Jan 'YARN' Wositzky
My Story: A View in the Rear Vision Mirror

1956 April 26
I remember getting off the boat, aged four, and looking down Station Pier towards Melbourne, wondering where we'd landed - Australia, with the wind in my hair. Half of my family were refugees, half immigrants. The dinner table was mainly a Czech-Scots affair, but when we were all together it included Hungarian, Polish and English relations as well.

Most of us embraced life in the new land. But of course the Slavs and the Celts weren't always dancing to the same tune. I was young enough to wander out the gap between Robbie Burns and Dvorak, to roam the bushland, travel to the deserts, play footy and lose my Scots accent.

1968
At Frank Traynor's Jazz Club I discovered Australian music and story. As a 17 year old joke-telling, going-to-play-for-Collingwood, pipe-smoking booze-artist kid, I was 'blown away' by the music.

The songs were in my Celtic blood. The stories put a narrative on the landscape that was my home. I'd grown up on stories of refugee camps and escapes through deep, dark forests - now there was a big and ever-growing story in my family's new homeland, and it included us.

1971
Failed uni but succeed in becoming a founder of The Bushwackers Band - my first job, playing the tea-chest bass. No prior musical experience necessary. The ’70’s - the best time in human history to be in a band. Take up yarn-spinning, dance calling, mouth organ, banjo, bones, spoons, bodhran and writing.

1973
Go full time on $25 per week.

1974
Nine months in Europe. 15 Aussies in a 3 bedroom London house. Up against it in that all Australians were regarded as ‘Barry McKenzies’, but make some lovely friends in the English folk scene. Returned broke with stories to tell.

1976
Europe for 15 months. 21 Aussies in a London 3 bedroom house. Mum & Dad put the mortgage deeds in the bank to keep the band afloat. Come home with our best album, ‘Murrumbidgee’.

1978
Creating the Bushwackers Song Book & Dance Book - a world of publishing opens up.

1981
Burnt out. Yearning for something else. Meet director Deborah Sonenberg who directs a band piece at Universal Theatre. Last tour right ’round Australia. Something ‘up north’ calls me back. Leave band on July 4. R&R for the liver. Buy a panel van & swag and head north to the red sand, the dome of stars, to where English is a second, third or fourth language.

Ted Egan directs us to Borroloola in the Gulf of Carpentaria where Yanyuwa, Mara and Garrwa music and dance stun my sense of being Australian, and the heart, soul and mind reorganizes to digest the culture shock.

1984
‘Fuitcake of Australian Stories’ - A Cultural Cabaret From Black & White Australia, with Deborah, Bob Maza and Maroochy Barambah, and old band mates. The weight is shifting from music to story.

Meet Tommy Woodcock, a peach of a man, and Phar Lap’s strapper/trainer. Listen to him talk for a fortnight, which becomes his book. He dies before it’s out.

1987
I head north again, with Deborah and daughter Maya, this time to write a play about Bill Harney (1895-1962), the bushman, writer, storyteller. As the guide he takes us far and wide, through a multitude of stories, but no play.

1988
Deborah produces “Buwarrala Akarriya - Journey East” with and for people in Borroloola, and sells it to ABC. My first go at script-writing. The first V8 doco on TV. Shocked when it wins ATOM Award for ‘Best Australian Production’.

1990
Traveling north again, now with second daughter Ella. My case is now full of writings of Bill Harney. Meet Yidumduma Bill Harney, the ‘unknown’ son of WEH. He looked in my case of his father's writings. “Am I in there?” he asked. I said “No.” He said, “I got a story to tell too you know, and I can talk so long you’ll have a sore arse!” And our book, ‘Born Under The Paperbark Tree’, demonstrates he was correct on both counts.

1992
Borroloola again to make ‘Aeroplane Dance’, second doco, for SBS. Stay north for three years. Become part of the Darwin arts scene - where Canberra and Monkey Grip meet in the tropics by a the turquoise sea; where a prodigious wet confines you to the back verandah; where, given a banjo, an endless supply of good books, a well stocked fridge and a private income, you could settle in for life....except that you might turn into human verdigris.

The family makes a show - The Dancing Krasnapolski Family - an illusionary puppet show crossed with vaudeville, and the girls are inducted to the stage.

1995
Back to Borroloola to live. The last colonial war zone. Help establish the Lijikarda Festival - all one mob together. Set up camp under 20 tamarind trees and lived by the McArthur River. Live under the stars for 6 months. You can look at stars, real stars, for a long, long time, till a cycle comes to an end, and you’ve no more to gain, no more to offer, and so we slowly pull a caravan, never breaching 70k’s an hour, right across the continent, back home to Victoria, in the Dandenong Ranges. Calculate that if we stayed in the hills for life that 15 years of it would be in fog…

1996
Move to Castlemaine, central Victoria, back under an open sky.

Began performing one-man shows - a unique mix yarns, poems, instrumentals, characters and stories all segued together to link our heritage with the present.

The one that lasts is Whitefella Learns To Dance, (1995) the story of a white man who goes black and finishes up with egg on his face.

1999
Created Lest We Forget as an ensemble piece, to tell the Turkish & Australian story of Gallipoli.. Hits the stage with a very emotional outdoor performance in Castlemaine on Anzac Day.

2000
Put together Australia In A Suitcase and The Great Big Little Creatures Show, and tour Tassy in a yellow Volvo. Single again.

2001
Returned to Melbourne after 15 years away. I began broadcasting on ABC radio. My first 30 minutes on air is the most harrowing experience of my career. But stayed in the seat, like a terrified rodeo rider, to survive and land a regular program, 'Saturday's With Jan Wositzky'.

2002
Finally put together Bilarni after all the research up north, and also write my version of the Buckley story – The Legend Of William Murrangurk Buckley. I’ve been passionate about this tale ever since I read Craig Roberston’s novel, ‘Buckley’s Hope’ – a must read.

2003
Travelled to Gallipoli, Turkey, to perform a solo version of Lest We Forget at Anzac Cove for Anzac Day. Did the show for 8,000 people before the Dawn Service, which turned out to be one of the most profound experiences of my performing career, the show being just a part of something much greater.

With Lee Fox developed and produced the Buckley show into a full theatre piece, titled 'William Murrangurk Buckley: The Go-between'. Directed by Paul Hampton and put it on stage for a string of shows at Guildford's 150 year old music hall. Recorded show for an ABC radio special.

2004
Touring Buckley show to folk festivals and season at Melbourne's Immigration Museum; touring to schools with educational band Bushwazee; completed long-standing radio feature for Hindsight on Radio National, a Stolen Generation story concerning two generations of the Darby family whom the Victorian government removed from their families and community.

2005
With writer and partner Lee Fox established the Storyteller's Guide To the World, beginning with the schools shows, 'You've Got Buckley's' (Seconday School version of Buckley show); 'Lest We Forget'; and for Primary Schools, 'Australia In A Suitcase'