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Explore powerful stories at the intersection of history, culture, and music—from Aboriginal cricket pioneers and war heroes to legendary albums by Hendrix, Miles Davis, and Gurrumul. This blog dives deep into First Nations resilience, iconic protest music, and untold truths that shaped Australia and the world. Engaging, thoughtful, and unapologetically real—where powerful voices from the past meet today's social conversation.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this page contains images and names of deceased persons.
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Music Spotlight | BRIGGS.
Some artists make music. Briggs makes history. And he's been doing it so consistently, so fearlessly, for so long, that it's easy to forget just how much ground this bloke has covered. Adam Briggs — born and raised in Shepparton, Victoria — is a proud Yorta Yorta man, and he wears that identity literally: the name of his people is tattooed on both forearms. "So every time I rock the mic," he's said, "people know that I am representing." That says everything about where he's c
Groote Broadcasting
May 303 min read
National Reconciliation Week.
National Reconciliation Week starts today. And this year, the message is simple: All In. Not some of us. Not when it's convenient. Not just during the one week a year when it appears on the calendar and organisations put up a poster in the lunchroom. All of us. Every day. All in. National Reconciliation Week runs from 27 May to 3 June every year — and those two dates aren't chosen randomly. They mark two of the most significant moments in this country's history. On 27 May 196
Groote Broadcasting
May 272 min read
Artist Spotlight: William Barton.
He grew up on a cattle station outside Mt Isa, picked up a didgeridoo at age seven, and somehow ended up performing at Westminster Abbey, Anzac Cove, and the Beijing Olympics. That's William Barton, and his story is something else entirely. For anyone who hasn't heard of him — you're about to want to fix that. William started learning the yidaki from his uncle, Arthur Peterson, an Elder of the Wannyi, Lardil and Kalkadunga people. It wasn't a formal lesson. It was a handover
Groote Broadcasting
May 233 min read
65,000 years of unbroken connection to Country.
When Aboriginal people were already living, cooking, making tools and painting on the walls of rock shelters across this continent — the pyramids of Egypt were still 60,000 years from being built. Rome didn't exist. Neither did Greece. The entirety of what we call Western civilisation hadn't yet formed as a concept. First Nations Australians were here. Not just surviving. Flourishing. The evidence isn't mythological — though oral traditions carry their own profound authority.
Groote Broadcasting
May 112 min read
Artist Spotlight: Alan Dargin.
He started at age five, with a hundred-year-old instrument and a grandfather's hands guiding his own. Born in Wee Waa, New South Wales in 1967, Dargin began learning the didgeridoo at age five from his grandfather, who passed down the instrument as a treasured family heirloom — cut from a variety of bloodwood tree that has since gone extinct. Those early lessons weren't just music lessons. They were a transmission of culture, story, and identity across generations. The didger
Groote Broadcasting
May 92 min read
We are now LIVE at 5.00am!
New broadcasting times are now in effect and don't forget the sensational sista's Amathea and Jaslyn will be starting their new Daily Show soon! Stay tuned.
Groote Broadcasting
May 41 min read
'The Loner' by Vic Simms.
Some albums are polished in studios. Others are forged under pressure — and 'The Loner' is about as raw and real as it gets. Recorded in just one hour inside Bathurst Gaol in 1973, with a mobile studio rolled in by RCA, this wasn’t meant to be a landmark moment in Australian music. It was supposed to be a public relations exercise for the prison system. Instead, it became something else entirely. Vic Simms — a Bidjigal man and inmate at the time — turned that brief window int
Groote Broadcasting
May 22 min read
Indigenous art is having a moment. A big one.
Indigenous art is having a moment. A big one. And that's both wonderful and complicated. Walk into any gallery in a major Australian city right now and you'll find stunning First Nations artwork commanding serious attention — and serious money. The world has woken up to the power, the depth and the extraordinary beauty of the oldest living art tradition on the planet. That recognition is long overdue and genuinely exciting. But here's where it gets uncomfortable. An estimated
Groote Broadcasting
Apr 302 min read
Anzac Day 2026.
This year, we want to make sure we remember some of the people who have too often been left out of that promise. When Australia answered the call in 1914, thousands of young men signed up to serve a country they believed in. Among them were an estimated 1,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who served with the Australian Imperial Force in the First World War. The precise figure will never be known — because a number of those who served changed their names and bir
Groote Broadcasting
Apr 252 min read
Artist Spotlight: Budjerah
If you haven’t been paying attention to Budjerah yet, now’s the time. The platinum-selling, ARIA Award-winning artist — a Coodjinburra man from the Bundjalung nation — has quietly become one of the most compelling voices in Australian music. What hits you first is that voice. It’s rich, soulful, and carries an emotional weight well beyond his years. There’s a sincerity to the way Budjerah sings — no over-singing, no gimmicks — just pure feeling. Whether he’s leaning into stri
Groote Broadcasting
Mar 281 min read
Artist Spotlight: Eric Avery.
Few artists in contemporary Australian music embody the power of cultural expression quite like Eric Avery. A Kabi Marrawuy Mumbulla man with connections to the Ngiyampaa, Yuin and Gumbaynggirr peoples of New South Wales, Avery is a violinist, vocalist, dancer and composer whose work moves fluidly between classical tradition and the deep cultural rhythms of Country. What makes Avery remarkable is not simply his technical mastery of the violin, but the way he reshapes the inst
Groote Broadcasting
Mar 211 min read
Deborah Cheetham Fraillon: A proud Yorta Yorta woman, Soprano, Composer, and Educator.
Few figures in Australian music have reshaped the cultural landscape with as much vision and determination as Deborah Cheetham Fraillon. A proud Yorta Yorta woman, soprano, composer, and educator, Cheetham Fraillon has spent decades redefining what opera can mean in Australia — expanding the art form to include First Nations languages, stories, and performers who had long been excluded from its stage. Her journey into music is inseparable from her personal history. Removed fr
Groote Broadcasting
Mar 142 min read
On This Day: 13 February 2008. The National Apology to the Stolen Generations.
From the floor of Parliament, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd delivered the National Apology to the Stolen Generations — acknowledging the deep harm caused by past government laws and policies that forcibly removed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, cultures and Country. The apology was never about assigning personal blame. It was not about telling today’s Australians — particularly non-Indigenous Australians — “you did this.” It was about saying, a
Groote Broadcasting
Feb 131 min read
The Stolen Generations: The effects did not end when the policies did.
In the quiet spaces between official records and family memory lies one of the most confronting truths of Australia’s modern history. Between 1910 and the 1970s, it is estimated that as many as one in three Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children were forcibly removed from their families under formal government policies of assimilation. These children would later become known as the Stolen Generations — though the term itself barely captures the scale, duration, and hu
Groote Broadcasting
Feb 112 min read
On This Day, 4 February 1939: The Cummeragunja Walk-Off.
On 4 February 1939, a quiet but revolutionary act unfolded on the banks of the Murray River. About 200 Aboriginal men, women and children walked off Cummeragunja Aboriginal Station, near Moama in southern New South Wales, in what became one of the first mass Indigenous strikes in Australian history. This was no spontaneous protest. It was a carefully considered act of resistance against years of neglect, abuse and control imposed by the NSW Aborigines Protection Board, the go
Groote Broadcasting
Feb 42 min read
The Final Quarter: The unmistakable brilliance of Adam Goodes.
The Final Quarter is not a sports documentary in the conventional sense. It contains highlights, trophies and the unmistakable brilliance of Adam Goodes in full flight, but its true subject is something far more unsettling: how a nation responds when an Indigenous champion refuses to remain silent. Directed with restraint and purpose, the film focuses on the final three years of Goodes’ AFL career, a period in which his on-field excellence collided with a storm of public back
Groote Broadcasting
Feb 22 min read
January 26: A Date That Still Divides a Nation.
Each year, January 26 arrives carrying two very different meanings. For some Australians, it marks the foundation of the modern nation — the day the First Fleet raised the British flag at Sydney Cove in 1788. For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, however, it represents the beginning of dispossession, violence, and the systematic disruption of cultures that had thrived on this continent for tens of thousands of years. This is why the date is widely referred t
Groote Broadcasting
Jan 261 min read
Colonisation: A Global Story of Displacement and Survival.
Colonisation is often taught as a chapter of expansion and exploration. For Indigenous peoples, it is remembered as a profound rupture — one that reshaped lands, laws, cultures, and lives across continents. In Australia, British colonisation from 1788 was built on the false premise of terra nullius, the claim that the land belonged to no one. This legal fiction ignored the existence of hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations, each with their own laws, langua
Groote Broadcasting
Jan 212 min read
Evonne Goolagong Cawley: A Champion with Grace.
Some sporting legends dominate with power. Evonne Goolagong Cawley did it with grace. Born in 1951 and raised in the small town of Barellan, NSW, Evonne grew up at a time when life for Aboriginal families was shaped by strict government control and constant uncertainty. This was the Stolen Generations era — when many Aboriginal children were taken from their families, and opportunity was not something that came easily. As a young girl, Evonne spent hours hitting a tennis ball
Groote Broadcasting
Jan 191 min read
Auriel Andrew - "an enduring influence on Australian music."
Auriel Andrew occupies a unique and quietly dignified place in Australian music history — a country singer whose voice carried the vastness of the Northern Territory and whose songs bridged gospel, country, and lived experience with remarkable grace. Best known for her 1969 album Just For You, Andrew’s work stands as an important, often overlooked chapter in the story of Indigenous Australian music. 'Just For You' is a gentle, heartfelt record that reflects both its era and i
Groote Broadcasting
Jan 172 min read
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