A Tale from the Australian Bush, Queensland

BBC Radio 4 (IPlayer)

Programme note:

Alan Dein crosses the world via Facebook and Skype, hearing the real life dramas of random strangers. He never knows who he will be speaking to next or what secrets they will reveal.

Today, he hears a moving story of widowhood from 60 year old Jennie in the Australian Bush. The line is so bad that Alan decides to send her a digital recorder so that she can record herself in quality. What emerges is a bittersweet and intensely personal story but one which also touches on key events in Australia in the post-1945 era, including the Vietnam War and the catastrophic Darwin Cyclone.

She also uses the recorder to capture some of the abundant bird life in her remote and rural part of Queensland.

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See also my blog post, For Old Friends in Australia