Australia Comes To Grace Hall

Wilma Kenny | Jun 20, 2013

The 65 people who came to Glenn Foster’s “Australia Night” at Grace Hall in Sydenham last week were richly rewarded by Foster’s personal, fascinating retelling of the social history of his homeland, from the long-ago dreamtime stories of the creation up until the present.

Foster, a former drama teacher and football coach at Sydenham High, accompanied himself on a variety of stringed instruments, using a combination of song, anecdote and pictures to describe the Aboriginals, the exiled men and women of the penal colonies, the hobos, squatters, swagmen and soldiers. It was a powerful combination, taking the listener into the emotional core of his stories. Most of the songs were ballads, spiced in the final parts of the program by more modern Australian jingles celebrating Marmite and Airplane Jelly (their version of our Jello).

Foster told how his grandfather had been sent at age six from his family in Tasmania, where the family was starving, to work for an uncle up the Australian coast. Three years later, the child ran away and somehow, no one knew how, made his way 350 miles overland to the sea and on to New Zealand. Much of the rest of his life, Foster’s grandfather worked on sailing ships carrying lumber through the stormy Hobart Straits: hair-raising pictures showed enormous waves and tattered sails.

Glenn was accompanied in some of the songs by Jason Pedherney, a self-taught didgeridoo player. The didgeridoo is an ancient Australian Aboriginal wind instrument, made from a long branch which has been hollowed out by termites and rimmed with a beeswax mouthpiece. A skilled player can sustain long deep notes by circular breathing; ie, breathing in through the nose at the same time as he maintains air pressure on the instrument through his mouth. Pedherney admitted it took him almost a year to master the technique.

The evening, which had been arranged by Jill Ferguson and sponsored by the Grace Arts Committee, raised over $500 to help further develop the Grace Hall as a performance site.