Tassie Hills
From Australian Traditional Music People
Jump to navigationJump to searchTassie (Edward Tasman) Hills, Swan Hill, Vic provided details of some of the Australian tunes in this archive.
Portrait, [1], "Edward Tasman ('Tassie') Hills comes from Swan Hill in Victoria. Born in Tasmania in 1916 he battled through the depression years doing manual work on a big dam project in Northern Tasmania. Recorded by Meredith & Willis in 1989, he plays accordion with the Gay Charmers Dance Band."
The National Library of Australia holds aural recordings of interviews conducted with Tassie Hills. He was interviewed by
- John Meredith in July 1989, [2], "Edward "Tassie" Hills speaks about dances featuring Bill Burgess and how they danced all night; the aural process of learning to play the accordion; some of the dances performed in his younger days; how these dances were run; his memories of the time of the Great Depression; rabbiting; his father smoking plug tobacco; post cutting and the work of the Tasmanian axe-men; the felling of big trees; the safety measures that they practised; working on Butlers Gorge Dam and the pay and conditions for sustenance work; broken tools; the rewards for hard work; an incident of workers being sacked; working with iron in cold and wet conditions; working conditions in 1934; bush dances." Also available online [3]
- Peter Ellis in April 1996, [4]
