Sound
Magnetic audio tape is risk of loss due to physical deterioration and technology obsolescence. We digitising our collection to ensure we preserve the contents and make it accessible to all.
The first collection to be preserved, and available online, are the 45 oral histories that cover a series of interviews by Alison Viney Houghton. The audio is part of Alison's oral history project, "The Age of Innocence 1937-1947", created in 2010. The interviewees discuss their experiences as wartime children growing up in Australia and England during the Second World War.
Group portrait of English children who were evacuated from Britain by ship. After arrival at Melbourne they were taken on a day's outing to the Zoo and are shown arriving back at the ship before final disembarkation. c.October 1940
The Alison Viney Houghton collection has been digitised for the first time. It consists of a series of interviews of Australian and English childhood experiences during the Second World War.
Recollections include: wartime hairstyles; blackout windows; household routines such as weekly bathing; the availability of alcohol in wartime; mothers employed outside the home for the first time; celebrating VE Day; newsreels; social activities like church groups, dances, bike riding, and cinemas; schooling; social norms regarding family relationships; Red Cross volunteering; rationing; child evacuees; and the inventiveness of women in managing limited food supplies.