When I was young, I went on a dancing competition to Tasmania. On that trip, an eleven year old dancer went down a slide and managed to break her ankle in the worst way I’ve ever seen. She had to go to hospital, then they couldn’t do the surgery in Tasmania so she had to be ferried to Melbourne and she wasn’t able to dance for ages. I wrote this tune to cheer her up and played it for in hospital. It’s written for the type of dance she was meant to be doing.
Melbourne Tune Collection records and publishes original folk tunes and songs from around Australia.
I started this project after realising that I barely knew any Australian folk tunes, even though I’ve been playing the fiddle for almost two decades. It wasn’t that Australians weren’t writing tunes, it’s just that there was limited publishing opportunities for them.
I thought maybe if I collect these tunes and put them together, they would have a better chance of getting played. So in early 2019 I set off with my camera and recorder, first around Melbourne, then across Australia.
This site is the result of these travels. Its purpose is to make Australian folk music as accessible as possible and promote the incredible music that’s being written today. I genuinely believe that there’s something special happening in the Melbourne and Australian folk music scenes right now.
I hope you enjoy playing through these tunes as much as I have!
Katherine Oleinikov
Melbourne Tune Collection 
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