My brief stint collecting oral histories in Lithgow in the early 1970s provided me with some signposts that have stayed with me and helped develop my understanding of what makes us unique in a rapidly changing world.

I grew up in a different Australia at a time when the Australian identity was usually defined as a grog-fuelled, fag smoking, ocker sort of world.

Men were gawky, often awkward around women and totally insular in sharing their emotions.

Women were the glue in most families, hardworking and controlling the purse strings.

Caricatures like Chips Rafferty’s film blokes, Barry Humphries’ Bazza McKenzie and Paul Hogan’s Crocodile Dundee were all macho types and, to some extent, not too far removed from the colonial outback drover and shearer, especially when they hit the big smoke.

I started to absorb Australian history at a young age.

Although born in the inner Sydney suburb of Paddington I was raised on storytelling, old songs and the poetry of Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson.

The stories of pioneers, explorers and itinerant workers fascinated me. I realised the songs and stories provided a link, a signpost, to just about every aspect of Australian history from the convict era through to city factory life.

Over the past fifty years I have collected, analysed and performed these songs and stories on radio, stage and in my books and recording projects.

In the late sixties, when I began producing programs for ABC radio, I became concerned that the new medium of television, launched in 1956, was sounding the death knell for storytelling and homemade entertainment, so I decided to go bush for a year and see if I could collect remnants of yesterday’s Australia.

I was also keen to see if Australia had any industrial songs.

In 1972 I began collecting in ernest and one of my first destinations was Lithgow.

It had the history, relative isolation of a valley, and it had coal mining.

Arriving in Lithgow I made for the obvious point of reference - the Lithgow District Historical Society.

Eskbank House, Lithgow’s most-valuable heritage asset, was operated by the society and I recall trawling through endless files and bookcases.

My next move was to contact the local miner’s union and locate some retired miners who might agree to be recorded for my National Library collection.

Collecting oral history and folklore is a bit like assembling a jigsaw puzzle - one piece leads to another until you have a rounded story.

I was fortunate to meet Jack ‘Twinny’ Mays, a retired miner and a mine of storytelling.

Jack introduced me to another miner and unionist, Jim ‘Champ’ Champion.

Together they provided me with an extensive lexicon of words peculiar to the local mining industry.

Many of these words and expressions have been lost in time, especially with the mechanisation and now computerisation of mining.Words like gantry, over-wind, bork, sprags and daug join long-forgotten lines from songs, poems and drinking toasts.

I remember asking Jack about his experience in the Great Depression.

“Oh, my wife made me a sandwich and I’d head off every morning at 8am and return at 4pm”.

I said, “Where did you get work in Lithgow in the Depression?”

He looked at me and said, “Work? I couldn’t get work.

I used to hide in the bush every day - we didn’t want the neighbours to pity us, they didn’t have any money either.”

Jack’s wife added that the family lived on nine shillings a week and had to ‘put our pride in our pocket’.

I often use this story when I am trying to explain the hard times of the 1930s to school students.

You can give them all the facts and figures but a heart-retching story wins every time.

Jack and Jim also gave me a song about the 1911 strike at the Hoskin’s Mine.

Miners were paid per ton they bought to the pit top and the union was negotiating with Charles Hoskins for an additional tuppence in the ton.

The colliery owner retaliated by decreasing the tonnage by tuppence.

One of Lithgow’s most bitter strikes erupted.

Jack and Jim related how every day of the strike the scab labourers were met by the Lithgow miner’s brass band who would usually play the ‘Dead March’ as the scabs arrived.

One day, encouraged by month’s of keeping the mine operating, the scabs began to dance to the music.

This was too much and a hell of a donnybrook broke out with the scabs being locked in the boiler room, Hoskin’s brand new Tmodel Ford torched, and the local police thrown into the mine’s slush pit.

Another Lithgow contributor to my collecting project was Bill Coleman.

Bill worked as a mine engine-driver but was better known as Lithgow’s ‘strongman’.

He was known for lifting heavy weights, including horse wagons in competitions.

In some contests he would even have a tug of war with a horse.

During the Depression he earned money from competing in amateur contests.

In 1977 I returned to Lithgow to record Sally Sloane, a renowned musician and singer of early ballads.

Sally had been recorded in the late fifties by John Meredith and I wanted to record some of her extensive repertoire and get some interview material on her life’s story.

She was a remarkable contributor to the treasury of Australian folksong having age-old Irish and English songs learnt from her mother plus dance tunes and stories.

Sally was undoubtedly the major source for many Australian songs including songs about bushrangers, shearers, drovers and settler songs.

Warren Fahey will visit Lithgow on Sunday 2nd August to perform with legendary Australian actor, Max Cullen, in their hit play ‘Dead Men Talking’ (4pm Lithgow Workmen’s Club) where he plays Banjo Paterson with Cullen’s Henry Lawson.

Tickets from the Workmen’s Club or www.deadmentalking-lithgow.floktu.com

He will also officially launch the Panoramic Photographs of Lithgow exhibition at Eskbank House at noon, followed by a one-hour talk and concert of his Lithgow folklore material (Free, register at Eskbank House).