The hour and a half long commentary is saved in seven parts for quick and easy listening, just double click on one of the links below:
This Month in Australia April - Part One - Two Up (5299kb)
This Month in Australia, April - Part Two - Hopevale (10615kb)
This Month In Australia, April - Part Three - Divorcing Telstra (3440kb)
This Month in Australia April - Part Four - The Old Soft Screw (4589kb)
This Month in Australia, April - Part Five - Bad Buggers (6955kb)
This Month in Australia, April - Part Six - What is the Australian Voice? (7336kb)
This Month in Australia, April - Part Seven - What is the Australian Voice? (continued) (7542kb)
Download and listen to one of the free files above
or purchase the transcript. For a better quality recording, or for
those in rural and regional areas without access to high speed
internet, or for those who want the complete commentary on one file,
send a blank CDR disk and a stamp addressed bubble rap CD envelope to
The Editor, Working Papers, PO Box 29, Barrengarry, 2577 and allow a
week for a turn around delivery.
The loose manifesto of the bi-monthly podcast is to:
1) To use the internet as creatively as possible to generate alternative ideas and critical perspectives;
2) Draw attention to high quality Australian music that is often ignored or not played by mainstream, formulaic radio outlets;
3) Continually serve it up to Australia's monopoly, mainstream news outlets, especially the Murdoch press;
4) Try to maintain an ordinary citizen's eye-view of current news and events and what is important;
5) Take a regional, remote and rural eye-view of current news and events;
6) Speak to the international and expatriate audience about Australian issues;
7). Never sit on the fence!
A Summary of this month's commentary and music
Two Up
"The strange land of
HMAS Sydney and Kaz II
"This year ANZAC ceremonies have been more poignant because of the location of HMAS Sydney. ..April also makes it a year since the disappearance of three fine men with Broome family connections, aboard the Kaz II. Solace and best wishes their relatives."
Hopevale
"For Australian Indigenous men and women the battle field was a bit like the sporting field – a chance to show courage and skill on equal terms with white men. They did so prodigiously but when they returned home after wars, the same old Australian apartheid came into force. It was good to see the second march of Indigenous servicemen and women through Redfern this year. ANZAC is a time of mixed emotions for Indigenous Australians. There are many stories. ...On the 17 May 1942 American soldiers destroyed the Hopevale community’s housing and infrastructure and forcibly transported the entire community 2000 kilometres south to inland Woorabinda with tragic consequences."
Guumba
"To the north of Hopevale is a sacred area for the (Thuipil) mob, the Thuipiwarra, a clan group of the Guugu Yimithirr nation. This place is called Guumba."
Gurrumul
"Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu’s CD entitled simply
Gurrumul was released this month to
critical acclaim. Gurrumul is from the Gumatj nation of
The PMs Ideas Summit
"The PMs bobba wobba weekend seemed like a way of
breaking the usual ideas flow to
Terrible Telstra
"Telstra is like a Sam Beckett play, the consumers pay the world highest fees, have to deal with the worlds worst customer service and must wait for godot who never comes. Kevin Rudd came to office promising world class high speed broadband for all; we’re going to hold you to that promise Kevin because at the moment Australians are in the middle of a scrapyard telecommunications derby, opportunistic teams are all in the junkyard trying to build contraptions that will satisfy some bureaucrat or regulator or are playing games with politicians; and consumers are left in the lurch."
Labor in Power
"There was a time when Australian Labor governments were messianic rarities. Now with wall-to-wall Labor in every state and with the newly installed Rudd Federal government in power Labor is a dime-a-dozen. Everyone is starting to talk about Labor rhetoric being the problem not a solution...."
Bad Buggers
"It is not only democracy that is dead in the Australian Labor Party. The last Federal election reached an unprecedentedly high level of expenditure. The ALP raised over 40 million dollars and this was supplemented by the independent advertising campaign run by the Australian Council of Trade Unions which ran into the tens of millions. The costs of elections have doubled and quadrupled over the past decade primarily because television is recognised to be the most persuasive way of getting a message across to the electorate..."
Don Watson"s American Journeys
"Don Watson like his former boss Prime Minister
Paul Keating is a melancholy tragic. The good thing about melancholy tragics is
that they journey into the darkness and ugliness to find beauty and light. In American Journeys Watson has an on and
off again affair with a mystery woman called Julie; battles giant cockroaches
and mingles with the
What is the Australian Voice?
"I’ve had some challenging feedback from last month’s show.
One of the most interesting emails came from Londoner Graham T. who is living and
working in
"..if you’d asked me who Curly Putman or Porter Wagoner was back in the late 1960s I wouldn’t been able to tell you. For me there was only one person who I associated this next song with and that was the great Yorta Yorta statesman and elder, Jimmy Little, and now even when I have heard the versions by those great American singers or even the English troubadour Tom Jones, its Jimmy who I prefer. So when Jimmy sang this song was he thinking of the tragedy that befell his Yorta Yorta countryman. Was he thinking of Broger from my own area of Kangaroo Valley who was hanged with only a summary trial for killing two white man who had molested Aboriginal women? Nearly 50 years after his debut Jimmy is still going strong.."
This Month’s Music List
Strange Land, Andrew
Baylor, The Bush is Full of Ghosts
1993-1996, http://www.andybaylor.com.au/
Come in Sucker –
Saltwater Cowboy
– Pigram Brothers Stephen Pigram, Alan Pigram, Colin Pigram, David Pigram,
Phillip Pigram, Gavin Pigram and Peter Pigam are the Pigram Brothers. Saltwater Cowboy is from their album Saltwater Country available from www.pigrammusic.com or write to
Hopevale – Dylan Harrigan - The Black Image Band, Beautiful Land and Sea, www.blackimage.com.au, email: blackimage02@hotmail.com
Guumba, Cordroy Country
Connection, for details and information for contact write to Executive Director,
Balkanu,
Wiyathul , Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, Gurrumul,
http://www.skinnyfishmusic.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=170&Itemid=126
Wedding Ring – Sports, Bon Bons, Mushroom Records, 1982
Bobba Wobba Wedding
–
The Old Soft Screw – Robyn Archer, The Ladies Choice, Larrikin Records, 1978
Strangely Dusty – Gadflies –Many Happy Returns, Festival Mushroom Publishing, 2000, Copyright, Mongrel Jazz, http://www.acay.com.au/~hutchins/welcome1.html
Harry was a bad
bugger -
Green Green Grass of Home, Jimmy Little, The Country Side of Jimmy Little, Summit Records, St Leonards, SRA250-018, www.jimmylittle.com.au
Allons A Lafayette, Andrew Baylor, “Tonight”, Andy Baylor’s
Cajun Combo, http://www.andybaylor.com.au/
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=92698797
Blues on a Ukulele, Seaman Dan, Island Way, Steady Steady Music,
www.seamandan.com.au or write to Seaman
Dan, PO Box 154, Thursday Island, Qld, 4873
Convict Streak, Dave Warner From the Suburbs, Mugs Game, 1978, www.davewarner.com.au
Singing the Blues
Seaman Dan and The Black Image Band,
Books
Don Watson, American Journeys, Knopf Books, 2008
.
