Rob Willis OAM
Collector of Oral History and Folklore with The National Library of Australia
Rob Willis has been recording social history and folklore since the mid 1970s. His audio, video and photographic collections are housed in the Oral History and Folklore Section of The National Library of Australia (NLA).
The Willis audio/video collection is the largest folklore/social history collection in Australia with over 2,200 hours of interview and performance from all states and territories of Australia.
Rob is partnered in all endeavors by his wife, Olya, a former teacher and now sound recordist and photographer.
Rob is a published author and has produced and contributed radio and TV content for ABC, SBS, BBC and community radio.
Rob Willis was a major contributor to the Australian Federal Government’s significant projects:
- The Bringing Them Home (Indigenous separation) Oral History Project
- The Forgotten Australians and Child Migrants Oral History Project.
Other major, ongoing, projects include:
- The Paralympians Oral History Project. A National project recording the life stories of early Paralympians
- ‘Voices of the Bush’ documenting stories and folklore from regional and remote Australia.
Olya and Rob have also recorded and preserved many other multicultural and First Nations stories and traditions within Australia.
Rob has been recognized for his cultural collections with an Order of Australia in 2012 and, along with Olya, recognition by the Australasian Sound Recordings Association in 2019 for “Outstanding contribution to Oral History collecting and recording”.
Rob and Olya Willis were been awarded the Australasian Sounds Recording Association award for 2019 for their outstanding contribution to oral history collecting and recording. For more than 30 years, the Forbes couple have travelled the country recording the stories of ordinary Australians.
Much of Rob and Olya’s work and recordings can be found on ‘Trove’ refer link below. Trove is an Australian online library database aggregator and service which includes full text documents, digital images, bibliographic and holdings data of items which are not available digitally, and a free faceted-search engine as a discovery tool. https://trove.nla.gov.au/
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Carmel’s Riddle of the Week 
Whats for Dinner?
Stupid Silly Joke 
Group Photos 
