SIENNA BROWN
Caribbean Echoes
Podcast Series
In partnership with Impact Studios (UTS)
& the Writing and Society Research Centre (WSU)
Caribbean Echoes is now in development
as part of the History Lab Series
Produced by Ben Etherington
Co-produced & Presented by Sienna Brown
Made with Impact Studios - supervising producer, Jane Curtis & executive producer Sarah Gilbert
Since arriving in Australia, Sienna's interest in uncovering and exploring the lives of Caribbean Australians has never wavered. Some were famous in their lifetimes, others were everyday people. But they all contributed to Australia’s cultural fabric. Together their life stories form the basis of this series.
Using layered archival material from the period, interviews with experts and descendants, on-location soundscapes and descriptions, Sienna pieces together their life stories and the highlights of their career. She also explores their inner life through fictional recreation. Imagining what they might have thought or felt, a kind of ghost character brought to life by Caribbean Australian actors.
Episode 1 features Peter Jackson
Peter Jackson was born on the tiny island of St Croix in the Danish West Indies in 1861. He became an Australian heavyweight boxer who had a significant international career. He died at the early age of 40 in 1901, in Roma Queensland. Jackson was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the inaugural 1990 class, as well as being the 2004 inductee for the Australian National Boxing Hall of Fame in the Pioneers category.
Episode 2 features Nellie Small
Ellen E. Small was born in 1900 in Sydney Australia. She performed as Nellie Small and dressed in men's clothing. A celebrated nightclub entertainer, who sang jazz and blues, Nellie was famous all through the 1940's, 50's and 60's, right across Australia and New Zealand. Nellie's Caribbean lineage is on the male side with father, grandfather, and great-grandfather arriving from the islands of Barbados and Antigua. Nellie died in 1968.
Further Episodes
Using a Verbatim style approach the remaining podcasts will feature contemporary Australians who all have Caribbean roots, some going as far back as the 1850's. This includes Susannah Andrews, once a slave in Jamaica, who arrived in Melbourne in 1853 as a wealthy woman having been freed by her Jewish master and inheriting his wealth. We profile Professor John Maynard, historian and First Nations activist, as well as Tony Birch First Nations award winning author and activist. We also present a research case study into the uncovering of Nellie Small's Caribbean lineage by Vanessa Cassin, SAG's education Manager.
Past Episode
CARIBBEAN CONVICTS IN AUSTRALIA
While working as a guide at Hyde Park Barracks, Sienna discovered several convict indents of men from the Caribbean. This was at odds with the largely Anglo-Celtic story about convicts that fill our history books. This discovery sent her on a decade-long quest to learn more about them and to reimagine the lives they lived.
In the Caribbean Convicts in Australia podcast, Co-produced with Associate Professor Ben Etherington, the listener follows Sienna on her research journey, as she discovers the presence of these Caribbean men in the convict database at Hyde Park Barracks. As the research deepens, Sienna discovers that the men were slaves and takes the listener into the world of life on a British sugar cane plantation.
Coming full circle, Sienna uncovers what their lives were like while serving their convict sentences, until in some cases their evidential freedom and mergence into rural Australian life. Throughout the program, Sienna also reflects on her own passage from Jamaica to Australia a hundred and fifty years later.
The men’s lived experiences of slavery and convict-hood, are brought to life using layered archival material from the period, interviews with experts and descendants, on-location soundscapes and descriptions, along with, excerpts from Brown’s award-winning historical fiction novel Master Of My Fate to give voice to the convicts’ inner lives.
The story of progressive discovery gives the program a strong narrative arc, but its main purpose is to immerse listeners in the world of these convict men so they can imagine for themselves what life might have been like as slaves and convicts and come to understand the challenges they faced in becoming masters of their destinies. It also allows for reflection on how this might change our view of Australia’s early colonial history.
The full draft script of the program has been prepared with funding support from the Writing and Society Research Centre at Western Sydney University and is available on request.