The Memory Tapes

Episode One – Hazel de Berg: The Silent Revolutionary

Dr Shirleene Robinson begins the series with an introduction to Hazel de Berg, a pioneering oral historian who recorded the stories of over 1,290 Australians and built Australia's first oral history collection. For nearly 30 years, Hazel de Berg sat down with people across Australia - writers, poets, actors, artists, scientists, migrants, Indigenous people, feminists, musicians—people from all walks of life, and pressed record. Hazel de Berg believed that even the quietest stories mattered. That a voice, once heard, could change how we see a person or a country.

To learn more, the book The Memory Tapes is available where all good books are sold.

This introductory episode includes excerpts from the following oral history interviews from the National Library of Australia's Oral History Collection:

1. Hazel de Berg interviewed by Tom Jacobs

Hazel de Berg speaks about Dame Mary Gilmore when being interviewed on the radio program, "News Magazine".

2. Jessie Street interviewed by Hazel de Berg

Lady Jessie Street, diplomat, feminist and campaigner for the rights of Indigenous Australians, warned what happens when we sideline women and argued for greater inclusion.

3. Peggy Van Praagh interviewed by Hazel de Berg

In 1973, Dame Peggy van Praagh, who had taken up a role in 1962 as the founding artistic director of the Australian Ballet, explains how exciting the development of ballet was in Australia at that time.

4. Nancy Bird Walton interviewed by Hazel de Berg

In 1977, Hazel recorded Nancy Bird Walton, who born in 1915 and was a pioneering Australian aviator, the first woman in Australia to fly for a living rather than for recreation.

5. William Liu interviewed by Hazel de Berg

In 1978, William Liu, a man of Chinese and Scottish descent who was born in 1893 and had lived with anti-Chinese immigration policies and attitudes for the majority of his life, reflected on a pivotal moment with Hazel de Berg.

6. Brian Syron interviewed by Hazel de Berg

Brian Syron, of Biripi heritage, who studied acting in New York with the legendary acting couch Stella Adler and was enjoying growing success internationally when he made the decision to return home.

7. May Gibbs interviewed by Hazel de Berg

One of the most difficult interviews for Hazel de Berg to obtain was with May Gibbs. Hazel's daughter, Diana Ritch, remembers Hazel called her every day on the phone for a month to convince her to be recorded. And with persistence, she eventually succeeded. May Gibbs told her that she was much more comfortable speaking outside, so they did. And May Gibbs told her about her childhood and where the inspiration behind her Gumnut characters, as well as her drawing talents, had come from.

8. Howard Florey interviewed by Hazel de Berg

Nobel Prize winning pathologist, Sir Howard Florey, whose work on penicillin, saved millions of lives, died one year after being interviewed by Hazel. Again, her recording is the only recording of his voice that exists.

9. Essie Coffey interviewed by Hazel de Berg

Essie Coffey, a proud young Murrawarri woman from Brewarrina in north-west New South Wales. A brilliant filmmaker, activist and fierce advocate for Indigenous people and speaking the truth of the Stolen Generations.

10. Jim McNeil interviewed by Hazel de Berg

Playwright Jim McNeil remembers rallying against the sensationalism against homosexual relationships in prison in the play he wrote at Bathurst. He was inspired by Robert McKinnon, an artist in the cell next door. He remembers draining water from their toilets so he and Robert could exchange ideas through the pipes.

11. George Pardey interviewed by Hazel de Berg

George casually told Hazel that he had taken the most important photograph of his life nearly four decades earlier, on 5 August 1944. This was the day of the Cowra breakout, a mass escape by Japanese men who were forcibly kept in an internment camp in Cowra. Their attempt to break out of the camp was the biggest mass escape in the Second World War and one of the bloodiest in the history of attempted escapes in wartime. More than 234 Japanese prisoners died, 108 were wounded and three Australian guards were killed.