A collector of vinyl, one of our wandering correspondents, fossicking about the Northern Territory town of Katherine , went into raptures over his find of the above 1956 record featuring Australian poets , the score by Peter O'Shaughnessy.
As a writer, editor and lecturer, he promoted early Australian history and folklore. In January 2013 he was awarded the OAM for service to the performing arts.
Those named on the sleeve were C.J.Dennis, Judith Wright, A.D.Hope, Banjo Paterson , Henry Lawson , Adam Lindsay Gordon and Mary Gilmore .
When Mary Gilmore was a schoolteacher in Sydney , before going to the New Australia settlement in South America , she noticed a smart young girl who , when married , became a prominent Darwin identity -Jessie Litchfield , newspaper editor , writer , author , who financially backed author, writer and publisher Glenville Pike to launch the first edition of the North Australian Monthly magazine .
An actor, director and producer for the stage, O'Shaughnessy presented the work of playwrights ranging from Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov to modern dramatists, such as Ionesco, Pinter and Samuel Beckett.
He was a pioneer in the production of the plays of Beckett, and directed the Irish premieres of Not I and Footfalls (1978), Rockaby and Theatre I (1984); the Australian premieres of Waiting for Godot (1957) and Krapp's last tape (1959); and the English and world premieres of Theatre I and Theatre II, at Cambridge (1977).
The National Library of Australia ,Canberra, contains a collection of his including drafts of short poems and reminiscences and writings , including the manuscript and typescript fragments of the score for Flamin' beaut . Other material is held in the ScreenSound Australia library, and the Museum for the Performing Arts, Melbourne . He died in July 2013 in Britain.
