Historical information
Mr. Braz Borschman was born in Beechworth on the 1st of July 1914 at his parents home. He played for many years in the Towns volunteer Brass Band, a popular local band of about 30 members. Braz played the coronet and later the trombone. His first job was for the post office, but he spend most of his working life at the Beechworth Tannery. His interview contains lots of information about the tanning processes, including the story of 'Young Thomas', who lost his arm in a tannery accident. Braz recalls the open-air picture theatres of Beechworth, the many dances and balls, and distinct lack of cars. His testimony is rich with detail and filled with many other side-stories, including 'Blind Tommy', a self-sufficient, opium-smoking blind man of Chinese descent.
This oral history recording was part of a project conducted by Jennifer Williams in the year 2000 to capture the everyday life and struggles in Beechworth during the twentieth century. This project involved recording seventy oral histories on cassette tapes of local Beechworth residents which were then published in a book titled: Listen to what they say: voices of twentieth century Beechworth.
These cassette tapes were digitised in July 2021 with funds made available by the Friends of the Burke.
Significance
Braz' interview is significant for the many historical details it provides about life, work, and leisure in Beechworth, particularly in relation to the period of the depression and after, which is the context which Braz' interview focuses on. His detail about the Beechworth tannery and the many open-air picture gardens is particularly rare and insightful to any social history of Beechworth.
The oral history project more broadly is significant for its capture of the lives of ordinary Beechworth residents from incredibly divergent backgrounds, which has led to a rich, nuanced and diverse range of accounts of Beechworth.
Physical description
This is a digital copy of a recording that was originally captured on a cassette tape. The cassette tape is black with a horizontal white strip and is currently stored in a clear flat plastic rectangular container. It holds up 40 minutes of recordings on each side.
References
- Listen to what they say : voices of twentieth century Beechworth ISBN/ISSN: 1920795111 Beechworth has always been known for its gold history. This is an account of more than seventy of Beechworth's less well-known residents and their everyday life and struggles. It is a record of a small country town in the twentieth century. It is the transcripts of oral history.
