Khe Sanhn, Boys in Town, Great Southern Land, Cattle and Cane added to NFSA’s sounds of Australia list

Cold Chisel, Divinyls, Icehouse and The Go-Betweens have been added to the National Film and Sound Archive’s Sounds of Australia registry of historically, culturally and aesthetically significant sound recordings. The songs selected this year for inclusion in Sounds of Australia are Cold Chisel’s Khe Sanh (1978), Divinyls’ Boys in Town (1981), ICEHOUSE’s Great Southern Land (1982) and The Go-Betweens’ Cattle and Cane (1983).
Cold Chisel’s Don Walker said of the announcement “The choice of Khe Sanh by the NFSA for their Sounds of Australia registry is a great honour. Who would have thought such a thing was possible?”
Mark McEntee of Divinyls, said the inclusion of Boys in Town is a welcome surprise “Who knew, the very first time Chrissie Amphlett and I met, that we would sit down and pen this song together? It was the first result of a magical connection between us, as song writing partners, which would take us to heights we never would have expected.”
“I feel greatly honoured. At the time I wrote Great Southern Land, I was attempting to capture within it something of the sense of place, and perhaps something of the soul of Australia. I had absolutely no idea at the time that people would react to it in the way that they did, and certainly not that they would still be reacting to it more than 30 years into the future. The song, and the way it has been received, still remains a mystery to me today, as it did then.”
Robert Forster, of The Go-Betweens, added “The addition of Cattle and Cane to Sounds of Australia is a highlight of The Go-Betweens’ career, and a further testament to the vision of the man that wrote it – the late Grant McLennan.”
A Spokesperson for the National Film and Sound Archive explained that In addition to these four popular songs, the new Sounds of Australia entries for 2014 include the earliest known Australian singer to make a commercial recording (Syria Lamonte, 1898), a concert recorded in a cave at Tobruk (1941), the sounds of a lone dingo howling in the wild (1990) and the collection of the ground-breaking Indigenous radio program Deadly Sounds (1993-2014).

The 2014 Sounds of Australia – in chronological order – are:
1. They Always Follow Me, Syria Lamonte (1898) – popular music
2. Speech at the Opening of the Columbia Gramophone Company Australian Factory, Admiral Sir Dudley de Chair KCB MVO (1926) – speech
3. Concert in a Cave at Tobruk, Chester Wilmot, ABC Field Unit (1941) – spoken word, popular music
4. Fireworks and The Orgasmic Opus, Dr Val Stephen (1967) – electronic music
5. Khe Sanh, Cold Chisel (1978) – popular music
6. Boys in Town, Divinyls (1981) – popular music
7. Great Southern Land, ICEHOUSE (1982) – popular music
8. Cattle and Cane, The Go-Betweens (1983) – popular music
9. Dingo, Vicki Powys (1990) – environmental sound
10. Deadly Sounds, Vibe Australia (1993-2014) – Indigenous, radio broadcast

The Spokesperson went on to explain that there are currently 94 recordings in the Sounds of Australia registry, from the earliest Australian sound recording (1897’s The Hen Convention ) to international stars such as AC/DC, Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, adding that the registry was established by the NFSA in 2007. The Sounds of Australia is the ultimate selection of sounds which inform or reflect life in our nation. They can be popular songs, advertising jingles, famous speeches, radio broadcasts, or any other sound recordings – as long as they’re Australian and more than 10 years old.