Although not the first song about the enforced separation of Indigenous children from their families, Archie Roach’s song, based on his own life and experience, was released at a time when there was increasing public focus on the Stolen Generations.

The significance of the song also resonated outside the Indigenous community with Roach winning ARIA Awards for Best Indigenous Release and Best New Talent in 1991. Took the Children Away received an international Human Rights Achievement Award, the first time that the award had been bestowed on a songwriter.

Archie Roach (1956–2022) was a Gunditjmara (Kirrae Whurrong/Djab Wurrung), Bundjalung Senior Elder. To learn more about his life and work, explore the curated collections Archie Roach and Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter.

Notes by Beth Taylor and Adam Blackshaw

Lyrebirds are great mimics, copying many sounds in their environment. In nature this consists predominantly of other birds but, in rare circumstances, their calls reflect the human impact on their environment. In this recording the lyrebird's call resembles an electronic game.

Greg Wignell recorded Chook, a Superb Lyrebird, at Healesville, Victoria for ABC TV in 1987. The original recordings are in the ABC’s natural history audio collection at Ripponlea in Melbourne.

The summer of 1963-64 saw a brief flowering of Australian surf music. Inspired by the songs of Jan and Dean and The Beach Boys as well as the reverbed guitar instrumentals of bands like the Shadows, Bombora was the big hit of Australian surf music, hitting No. 1 in September 1963 and opening the way for six months of surf‘n’stomp. The Atlantics were the only Australian surf band to achieve international success. By early 1964, The Beatles were No. 1 in Australia and surf music was replaced by the British Invasion.

While I Still Call Australia Home reached only No. 72 on the charts when it was first released, it has become firmly cemented in the national consciousness. Allen recorded this song in Sydney in 1980 and it was originally released only as a 7-inch single with a vocal on the A side and an instrumental version on the B side. There was no LP release until some years later on a ‘best of’ compilation.

Its adoption by National Panasonic and later Qantas in long-running advertising campaigns exposed more Australians to the song, as did its inclusion in the musical, The Boy From Oz. Todd McKenney starred as Peter Allen in the Australian production of The Boy From Oz; Hugh Jackman played the lead when the musical transferred to Broadway.

Russell Morris was 18 when he recorded 'The Real Thing', his first solo single after leaving Melbourne pop band Somebody’s Image. The song was written by singer Johnny Young, recorded in Bill Armstrong’s Melbourne studio on the country’s first 8-track tape recorder by engineer John L Sayers, and produced by Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum, a columnist for the weekly music magazine Go-Set. The song was notable for its length (over six minutes); the way musical instruments, vocals and sound effects were layered in the recording; and the distinctive ‘phasing’ sound, achieved by running two tape recorders at slightly different speeds. It was the fourth best-selling single of 1969 (behind two Beatles’ songs and one from The Rolling Stones) and stayed in the charts for six months after being released in March, including two weeks at No. 1 in May. The song has enjoyed enduring popularity and has been covered by Midnight Oil and Kylie Minogue.

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This Sporting Life ran on the ABC’s triple j network for 22 years on Saturday afternoons. It was presented by John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver performing in character as sports commentators ‘Rampaging’ Roy Slaven and HG Nelson. After leaving the ABC for Triple M in 2008, triple j station manager Linda Bracken said of them, ‘They are more than a radio program; they have become their own radio comedy genre’. Their ability to send up both themselves and the sports they were commentating, while sharing their passion and expertise, broadened their appeal to a wide range of Australians.

This six-track EP was the first recording of an Indigenous Australian singing his own compositions in a country music style. Dougie Young was born of mixed parentage in Cunnamulla in the early 1930s, and worked as a stockman in Southern Queensland while learning guitar and developing his songwriting. The recording was made in Wilcannia in 1964, where Young was living in the Aboriginal community on the edge of town, by anthropologist Dr Jeremy Beckett and released by Wattle Records in 1965.

Wattle B5

Ros Bandt is an internationally recognised composer and sound artist. Improvisation in Acoustic Chambers was recorded in 1979 in a concrete water tank and a wheat silo using a binaural dummy-head microphone and a Nagra tape recorder with no editing or production effects. Released on vinyl LP in 1981, Bandt credits this recording with inspiring her to ‘create architectural and spatial musics’. She is currently engaged in creating a digital acoustic sanctuary celebrating the sounds of the Jaara Jaara Box-Ironbark Forest of North Central Victoria.

This recording is 'No. 7 Fleet, water, conduit hose (recorded in the water tank)'. Move MS3035. Image courtesy Ros Bandt and Move Records.

Few Australian radio serials have had the enduring popularity of Yes, What?.

A total of 520 episodes were broadcast on Adelaide radio station 5AD with the first going to air on 23 June 1936 and continuing until December 1940.

Originally titled The Fourth Form at St Percy’s, it was based on an English radio series called, The Fourth Form at St Michael’s.

The show was written and produced by, and starred, Adelaide lawyer and actor Rex ‘Waca’ Dawe who played the Headmaster of St Percy’s with a small number of other cast members playing his students in the Fourth Form.

The series was being broadcast nationally by 1938 and 300 episodes are still available through Grace Gibson Productions for broadcast on commercial stations.

Sony released CD box sets of the serial in the 2000s.

Florrie Forde was one of Australia’s first major popular-music stars, specialising in songs with catchy choruses that the music hall audiences could sing along with. During the First World War she became well known for patriotic songs like ‘Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag’ and ‘It’s A Long Way To Tipperary’. Born in Fitzroy, Victoria in 1875, she sailed for England in 1897 and debuted in the London music halls later that year. She made her first recording in 1903 and by 1936 had recorded over 700 songs. Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy is a fine example. Forde died in 1940, shortly after entertaining troops at a naval base in Scotland.

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In this recording of Chook the lyrebird, made for ABC TV in 1987, the bird's call resembles the sound of workers.

Lyrebirds are great mimics, copying many sounds in their environment. While in nature this consists predominantly of other birds, their calls sometimes reflect the human impact on their environment.

Greg Wignell recorded the Superb Lyrebird at Healesville, Victoria. The original recordings are in the ABC’s natural history audio collection at Ripponlea in Melbourne.

Image: CSIRO (CC BY 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons

An excerpt from a 1990 edition of 'The Nelson Report', part of This Sporting Life, in which HG Nelson waxes lyrical about the Melbourne Cup.

This Sporting Life ran on the ABC’s triple j network for 22 years on Saturday afternoons. It was presented by John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver performing in character as sports commentators ‘Rampaging’ Roy Slaven and HG Nelson. After leaving the ABC for Triple M in 2008, triple j station manager Linda Bracken said of them, ‘They are more than a radio program; they have become their own radio comedy genre’. Their ability to send up both themselves and the sports they were commentating, while sharing their passion and expertise, broadened their appeal to a wide range of Australians.

This song features on a six-track EP that was the first recording of an Indigenous Australian singing his own compositions in a country music style. Dougie Young was born of mixed parentage in Cunnamulla in the early 1930s, and worked as a stockman in Southern Queensland while learning guitar and developing his songwriting. The recording was made in Wilcannia in 1964, where Young was living in the Aboriginal community on the edge of town, by anthropologist Dr Jeremy Beckett and released by Wattle Records in 1965.

Wattle B5. EP cover features Dougie Young second from the right. Courtesy National Library of Australia.

A clip from 'Date's Up' featuring Rampaging Roy Slaven, from an episode of This Sporting Life (1990).

This Sporting Life ran on the ABC’s triple j network for 22 years on Saturday afternoons. It was presented by John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver performing in character as sports commentators ‘Rampaging’ Roy Slaven and HG Nelson. After leaving the ABC for Triple M in 2008, triple j station manager Linda Bracken said of them, ‘They are more than a radio program; they have become their own radio comedy genre’. Their ability to send up both themselves and the sports they were commentating, while sharing their passion and expertise, broadened their appeal to a wide range of Australians.