Red Dust Tapes
OVER 55 YEARS AGO multi-award-winning journalist John Francis interviewed ageing Australian Outback characters, before their voices were lost in the red dust.
THIS IS UNIQUE Aussie history.
NEARLY ALL lived largely solitary lives, in the harsh and lonely inland, on the edge of deserts, in a world of searing droughts, and occasional fierce floods.
THEY WERE prospectors, sheep and cattle men, boundary riders, drovers, railway workers, truck drivers, Aboriginal groups, and isolated but hardy women.
AUSTRALIA'S AVIATION HISTORY also started in the red dust. You'll hear interviews with some of Australia's most famous pioneer airmen (many of whom started flying in the First World War), who used aircraft to make the Outback a little less lonely.
JOHN ALSO interviews the descendants of other unique characters, reads fascinating tales from Australia's Outback past, and spins tales of his own red dust adventures.
WEBSITE: www.reddusttapes.au
Red Dust Tapes
More Naughty Norman, then tales from Granny McRae, the All-night Fiddler
SEASON 1, EPISODE 6
There are two distinct parts to this episode: first, more revelations about an early aviation legend. Then, we visit Ada (Sis) Mcrae, born 1889, who recalls the hardships and joys of life in a small Outback town.
SIR NORMAN BREALEY really made the dust fly with his biplane-era airline in Western Australia, but the maverick way he ran his business also raised the ire of our early aviation authorities.
In this final instalment on Sir Norman, we hear of more of his brazen business antics.
SIS McRAE in Hawker, South Australia, was the big-bodied, big-hearted grandmother of Australian Country Music legends Peter Coad and the Coad Sisters.
In this 1967 interview with Sis, she shared with me some of her swag-full of yarns about small-town life over a century ago. And through the Coads’ song, ’Sing Me That Old Song, Granny’, we hear the ancient violin Sis would play all night at country dances in the Flinders Ranges.
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