Highly Recommended SOUND-BASED Historical Sources
to Support and Inspire Accurate, Creative and Engaging Research, Writing or
Other Modes of Presenting Australia’s History
Rosalie Triolo
2025
debates
music – live or recorded, without lyrics
music – live or recorded, with lyrics, including
– chants
– hymns,
– songs (belonging to all kinds of genres and settings)
– national anthems
– nursery rhymes
– raps
oral history – some-one telling their own or family’s history: a guest speaker or an interviewee;
podcasts
poems, haiku, limericks or jokes
– read or spoken aloud by the writer, or
– ‘live’ or as ‘a recording’ of the writer
prayers
radio
– advertisements (includes memorable ‘jingles’)
– news broadcasts
– radio plays
– sport scripts
‘sounds’ – live or recorded, with or without lyrics
An example without lyrics and for ‘atmosphere’ – gunfire from the Vietnam War that de-escalates into jungle sounds of insects away from the conflagration – part of the ‘China Beach’, 1988 television series soundtrack
speeches – live or recorded
An example of a recording: ‘Menzies’ Speech: Declaration of War [1939]’, National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/menzies-speech-declaration-war (accessed 7 May 2025)
voicemail – and technologies of the new era …