Seeing history through a different lens with Australia in Photographs and Songs
Following the success of Western Australia in Pictures and Songs from Fringe World 2024 and 2025, Peter Barry is back with a nationally encompassing focus in Australia in Photographs and Songs. Taking on the whole of Australia, whilst still incorporating several visits to WA, Australia in Photographs and Songs will play at various venues from Saturday, January 24, to Thursday, February 12, with tickets on sale now. BEC WELDON sat down with Gudgeon Pinn to hear all about the new show!
Your new show, Australia in Photographs and Songs, is an expansion of sorts from your original show, Western Australia in Pictures and Songs! What do you have in store for audiences this year?
Hi Bec, lovely to talk once again. It’s so great to be looking forward to another great Fringe World season, one of my favourite times of the year! This year the show is indeed being expanded to include the rest of Australia, but we will still be paying homage to the amazing State of Western Australia in the show. The new scope means that there will be lots of new songs and photographs celebrating my favourite country on earth.
Australia in Photographs and Songs pays homage to the iconic landscapes and iconography of Australia through historic photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and original acoustic songs. Tell me about the process of image research and song composition for the new show.
Many of the photographs have been sourced from the various state libraries around the country, which have huge collections of freely available amazing historical photographs. I was also very fortunate to have my friend Suzi Poli helping me pull things together, which was a tremendous help! Also, a call-out to my mate Shannon Dale, who provided some of the great contemporary landscape images for the show.
How did you make decisions about the parts of the country you wanted to highlight and feature?
This has actually turned out to be a personal tour of the country, as I’ve written a lot of songs inspired by places I’ve visited in Australia, so if I’ve written a song about it, it was up for consideration!
Were there songs, stories and images that didn’t make the cut now that the scope has expanded?
Absolutely, we have enough songs to do three or four completely different shows, so in the end the editing process had to be quite brutal, with many wonderful possibilities discarded to achieve the correct balance. We also had so many amazing photographs to choose from, so it was quite time-consuming matching images to songs to convey the story we want to tell.
What does it mean to you as an Australian musician and historian to unearth and tell these stories of the country and share those with audiences?
It is such a joy and privilege to be able to share our songs with our audiences and introduce them to some of the amazing stories and photographs we’ve uncovered in putting the show together. I’m always moved when we can pay homage to the tough lives of the ordinary Australians in the images, most of whom will have passed away decades ago.
This is a show with such poignant iconography! How have audiences reacted to the shows, and were there any responses that surprised you?
The reactions to the shows have been amazing and overwhelmingly positive. It’s so great hearing people tell me how much they loved hearing the songs combined with the fantastic and thought-provoking photos. I am always amused by how an apparently genteel audience can get wound up about footy, though—one of our songs is about the last Derby game at Subiaco, and those Eagles against Dockers feelings run deep! Of course Bethany winding me up on stage about the result probably doesn’t help…
Tell me about the team joining you in the show!
I have the great privilege of sharing the stage with the wonderful, angelic-voiced Bethany O’Brien once again this year. Her talent adds so much to the show that it would simply be impossible to perform without her. If only she could be persuaded to change her footy allegiance! Many thanks too to Lucia Caravia for her brilliant work managing the projections.
Thanks so much for chatting with us! For a final question, I’d love to know which, in your opinion, is the more special or iconic Australian location.
I really love the wild, natural beauty in Australia, but I cannot choose just one when we have Karijini National Park, the Southern Ocean Coast, the Flinders Ranges and the Daintree Rainforest all in our beautiful country.
Australia in Photographs and Songs plays at various venues from Saturday, January 24, to Thursday, February 12, 2026. Tickets are on sale now from fringeworld.com.au