DECADES of Barmera history, as told by people who lived through it, has been captured in a new book released recently.
Voices of Barmera, a collection of oral histories from early Barmera residents, was launched at an event at the Barmera Soldiers Memorial Hall late last month.
The book was produced by the Barmera Library, with local women Glenys Badger and Sue Crossing volunteering as compiler and transcriber respectively.
More than 25 locals were interviewed for the book, which includes details about life on the land, the social scene and family life in the young town.
Berri Barmera Council library manager Peter Ison said the book’s release was the culmination of several years of work.
“For the Berri centenary in 2011 we did some oral histories… and then we thought afterwards that we couldn’t leave Barmera out,” he said.
“We put some money in our budget and professional historian Rob Lynn did about 16 interviews for us over a few years.
“For Barmera we decided to pull snippets out of the interviews and create this book.”
Mr Ison said the book also included sections from interviews conducted more than three decades ago.
“We realised there were some 1980s interviews done by former Barmera librarian Di Tillett,” he said. “They’re on cassette and are very hard to hear, but we have used snippets of those in the book… and that gave us some older history as well.”
Mr Ison said the library would look at making the interviews available online, or producing further oral history books for other towns.
“With the Barmera, Monash and Glossop centenaries happening this year, I know there’s already a group getting into doing some oral histories, and we have the Berri oral histories that we have transcribed but haven’t done anything with,” he said.
“Now we’ve made a book once it will probably be more achievable if we do it again…”
Copies of Voices of Barmera are available for $25 at the Barmera Library, Berri Library, Berri Barmera Council office and both the Berri and Barmera visitor information centres.