa is her most substantial and critically admired work and is based on Robert Graves’ novel Homer’s Daughter (1955).

The novel explores Samuel Butler’s contention that Homer’s Odyssey was written by a princess living in ancient Sicily after the Trojan War.

Glanville-Hicks had worked with Graves on the libretto between 1956 and 1958, before moving from New York to Athens in 1959, where she devoted herself to intensive research into Greek demotic (folkloric) music.

The opera premiered at the Athens Festival to widespread international acclaim. The subsequent Composers Recordings Inc. recording, made soon after the premiere with the original cast, brought the work to a popular audience.

The opera successfully incorporates a range of Greek musical modes, including demotic tunes from various regions.   

After long periods living in the US and Greece, Glanville-Hicks returned to Australia, where she died in 1990.

In her will she established the Peggy Glanville-Hicks Composers' House, a residency for young Australian composers, at her former home in Paddington, Sydney.

Eileen Joyce (1908–1991) was an Australian piano prodigy whose international career spanned more than 30 years.

Born in Zeehan, Tasmania, she studied in Perth and at the Leipzig Conservatorium before making her professional debut in London in 1930.

In 1933, she made the first of her many recordings, Franz Liszt's ‘Transcendental Étude in F minor’ and Paul de Schlözer's ‘Étude in A-flat, Op. 1, No. 2’, for Parlophone. 

Joyce had recorded the Liszt work at her own expense and Parlophone was sufficiently impressed by the recording to purchase it from her and request a side B. 

This record, and her other early records for Parlophone, are noted for their precision and clarity of articulation, which became a hallmark of her performance and recording career. 

During the 1930s and 1940s her recordings brought her international acclaim, particularly during the Second World War. When she performed in the United States in 1950, music critic and historian Irving Kolodin called her ‘the world's greatest unknown pianist’. 

Image: Eileen Joyce, pianist. 1958. Courtesy Libraries Tasmania

Light baritone Hamilton Hill (1869–1910) was a prominent early Australian music hall, vaudeville and recording artist born in Gordons (near Ballarat, Victoria).

Hill began his stage career in Perth in the early 1890s with Charles Godfrey, before joining Henry Bracy’s opera company, and later touring with Harry Rickards.

In 1899 he left Australia for San Francisco where he opened at the Orpheum, then toured America for three years. 

Hill subsequently made his mark in England, performing at the Empire Theatre in London, before touring and recording many of his popular songs for The Gramophone Co., Edison, Nicole, Odeon, Columbia, Lambert, Sterling, Favourite, Beka, Jumbo, Clarion and Pathé.

‘Starlight’, recorded on wax cylinder by Sterling, was a newly published march song for piano and vocals by Tin Pan Alley duo Theodore Morse (composer) and Edward Madden (lyricist), and is notable for highlighting the relationship between the music publishers and performers of the time and the emerging recording industry.

Hill died at the age of 40 in Los Angeles in 1910.  

Image: Hamilton Hill. Courtesy J. Albert and Son, c1906.