Rob and Olya Willis have been awarded the Australasian Sounds Recording Association award for 2019 for their outstanding contribution to oral history collecting and recording.
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For more than 30 years, the Forbes couple have travelled the country recording the stories of ordinary Australians.
The voices of the bush, the central west and Forbes, now feature heavily in the archives.
"Rob and Olya (Ollie) Willis are a remarkable team who together have made an outstanding contribution to Australian sound recording and to the preservation of Australian culture," the award citation reads.
"Rob, supported by Ollie, has dedicated his life to collecting the stories and songs of Australians from all walks of life, different geographical regions, diverse communities and across cultural and racial backgrounds."
The Forbes couple have recorded a staggering 2220 hours of audio for the National Library's Oral History and Folklore program.
The ASRA honour, whose distinguished recipients range from senior academics to performers such as Slim Dusty and June Bronhill, is incredible recognition of their work.
For them, it's recognition of the value of the stories of the bush they are so passionate about recording.
"The interviews might capture stories of immigration, war, loss through hardship or disaster, social change, changing patterns of work, or simply daily life in rural or urban Australia," the award citation reads.
Key to their recordings is how people share their journeys through song, story, dance, yarns and other forms of cultural expression, often as a way of creating and sustaining communities.
"Such songs often signify stories of survival and of cultural transmission that could not be told in other ways - for example, amongst remote Indigenous mission settlements, tobacco-growing Italian immigrant families in Queensland, Aboriginal descendants on Flinders Island, Sikh communities in NSW, or in the homes of rural Australia," the award citation acknowledges.
"Rob records both the songs/tunes and the social context that lies behind their performance, providing insight into the process and power of cultural transmission across families, generations and communities.
"Rob has thus documented a rich body of cultural knowledge about Australia and Australian life."
Rob spends an enormous amount of time engaging in community outreach in person, in print and through his Youtube channel. He produces podcasts and is a regular guest on regional radio, bringing Australian music and folklore to appreciative and far flung audiences.
"This year, as we reflect on the ways that various audio formats will be handed down to future generations, the scope of the collecting that Rob and Ollie have been engaged in, is particularly noteworthy," the award acknowledges.
"Rob and Ollie are treasured for their concern for people, their humility and empathy and their generosity.
"Their body of work embodies and expresses a breadth of historic and cultural life and community music-making - through the past and into the present - that is much richer and more diverse than would otherwise be known, valued or understood."
