The National Library of Australia’s Oral History and Folklore Collection is the largest in the country, containing more than 58,000 recorded hours of interviews. Captured in the collection are memories from the mid-nineteenth century to today – deep time to deep space and everything in between. Interviewees describe major moments of social change, cultural creativity, political struggle and everyday experience that will both enhance and challenge your understanding of Australian history.

The Memory Tapes brings together hundreds of interview excerpts, organised into chapters on broad themes, from domestic life to politics. The excerpts capture lived experiences in all their complexities, emotion and contradictions. Readers will get a sense of the textures of memory - tone, hesitation, reflection – learning about the past from the people who lived it. 

Hear from eminent Australians such as children's author May Gibbs, beloved actor Ruth Cracknell, Nobel Prize-winner Howard Florey, scientist Ian Chubb, astronaut Katherine Bennell-Pegg, television and radio personality Ita Buttrose, feminist icon Germaine Greer, family violence campaigner Rosie Batty, former CEO of Vision Australia Tim Costello, campaigner Charles Perkins, journalist Peter Greste, former prime ministers including Robert Menzies and Gough Whitlam, POW Vivian Bullwinkel, cricket captain Ian Chappell, boxer Lionel Rose, Dame Mary Gilmore, AFL player Alex Jesaulenko, scientist Gustav Nossal and artist Sidney Nolan. Hear, too, from regular Australians who have been affected by polio, aids or Covid; who survived bushfires, Cyclone Tracy, dispossession or war; who experienced love, mateship or loss.

Through the voices of Elders, prime ministers, migrants, scientists, athletes, centenarians, artists and more, this is our national memory. 

About the editor

Shirleene Robinson AM, image courtesy of Joy M Lai.

Dr Shirleene Robinson AM is an experienced oral historian, curator and Honorary Associate Professor and Visiting Fellow in the School of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney. She has published extensively across the areas of oral history, colonisation and Indigenous and non-Indigenous contact histories, LGBTIQ history and the history of childhood. 

Her eleven books include Something like Slavery? Queensland's Aboriginal child workers,1842-1945 and recent co-authored books, In the Eye of the Storm: Volunteers and Australia’s Response to the HIV/AIDS Crisis and Pride in Defence: The Australian Military and LGBTI Service Since 1945. Shirleene is currently the Oceania representative on the International Oral History Association Council and is a past President of Oral History NSW. Between 2018 and 2023, Shirleene's was Senior Curator of Oral History and then Director of Curatorial and Collection Research at the National Library of Australia. In 2022, she was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to the LGBTIQ community, to marriage equality and to history.