WESTERN AUSTRALIAN FOLKLIFE PROJECT

THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN FOLKLIFE PROJECT 

2004-2018

(This report was written for university research reporting requirements, so is on the formal side. But the information and links are useful for anyone interested). 

See also the WA Folklore Archive at Curtin University

http://john.curtin.edu.au/folklore/

BACKGROUND

The Western Australian Folklore Project was initiated in 2004 as a partnership between the National Library of Australia (NLA), the Australian Folklore Network (AFN) and the Australian Folklore Research Unit (AFRU) at Curtin University. Funding and recording equipment were supplied by the NLA, with the AFN and the AFRU providing background, contacts, facilitation and skilling, institutional support and general hosting. Rob and Olya Willis carried out the fieldwork, recordings and documentation of the collected materials, including photographs, some video and indexing. 

The project emanated from an earlier collaboration between the NLA, the AFN and Curtin University that produced the acclaimed book and double CD-set, Verandah Music: Roots of Australian Tradition(Curtin Books/Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2003), edited by Graham Seal and Rob Willis and featuring vignettes of traditions collected around Australia. It was felt that, while substantial collecting activity had taken place in many parts of Australia since the 1950s, Western Australia was under-represented in the national record and planning began for what became a major initiative.

Over the fifteen-year course of the project, the skill and dedication of the fieldworkers has produced a substantial body of important collected material that would otherwise remain undocumented. Much of that material has been made available to all on a permanent basis by online dissemination through the NLA digitisation program and the other outcomes detailed below. 

Importantly, the over-one hundred individuals interviewed throughout Western Australia, and the communities to which they belong, have expressed their enjoyment of the experience and their appreciation at having their cultural traditions acknowledged and recorded by such institutions as the National Library and Curtin University.

PROJECT AND RELATED ACTIVITIES

The first collecting year of the project took place in Perth, Fremantle, southwest WA and the Pilbara in 2004. It led to the documenting of Ukrainian and Swiss musical traditions. The now-retired country music pioneer performer, Rick Carey was also recorded during this trip, as was Rock & Roll historian John Dubber. An important counter-tradition concerning the outlaw Jandamarra (‘Pigeon’) was documented in the Pilbara, together with indigenous children’s play traditions. Fifteen extended individual and group interviews, some with video of group performances, were completed.

In 2005 the fieldworkers spent a week recording the musical, food, religious and handcraft traditions of the Perth Greek community. Dr John Yiannakis, Research Associate in the Australia Research Institute at the time, facilitated most of the contacts for this phase of the project, working through AFRU. 

The second week involved documenting the life histories and traditions of timber workers and their families as well as bush railways, with a particular emphasis on the now-sunken timber town of Banksiadale. As well as reminiscences, stories and other traditions, this aspect of the project also turned up substantial manuscript and photographic materials. The project was assisted by Mr Stephen Smith, then Director of the Australian Regional Research Unit at Curtin University.

Overall, fourteen extended interviews were conducted, together with the documenting of a Greek social function and related traditions. These have been copied, indexed and illustrated for housing at the NLA and the WA Folklore Archive.

The 2006 phase of the project involved an investigation of the oral history and traditions of the Western Australian whaling industry, including Cheyne’s Beach Whaling Station, Albany (now Whale World). Some elements of this activity were a follow-up to a joint project conducted by NLA and the State Library of WA in the early 1990s. This year, the fieldwork also involved the WA Irish community music, song, dance and other traditions, child migration and migration traditions from Persia, Iran and India. A concert of music and songs from the sheet music collection of the State Library of Western Australia was also recorded. A total of nineteen extended recordings were made.

In 2007 Rob and Olya Willis and Graham Seal presented aspects of the WA Folklife Project fieldwork at the Fairbridge Festival, Pinjarra. They also carried out a further six interviews, mainly follow-ups to the previous year’s Irish and child migration traditions, as well as one on World War 2 prisoner of war songs.

No fieldwork was conducted in 2008, but in 2009, the fieldworkers visited twice. InJune, in conjunction with the ARC Linkage project ‘Childhood, Tradition and Change’ (LP0669282)in which Curtin University was the Western Australian partner, together with Melbourne University, Museum Victoria and the NLA. Together with Graham Seal, they spent a week at Mt Hawthorn Primary School to document children’s playground traditions.

The following week they conducted the same fieldwork activities at Geraldton Primary School and also interviewed members of the Nunda community at Geraldton and Kalbarri regarding oral traditions of their 17^thcentury Dutch shipwreck ancestry, together with other folklore. These interviews were carried out in conjunction with an ongoing Curtin-led research project on the pre-1788 European settlement of Australia, some aspects of which appeared in Graham Seal’s The Savage Shore(Allen & Unwin, 2016; Yale UP 2017).

In August, the fieldworkers spent two weeks in Perth and Fremantle interviewing Australian submariners of the Cold War era, members of the creative arts community, folk revival performers and local newspaper proprietors. Nine extended interviews were recorded.

No visits took place in 2010-12, but in June 2013 Rob and Olya Willis again visited WA for two weeks. They conducted 11 extended interviews in and around Perth, Bridgetown, Brookhampton and Dunsborough. Topics covered included traditional music, the folk revival, environmental activism, popular dancing, early television, agriculture and orcharding, handbell ringing, Bindoon Home music and humour, the travelling show circuit community since the 1930s, as well as Indigenous music making.

A highlight of the visit was the documentation of the Brookhampton Bellringers. The tradition of handbell ringing is rare in Australia and the Brookhampton group represents an unbroken chain of transmission from 1904. As far as is known, this is the oldest continuous handbell tradition in Australia.

No collecting took place in 2014 but in July-August 2015 Rob and Olya Willis conducted interviews in Perth, Fremantle, Mosman Park, Broome, Derby and Seville Grove. Topics and traditions recorded included the Men’s’ Shed Movement, Indigenous, country and community music and a range of other community traditions in the Kimberley region.

In August 2016, Rob and Olya Willis, together with Graham Seal and Maureen Seal, visited Broome, recording contemporary indigenous music-making and pearling industry traditions. Rob and Olya Willis subsequently visited Derby to document indigenous traditions, particularly in relation to youth suicide.

Over these several visits to the Kimberley, Rob and Olya Willis also interviewed Dr William (Bill) Peasley, explorer, medical doctor and author of Last of the Nomads(1983), an account of the location of two Mandildjara people living alone in the desert for decades as a result of their breaking of traditional kinship law. Two of the interviews with Dr Peasley, covering his experiences in the Kimberley are online at https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-212285918 and https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/7245768. He also has an extensive personal archive of documents, diaries, maps and photographs related to his explorations that are in urgent need of preservation. We are currently investigating how this might be facilitated.

OUTCOMES

The project has had numerous and ongoing outcomes across a range of institutional, community and social media, including library dissemination, radio, book and journal publication, the internet, conference presentations and performances at folk festivals around the country.

Full details of interviewees, recordings, indexes, photographs and video may be accessed online through the Oral History and Folklore section of the National Library of Australia and the Western Australian Folklore Archive, John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library, Curtin University, Perth (online at http://john.curtin.edu.au/folklore/about.html).

In addition to the Fairbridge Festival event mentioned above, the project has also generated a number of other outcomes, including an entry on ‘Folklife’ in the The Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia(UWA Press, 2009), reports in specialised periodicals such as Transmissions (AFN), Trad & Now andthe journal,Australian Folklore, and in Antipodean Traditions: Australian Folklore in the 21^stCentury, edited by Graham Seal and Jennifer Gall (Black Swan Press, 2011).  Material from the project has also appeared in Graham Seal’s best-selling ‘Great Australian Stories’ series (Allen & Unwin), beginning in 2009 and currently numbering six titles, with a seventh due in 2019.

Aspects of the project have also been presented and performed at the National Folklore Conference (2005-2017), the National Folk Festival (2006-2018), the Cygnet Folk Festival (2016 and 2018) and the Illawarra Folk Festival (2016). The fieldworkers have been frequently interviewed by ABC Radio National and regional radio stations (ABC and commercial) and Rob Willis has produced many segments based on the project for ABC Radio. Some material has also been edited and presented on the Verandah Music You Tube channel. See also the related ‘Verandah Music’ blog maintained by Graham Seal and Rob Willis at https://verandahmusic.blogspot.com.

In 2018 a series of recording sessions at the National Library of Australia, featuring Rob Willis, Olya Willis and Graham Seal was, in part, dedicated to documenting musical and verbal traditions from this project, together with folklore collected elsewhere in Australia. A selection of these recordings will be made available through the NLA’s digital access facilities in 2019 and probably through social media.

While the WA Folklife Project has achieved its aims and is currently inactive, related research, fieldwork and dissemination continues to produce new material and opportunities to engage with academic, institutional and community sectors. Further impacts – actual and virtual - will therefore continue for many years.

Professor Graham Seal 

July 2013. Updated Sept 2015; August 2018.