About us

The Australians at War Film Archive is an Australian Government initiative, commissioned through the Department of Veterans' Affairs and designed to film and record the stories of over two thousand war veterans as a permanent asset for posterity. It is an unmatched historical collection, a resource for all Australians interested in our wartime heritage.

The interviews encompass individuals representing every conflict in which Australia has been involved from World War I up to and including currently serving members of the Australian Defence Force, although these latter interviews will not be made available for public access until 2020. The Archive encompasses the battlefront, the home front, media and entertainment, children, teachers, wives, workers and clerics. From signaller to Spitfire pilot, from SAS soldier to stoker, even those who fought with us and against us; as long as they were now Australians, then their service was represented.

Each interview has been transcribed and the interview and its transcript are available on this website.

All our interviews were undertaken without rehearsal on the part of the interviewees and have generally been transcribed without the interviewees having an opportunity to edit the transcripts for grammar, syntax and repetition. As well, despite the best efforts of the Archive's editors and an extensive fact checking process, errors may exist in some transcripts, in particular, with regard to names of people and places. Should you detect such errors in your transcript, please contact the Archive and corrections will be considered.

Users of this site are able to comprehensively search the interview transcription database which incorporates photographs of our interviewees, the transcriptions of their interviews and historical summaries relating to many of the categories that comprise the Archive.

Some of the details recorded here may be distressing to users and family or friends of the persons interviewed. Users should also keep in mind that some materials may contain offensive language, depictions of sexual matters or negative stereotypes reflecting the culture or language of a period or place.

The Archive is a repository of memories, a collection of experiences, and as such, it does not claim to be an accurate historical record. Rather, it is the stories of particular times in Australia's past, told by the people who were there. We are indebted to each and every veteran who has so generously permitted us to share their memories.

The material presented on this website is the memories and reflections of the person being interviewed. The material is presented in good faith, but does not reflect the considered views of the Department of Veterans' Affairs, The Australians at War Film Archive or UNSW Australia.

Any access that you make of this website is undertaken at your own risk.

In the year 2000, a landmark television series was broadcast in Australia. Commissioned by the Department of Veterans' Affairs on behalf of the Australian Government, it achieved huge audiences, a Logie award for best documentary of the year and a permanent place as a teaching resource in virtually every high school and university in the country. It was called Australians at War.

From that timely beginning grew a desire to establish a national collection of wide-ranging, filmed interviews with veterans of all Australia's wars, conflicts and peace-keeping missions from World War One to Afghanistan. A collection that would provide an unparalleled resource for historians, students, teachers, researchers, writers, film makers and all Australians interested in our wartime heritage.

Mullion Creek Productions (the producers of Australians at War) and the Department of Veterans' Affairs put together a consulting group of some of Australia's most eminent military historians - Professor Joan Beaumont, Professor David Horner, Dr Peter Stanley, Dr Richard Reid, Dr Michael McKernan, Dr Alan Stephens and Dr John Reeve - to devise a pilot program and workshops that would establish the methodology, practice and content of the project. After a year's work and preparation, production commenced on a unique undertaking - the largest oral history of its kind in the world.

The Australians at War Film Archive interviewed 2005 Australians who participated in one way or another in World War One, World War Two, the Occupation of Japan, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency, Indonesian Confrontasi, the Vietnam War, Gulf War 1, the War against Terror and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Interviews were also conducted with men and women who have seen service on UN and other operations in places such as the Sinai, Israel, Kashmir, Cambodia, Rwanda, Somalia, Bougainville and East Timor, along with Defence Force operations after the Rabaul tidal wave, the bombings in Bali and the Indonesian tsunami.

The interviews are catalogued into over 200 categories and, generally, there are at least ten interviews in each category. World War Two for example, contains over 90 categories. Every interview has been transcribed, is available on the Archive website, and is text­searchable.

All interviews were filmed against chroma-key green screens, meaning that users can place any background they choose behind the interviewee. In addition, the interview teams filmed still photographs of each person on their interview day as well as all the still photographs and artefacts that they owned. In this way, users of the Archive can examine a collection of words and pictures unique to each individual interviewee.

The interviews were conducted across the landscape of each person's life and so are of significant length - most ran for six hours, many others for eight or nine. A major principle of the methodology was that the relating of an individual's war experience is most valuable when viewed in the context of their entire life; so the brief for the interviewers was simple - detail, always detaiI.

That meant not only details of training and battles, but details of home life, of meals, of social behaviour and relationships. It was the Archive's view that the particulars of, for example, farm life in Gippsland in the 1930s were as important as a country boy's first impressions of jungle warfare. That how men dealt with death on a battlefield was as important as how they died.

Consequently, the Australians at War Film Archive is not only a diverse and exhaustive collection of personal, military histories but a remarkable, historical resource of information about Australian social and cultural life.

Let's say an historian, a film maker, a researcher or a student wanted to examine El Alamein. They would find new and valuable material in the 98 interviews the Archive holds with men who were involved in that battle, but they would also discover significant holdings across a wider canvas, including how those men were educated, what their parents were like, what characterised the relationships between men and women in Australia at that time and what all that meant to each of the 98 individuals interviewed.

Taking a somewhat longer view, one could even trace the changes in the social fabric of this country over the last 100 years, just from the Archive's interviews.

From the beginning, diversity and comprehensiveness were the main goals of the collection. Researchers conducted initial interviews with over 6,500 potential interviewees before the final choices were made. Included were individuals from every kind of civilian and military service experienced during wartime as well as service personnel and civilians who were in some way involved in Australia's conflicts and peacekeeping missions.

The Archive encompasses the battlefront, the home front, media and entertainment, children, teachers, wives, workers and clerics. From signaller to Spitfire pilot, from SAS soldier to stoker, even those who fought with us and against us; as long as they were now Australians, then their service was represented.

Interviewers have spoken with people for whom the war ended 86 years ago and those who came home from their war 14 days before their interview. Among our interviewees on the first day were a Lancaster pilot in Bomber Command who was shot down over France and spent the remainder of the war committing acts of sabotage alongside the French Resistance, a POW from the Thai-Burma railway who, upon his liberation, lay on a beach in Singapore, looked up at the stars and realized it was his 19th birthday; and a rifleman from the 6th Division, who enlisted in 1939 and finally returned home to Balmain, six long years later, never to be the same man again.

Among our interviewees on the last day were men and women serving in the Australian Defence Force, including a doctor from the Australian medical team in Rwanda who endured the massacres in a camp called Kibeho; a young aircraftswoman from the RAAF who flew into Denpasar on Operation Bali Assist in October 2002 and tended to the damaged and the dying on the long flight home to Darwin, and a Blackhawk chopper pilot who flew the SAS into Afghanistan at the beginning of the War Against Terror.

Produced by:
MULLION CREEK PRODUCTIONS PTY LTD

Project Director:
MICHAEL CAULFIELD

Producer:
LIZ BUTLER

Consultant Historians:
PROFESSOR JOAN BEAUMONT
DR MICHAEL MCKERNAN
DR JOHN REEVE
DR RICHARD REID
DR PETER STANLEY
DR ALAN STEPHENS


PRODUCTION TEAM:

Production Supervisor:
KYLIE FLEMING

Production Managers:
BRYONY KING
ANNELLA POWELL
TRACEY SHARP

Production Coordinators:
TANIA HORNE
ANNELLA POWELL
TRACEY SHARP
WENDY TRUELOVE
CORINA YIANNOUKAS

Production Accountant:
JOHN RUSSELL

Production Assistants:
LISA CAMILLERI
LEAH GIBSON
JOANNE MARTIN
JADE SUINE
LUCY WATERER
LOUISE WHALLEY
KRISTY WILSON

Researchers:
BRETT BARLOW
PHILLIPA CANNON
VICKI ESLICK
SARAH GURICH
BRADLEY HAMMOND
ANGELA HAMMOND
SERENA PORGES
BRONWYN REED
ELIZABETH HALLORAN RICHARDS

Dubbing Officers:
BARRY ELVERD
KIEREN ROBISON

Senior Supervising Editors:
DIANNE BRAMICH
MICHAEL CAULFIELD
MICHELE CUNNINGHAM
DR WAYNE GEERLING

Supervising Editors:
DIANNE BRAMICH
KEN BURSLEM
KIT CANDLIN
MICHELE CUNNINGHAM
CATHERINE DYSON
CHRISTOPHER ELEY
KATE HABGOOD
RON HARPER
CHRISTOPHER HOUGHTON
CHRISTOPHER KEATING
HILARY MCGEACHY
MYLES MCMULLEN
JEANETTE RIMMER
JOHN ROBBINS
JOANNE STEWART
CRAIG TIBBITTS
LEONARD HARRY WISE

Transcription Editors:
GEMMA BATTERSBY
KATE BATTERSBY
DALE BLAIR
PHILLIP BRADLEY
DIANNE BRAMICH
KEN BURSLEM
COLIN CAIRNES
KIT CANDLIN
MICHELE CUNNINGHAM
KIRSTY DE GARIS
CATHERINE DYSON
LUCINDA EDSELIUS
DARREN ELDER
CHRISTOPHER ELEY
ROD FAULKNER
KATE HABGOOD
MAT HARDY
RON HARPER
ROSALIND HEARDER
CHRISTOPHER HOUGHTON
DR JUDITH JEFFERY
CHRISTOPHER KEATING
JOHN KERR
MATTHEW LIBBIS
CHRISTOPHER LINKE
IAN MACKAY
HILARY MCGEACHY
MYLES MCMULLEN
JAMES MORRIS
LOUISE PASCALE
TRISH PATON
CATHY PRYOR
JEANETTE RIMMER
JOHN ROBBINS
KATHY SPORT
JOANNE STEWART
VANESSA STUART
CRAIG TIBBITTS
JOSH WADDELL
ALAN WILSON
LEONARD HARRY WISE

Camera Training Consultants:
PETER COLEMAN
KATHRYN MILLISS

Transcribers:
SUE BARTIMOTE
MATTHEW BIENEK
ELLA BOWMAN
MARJORY BRADLEY
ALISON BRUCE
ALISON BURGE
HELEN CARVER
MELISSA CAULFIELD
BARBARA DADD
AMANDA DRAKE
KRISTINA GOTTSCHALL
ANGELA GRAY
GRAHAM JOHNS
SHARON JOHNSON
CLAIRE JONES
KERRY KLEMENS
DAVID MARTIN
DARRYL MASON
RACHEL MEEHAN
FRANCES MILLER
LOUISE MUDDLE
KIM O'DONNELL
JESSICA RICHARDS
KAREN SIMS
KATE SMITH
MARYANNE SMITH
MONICA STEFFAN
JUSTINE WILLIAMS

Additional Transcription Services
CLEVER TYPES
THE LAST DRAFT PTY LTD

Film Digitisation:
DAMSMART

Website Design:
LINK DIGITAL

Logo Design:
GEORGIE HAWKE


INTERVIEWING TEAM:

The Archive interviews were conducted by two person teams in every
state and territory of Australia. Each team interviewed in 'tours' of eight
weeks, filming three hundred hours of material per team, per tour. The
number next to each name is the number of tours each interviewer completed.

Interviewers:
JULIAN ARGUS - 3.5
MARTIN BALL - 1
REBECCA BARRY - 2
MICHAEL BENNETT - 3
DENISE BLAZEK - 3.5
COLIN CAIRNES - 4
ELLEN CARPENTER - 2
LOUISE CHARMAN - 1
KIRSTY DE GARIS - 1
SERGEI DE SILVA-RANASINGHE - 5
SIMON DIKKENBERG - 2
CATHERINE DYSON - 4
CHRISTOPHER ELEY - 5
KEIRNAN FITZPATRICK - 4
ISABEL FOX - 2
ROSEMARY FRANCIS - 1
KYLIE GREY - 1.5
ZELDA GRIMSHAW - 1
MATTHEW HARDY - 2
NAOMI HOMEL - 3
CHRISTOPHER HOUGHTON - 3.5
IANTO KELLY - 2
SEAN KENNEDY - 1.5
STELLA KINSELLA - 2
ANNIE LETCH - 1
DAVID LEVELL - 1
DENE MASON - 1
CLAIRE MCCARTHY - 1
NICOLE MCCUAIG - 2
MYLES MCMULLEN - 2
COLIN MOWBRAY - 2
KRISTEN MURRAY - 1
PATRICK NOLAN - 1
KAREN NOBES - 1
ROBERT NUGENT - 2.5
LOUISE PASCALE - 2
HEATHER PHILLIPS - 2.5
CATHY PRYOR - 2
SOPHIE RELF - 1
SUE ROBERTS - 1
CHRISTOPHER SALISBURY - 1
GRAHAM SHIRLEY - 2
KATHY SPORT - 5
VANESSA STUART - 2
MICHELLE WARNER - 2
KYLIE WASHINGTON-BROOK - 1.5
JOHN WELDON - 1
PETER WELMAN - 3