The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has been with
me my whole life. I’ve been listening to ABC radio since I was a baby. My
parents always had ABC radio on; classical music and local ABC radio were on
the whole day in our house. At night we sat down to watch ABC news and programs
on television. The ABC filled our house with the arts, education, news, and
entertainment; it still fills my life.
For me, and many other Australians and people in our
neighbouring region, the ABC is vital. Because it provides services,
information, education, and entertainment that are not accessible
from anywhere else in the world.
I’ve been lucky enough over the years to have worked with a
few people from the ABC. My first collaboration with the ABC was in 2003. PoeticA,
was a National Radio program that ran from 1997 to 2015. It provided a weekly
resource of poetry readings and happenings from around Australia and the world.
PoeticA was like a religion to most Australian poets and poetry lovers. The poet
and presenter Mike Ladd and producer Krystyna Kubiak were the heart of PoeticA.
They were both wonderful and helpful people to work with.
The program, Ekphrasis,
that I organised with PoeticA, aired on Saturday 22 February 2003 at 3:00 PM. You
can listen to that program here, of course,
copyright restrictions apply to all content.
The second time the ABC and I developed a program was again,
for PoeticA. This time the program was about all things poetically Astronomical. Here’s the ABC blurb, “A feature on the
poetry of the cosmos including classical works as well as poems by contemporary
Australian writers. Based on an idea by Robert Kennedy, the program grew out of
a project called “A Poetic Journey Into the Cosmos”, a series of readings held
last year at Sydney Observatory”. They aired Astronomical on Saturday 27
March 2004 at 3:00 PM.
When I was in my early 20s, the ABC took on an all-encompassing
presence in my life. I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of what the ABC
offered. It seemed there was, and still is, something for everyone. I listen to
and watched almost everything that the ABC produced. The ABC had me hooked even
from an early age. If you grew up in the 1970s, Countdown was a
music program that had to be watched. I never missed a show.
One of the things I love most about the ABC is Radio
National (RN). Today they have more than 60 programs. I specifically loved the program
Airplay, which aired on what is now known as RN. Unfortunately, this
program is no longer broadcast, but it provided so many great Australian and
international radio plays and offered the first voice to a large number of current
Australian actors. Airplay
broadcast from 1997 to 2013.
Before Airplay there was The Sunday Play on what
was then called ABC Radio 2, or 2FC, which stood for Farmer and Company. That
was the original owner of the station before the ABC took it over. Back in the
early 1980s, the ABC used to produce a guide just for their radio stations. It
cost 40 cents. I kept a few copies which you can see in the picture in this
post. I gather they are worth a bit more today.
The mellow toned voice of Jaroslav Kovaricek presented two
of my most cherished ABC programs. These were Dreamtime and Innerspace.
I recorded over 100 broadcasts because the music was so unique. I heard sounds
that could not be found in almost any other place. I still use these recordings
every week when I need some headspace relaxation time. The music on Dreamtime
has inspired me to write many of my compositions.
Jaroslav Kovaricek produced hundreds of Dreamtime programs;
over 500 from memory. Innerspace never ran for that long but offered a
new sound experience. I recorded only a few of those. Unfortunately, there is
almost no record of either of these programs today anywhere. I may be the only
person that has recordings of these amazing soundscapes.
Other than the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), there
is nothing like the ABC on this planet. I can’t imagine living without the ABC.
Yet, the ABC might soon be gone.
Successive Liberal governments have been trying to kill off
the ABC. They want to see it gone because, in the words of former Liberal party
leader and former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, they (the ABC) are
not on team Australia. The hard right of the Liberal party wants the ABC to be
sold off to private interests. Why? Because according to these people, the ABC
does not represent their ideology.
If you don’t know what the Liberal party ideology is, just
take a look at the state of imbalance, greed, political spin and lies pushed
out by this unaccountable government. It’s sad to say, many people in Australia
want to see the ABC gone too. They believe the Liberal party spin and follow
them blindly.
If you don’t want to see the ABC sold off, or dismantled,
you should do something about it. Write to your local member and ask them to
increase ABC funding so it can be maintained. They need to be able to go on to
provide the necessary programs that they have been creating for almost 100
years.
If you don’t want the ABC gone, start talking to your friends and relatives about how you, and they can save this national treasure. Because the ABC is as important as Uluru, the Sydney Opera House, and the Great Barrier Reef - just imagine all these treasures gone.
