Parkhill Collection

The Parkhill Collection holds recordings of the music of various language, nationality or region-based communities in Melbourne, from 1975 to 1983. Also includes oral history interviews with people who lived in the Illawarra region from the 1920s to 1990s and people involved with the 1989 Newcastle earthquake.

Local history

Key items in the collection

The original collection comprised 222 tapes and cassettes, with over 60 hours of playing time. They were mostly recorded in Melbourne from 1975 to 1983 and include:

traditional songs and dance music of Turkey
songs and dances of Abruzzi and Compo Basso
Russian songs and liturgical chants
traditional music of Greece, Greek Macedonia, Crete and Syria
Lebanese improvised poetry.

There are also:

yarns
rhymes and songs of rural Gippsland
Pacific Islander music.

In 1990, Parkhill added 32 tapes and cassettes recorded in Sydney from 1986 to 1987, including:

Timorese and Paraguayan music
a Vietnamese music ensemble
interviews with directors of Greek, Turkish and Serbian music
dance organisations.

In 1993, additional music tapes were added to the collection, featuring recordings in the following languages:

Arabic
Persian
Greek
Turkish
Hungarian
South American.

The Newcastle earthquake collection comprises 46 interviews on 175 tapes with people involved in the aftermath of the 1989 Newcastle earthquake. They include:

a seismologist
an architect
builders
engineers
a demolition worker
social workers
a trade union leader
police officers
fire brigade officers
a politician
councillors and academics
a playwright.

The 'Voices from Illawarra' collection consists of 18 interviews on 93 tapes with people who had lived in the Illawarra region from the 1920s to the 1990s. They include a:

civil engineer
school teachers
language teachers
trade union official
retired waterside worker
retired coal miner
bush worker
leader of the Italian community.

Later recordings acquired from Parkhill include interviews with:

Greek Australian musicians and broadcasters
Australian folksingers
an Australian Aboriginal singer
anthropologists and musicologists.

Papers of Peter Parkhill, 1960-2015 (bulk 1970s-1990s)

This collection documents the music and folktales of Australians of diverse cultural backgrounds, including Middle Eastern, Southern European, Pacific Islander and South American, and comprises correspondence, published articles, research notes, interview transcripts, photographs, music scores, audio recordings, and a draft memoir.

About Peter Parkhill

Early musical journey

Peter Parkhill was a singer in various folk music clubs in Melbourne in the early 1970s when he became interested in the musical traditions of various language, nationality or region-based communities. He became known to many singers and musicians and was invited to their homes and to parties and concerts where their music was played. With some assistance from the Australia Council, he began to record their music and also interviews and has continued to do so ever since. He has produced many programs on these musical traditions for Radio National.

Academic background and scholarship

Parkhill is a graduate in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology and has written several scholarly papers on folk music and traditional music. He has at times had academic appointments, but for much of his career he has been a freelance oral historian.

Major oral history projects

In 1993, he was appointed by the Newcastle City Council to carry out an oral history project on the Newcastle earthquake. In 1994 to 1995 he undertook the Voices from Illawarra project for the National Library.

Background to the collection

The original collection was purchased by the National Library in 1986.

In 1991 to 1993, the Library provided grants to assist Parkhill in recording singers and musicians and further recordings of this kind have been received in more recent years.

The Library also helped fund the Newcastle Earthquake and 'Voices of Illawarra' projects in 1993 to 1995.

The Parkhill Collection is housed in the Oral History and Folklore Collection. The later recordings have been catalogued individually, but only a small number of the recordings in the 3 collections described above have been catalogued.

This guide was prepared using this reference: