New oral histories released in digital form

Published on 01 March 2019

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Oral histories have a special kind of magic. Hearing a person's voice gives you an insight into their personality that text alone cannot capture. The collection held at the Burnside Library are recordings of peoples' unique life experiences, and of scholarly talks given to the Burnside Historical Society.

We have recently acquired a device that allows us to convert the cassette tapes to mp3 format, preserving the histories for future generations of researchers.

To date, we have converted some exciting talks such as -

  • Recollections of living in Burnside in World War Two, by Edna Bayfield
  • Early Women Artists of the Burnside Area, presented by Shirley Cameron Wilson
  • The Centenary That Isn't - Commemorating Australian Rules Football, by Bernard Wimpress
  • Discovering Women in South Australia, presented by Dr Helen Jones
  • The Burnside Symphony Orchestra, presented by Mr Doug Pearce
  • The History of the Burnside CFS, by John Lea
  • Olive Growing and Olive Oil Making in Burnside, presented by David Cleland and Jean Jeffries
  • The History of Burnside Primary School, presented by Margaret Preiss, Edna Bayfield and Maurice Hart

Many of these talks were recorded in the first instance by the Burnside Historical Society.

For the full list of histories available, see our Collection Highlights. To listen to an oral history, ask at the library desk when you next visit!

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