form y separately published work icon The Eureka Stockade single work   radio play   historical fiction  
Issue Details: First known date: 1933... 1933 The Eureka Stockade
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'A self-contained historical chronicle of a great national event' ('Radio-Drama Week,' p.3), Barclay approaches the rebellion from the perspective of Gilbert Teal, and looks at the consequences and the effect it had on both him and his family ('Radio Drama Week : Bright Sessions," p.8.)

Notes

  • Barclay's Eureka Stockade was the first drama presented during the Australian Broadcasting Commission's 1937 Radio Drama Week.
  • The 1937 Sydney and Perth productions, although broadcast on the same day, were independently produced and performed.

Production Details

  • Originally produced by 2FC (later Radio National) on 21 November 1933.

    Producer: Edmund Barclay.

    Cast: John Pickard (Peter Lalor), Bert Barton (Frederick Vern), CARBONI Victor Gouriet (Carboni Raffaello), James Stanley (John Ross), John Bedouin (The Rev. Father Smyth, a Priest beloved of all sections of the Community), Vivian Edwards (Sir John Hotham, the Governor of Victoria), Ronald Morse (Captain Thomas, Commandant of Troops at Ballarat), James Pratt (Captain Wise, Officer in Charge of Storming Party), Charles Wheeler (Trooper Garvey, a Police Trooper, Spy, and Paid Informer), and Winifred Green (Alice Dunn, a Schoolmistress of Geelong).

    Source: [Radio guide], Wireless Weekly, 17 November 1933, p.53.

    Broadcast throughout Australia (except Western Australia) on relay from Sydney radio station 2FC on 19 April 1937.

    Producer: Laurence H. Cecil.

    Broadcast on relay throughout Western Australia from Perth radio station 6WF on 19 April 1937 (relay stations included 6WA and 6GF).

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Australian Broadcasting Commission , 1937 .
      Series: form y separately published work icon Radio Drama Week [1937] Australian Radio Drama Week Australian Broadcasting Commission (publisher), Australia : Australian Broadcasting Commission , 1937 9744955 1937 series - publisher radio play

      'Australian listeners will be forcibly reminded of the fact that Australian writers can write radio plays. The Australian Broadcasting Commission [ABC] is staging and Radio Drama' Week, on every night of which, a play written by an Australian' author will be produced at one of the studios and relayed to the other States. Each of the Eastern States will take its turn to provide the performance' ('Radio-Drama Week,' p.3).

      The plays, place of performance (Eastern States) and broadcast order were:

      1. Eureka Stockade (Barclay) Sydney, 2FC; 19 April.

      2. Sending Granny Off (Simpson) Hobart, 7ZL; 20 April

      3. Hester Siding (Turner) Sydney, 2FC; 21 April

      4. The Black Horse (Palmer) Sydney, 2FC; 22 April

      5. The Mingled Yarn (Barclay) Brisbane, 4QG; 23 April

      6. The Footsteps After (Porter) Melbourne, 3LO; 24 April

      7. The 25th of April (Hill) Melbourne, 3LO; 25 April


      'In selecting the plays,' writes L. C. Rees, the ABC's Federal Play Editor, 'It was preferable that they should be essentially Australian. By that, I do not mean a self-conscious insistence on backgrounds in which koalas, boomerangs, billabongs, sheoaks, drovers, cricketers, gins, waratahs, surf beaches, scrubber cows, and big timber are prominent. Such atmospherics do not make a play Australian. What we rather looked for was a work which seemed to be written sincerely, eloquently, and basically out of a personal experience of Australian conditions, a play which might in its material be similar to any number of oversea plays (since the material of life is much the same everywhere), but which in Its method, temper, and outlook stood on its own legs, was free from derivation, either conscious or unconscious. A hard thing about which to lay down the law, but you know it when you see it' ('Australian Radio Drama Week,' p.6).

      In its 'Radio Drama Week' article, Brisbane's Telegraph noted that the ABC was not suggesting that 'all of these plays [were] masterpieces but, with the exception of Vance Palmer's adaptation, all of the stories to be presented show the growing power of Australian writers in original work' (p.3). The Sunday Mail also suggested:

      While it is little use pretending that there are as many listeners to radio plays as there are to the musical forms of broadcast entertainment, Radio Drama Week should do much to swell the growing body of listeners to whom the broadcasting of plays and dramatic sketches stand out among other programme items as important and notable ('News About Radio,' p. 28).

             form y separately published work icon As Ye Sow : An Australian Saga Edmund Barclay , 1937 Z852174 1937 series - publisher radio play

      Described in most radio programme guides as 'an Australian saga,' the Courier Mail (Brisbane) records that the play 'reviews the influences that have affected the development and the progress of the continent for a century and a half" (4 January 1937, p.15).

      Known episode titles are:

      • 1. Seed Time
      • 2. Wavering
      • 3. Crossing the Rubicon
      • 4. Tillage
      • 5. The First Australians
      • 6. The Golden Fleece
      • 7. Govenor Bligh
      • 8. Over the Mountains
      • 9. Broadacres
      • 10. Gilbert the Second
      • 11. Reap in Joy
      • 12.
      • 13. Evensong
      • 14. The New Era
      • 15. The Gold Rush
      • 16. The Eureka Stockade
      • 17. Ploughshares into Scales
      • 18. Sydney-Siders
      • 19.
      • 20. Town and Country / or Black Wednesday
      • 21. Reaping Iniquity
      • 22. Many Waters
      • 23. The Rift
      • 24. Black Wednesday
      • 25. The Last of the Old
      • 26.
      • 27.
      • 28.
      • 29. Prelude to War
             Number in series: 16
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Last amended 16 Jun 2020 11:19:01
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  • Ballarat, Ballarat area, Ballarat - Bendigo area, Victoria,
  • 1854
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