G'day Rich-Joy,

I think you have started on the wrong foot trying to put "enterprising" into the same sentance as "folkie" ...

The old structure, whereby the National went to the state selected at the previous Natioanl, meant the there had to be a committee thrown together, with less than a year to devise plans and implement them. As the National grew and as the venue problems grew, we reached a point where,at the (one hopes) successful end of the festival the last thing anyone was thinking about was archiving and history!

Come to think of it, it has been very difficult to get the current Canberra team to even rememeber anything about the Nationals before 1993 ... if it didn't hapen in Canberra, it's not their pigeon! (However, there was an attempt to gather information and ephemera on past Nationals ... at the 2000 NFF ... ?_

Although I was slightly involved, in passing through Melbourne in 1966 and 1967, in the planning of what is now considered the first of the Nationals, the Port Philip Folk Festival of 1967, I was too busy in the hydro construction game to get to it ... in fact the first National I got to was Adelaide, in 1971. I have got to a good proportion of the eastern state nationals since, but I did not have the time or money to get to those a greater distance away.

In terms of keeping anything as organised as records ... this year is the first one for which I have created a batabase of the performers and venues appearing in my photographs ... instead of relying on that increasingly grey area ... my memory!

I hope we get some good data out of you thread ... best of luck!

Regards,

Bob Bolton