Category: OHAA QLD Blog

On the 5th of January 1975 at 9:27pm the bulk carrier Lake Illawarra collided with the Tasman Bridge which spans the Derwent River and connects Hobart’s eastern and western shores.  Twelve people were killed in the collision, which brought down two of the bridge spans and two of its pylons.  Seven of the ship’s crew died, as did five occupants of four cars which drove over the broken edge of the bridge to plunge 45m into the Derwent River below.  As well as the personal tragedy involved, the incident had a profound and lasting effect on the social and commercial life of Hobart, especially for people living on the eastern shore.  Alan Townsend is History Projects Officer with Clarence City Council, the local government body covering Hobart’s eastern suburbs.   He’s in charge of a project to compile an oral history of the bridge disaster and its aftermath, and is looking to hear from people who have stories to tell from that time. For full story including radio interviews with people who remember that day, click here.

Professor James Goff digs up evidence of tsunamis from the past to find clues that could prepare us for future threats. Recently Goff and his team uncovered signs of distinct periods of interruption during early Polynesian settlement of the Pacific.  “The timing of these coincides with the occurrence of massive earthquakes and tsunamis, much larger than anything that’s happened since we started keeping written records.”  In working closely with local Indigenous populations, Goff has been able to tap into a rich oral tradition that extends back through countless generations. For full story click here.

A research team from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is conducting a case study about the 2010 Fort Detrick cancer cluster investigation and has invited community members to participate.  The goal is to gather a public health oral history, said Beth Resnick, principal investigator and director of the Johns Hopkins Office of Public Health Practices.  “This is a way to profile people’s stories about cancer cluster investigations and how that impacts the community,” Resnick said.  For full story click here.

There are about 1,000 interviews included in the Oral History Collection of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. It also is part of a script for a pilot play, “Shared Voices,” that the museum created in conjunction with the Dallas Children’s Theater.  The play, which includes parts of the reporter’s oral history, is a unique presentation mixing live performances of two young actors, videos and still photographs. It premiered in May to a packed audience that included family members of the high school girl who got to meet President John F. Kennedy that fateful Friday.  For full story click here.

Director of Jeneba Project, Joseph Kaifala has told Reporters that the Memory Project will give Sierra Leoneans the opportunity to give oral history about the brutal civil war that happened in Sierra Leone.  The project will serve as “a platform for justice”, granting an avenue to the voices and experiences of children and youths who were most affected by the war and continue to be most vulnerable in society.  He added that this project is an oral history project dedicated to recording testimonies from former child soldiers, amputees, rape victims, all those who lived through the war, to ensure that the history of the civil war is preserved in order to confront the horrors of our past and to help prevent repetition of similar atrocities.  For full story click here.

If journalism is the first rough draft of history, then oral histories come in a close second. Listening to the thoughts and recollections of someone who lived through history can be eternally fascinating or interminably boring, but unquestionably useful. More than 30 years ago, a young woman named Miriam Breckenridge walked into the Community Library in Ketchum and handed over a box of cassettes. On each one were recorded interviews she had done with 18 sheep ranchers of the Wood River Valley.  For full story, click here.

The Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives (ALGA) were established in 1978 at the Fourth National Homosexual Conference. It sprung from a small core of people who had just witnessed the riots at the first Sydney Gay Mardi Gras.   Two people who have been instrumental in preserving the history are Liz Ross and Helen Pausacker. Pausacker was involved from the early days too. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, she was heavily involved in transcribing scores of oral history interviews.  Pausacker has also taken on other special projects for the Archives, including the Photo History Project in 2001 that was designed to get people to contribute photos of special significance to them.  For full story click here.

The Shadowcatchers: A History of Cinematography in Australia, has just been published by the Australian Cinematographers Society.  The Shadowcatchers is based on oral history collected from people who really knew the business. It is accessible, readable history with personal quotes and anecdotes. The specially researched text includes individual biographies of significant cinematographers combined with a pictorial record of more than 380 photographs of cinematographers at work on film sets. Beresford describes the beautiful glossy coffee table book as “a triumph of research, both in its text and photos”.  For full story click here.

Klaus Hueneke may be one of Canberra’s rarest species – a successful small publisher in the digital age.  After a number of career moves – environmental planner, academic, ski instructor and teacher – he set up Tabletop Press in 1984 in a spare room in his house, with the aim of publishing and promoting books on the cultural history and ecology of the Australian Alps. He also began collecting interviews with ”old timers who had lived in and around” the Alps, with a view to collating this oral history into a book. In 1982, the Australian National University Press published Huts of the High Country, which documented the history of more than 100 huts and homesteads in the Snowy Mountains of NSW. The book became an unexpected best seller and is now in its sixth printing. For full story click here.