Unsung: Reimagining Folksongs from the Victorian Goldfields

Kick off Ballarat Heritage Festival with a musical trip along the back roads of Australian music

The melting pot of goldrush multiculturalism birthed a vibrant musical culture. Songs were written, shared, adapted and changed. They told stories of hope and hardship, new chums, and the yearning for distant homelands. These songs have been passed down through time, gifting us deep insights into life on the Victorian goldfields.

Through a contemporary lens, local musicians Hap Hayward, Freya Josephine Hollick, and Phil and Trudy Edgeley revisit and reimagine these unsung musical gems in a rollicking in-the-round performance. After each song, MC Hap Hayward will guide a relaxed conversation delving into the stories behind the songs. To complete the evening, each performer will present an original song drawing on folk storytelling themes of hope, hardship and the rebel spirit.

Hap Hayward is a local music fixture who has been singing and writing lyrics since the late 1980s. He is best known as singer and lyricist with The Dead Salesmen, an enigmatic band inspired by electric art rock with lyrical influences from Henry Lawson to Leonard Cohen. His other musical projects include The Underminers, The Blue Lighters and Cosmonaut. He is a teacher at Sovereign Hill, co-owner of Kank Wolverang Records.

Whimsical country singer Freya Hollick is a rising star of Australia’s alt-country scene, known for her genre-blending sound of cosmic country, desert blues and psych-folk. Born and raised in the gold rush city of Ballarat, she has mined a rich alluvial songwriting vein across three full-length albums, ‘The Unceremonious Junking of Me’ (2015), ‘Feral Fusion’ (2018) and ‘The Real World’ (2022). Her nightingale voice sings of breathtaking bucolic scenes, love and loss.

Phil and Trudy Edgeley are both Singers, Songwriters and multi-instrumentalist. Performing together throughout Australia, UK, Europe and the USA, Phil & Trudy encapsulate the dynamics of a great partnership on both a musical and a personal level.

A Ballarat Heritage Festival event presented by the Eureka Centre Ballarat.

Image: Phil and Trudy Edgeley in performance. Photograph: H Squared Studios