Blue Swan Events (formerly Sound Tracks Travel)
Thursday, August 22, 2024 at 9:00AM 
With special guest:
• Raymond Hawkins
… in conversation with Bill Kable
There is a word for the special mystical feeling we get when we look at the stars in the heavens or listen to some ethereal music and that word is “numinous”. Unfortunately numinous is not a word most of us get to use very often but our guest today experiences this feeling frequently through his tours to remote locations and he tells us all about it.
Our guest is Ray Hawkins and he organises singing tours to some of the most significant locations in the history of this country. Ray draws on his experiences to thrill us all in this program with his vivid descriptions of these communal journeys to the very heart of Australia with Blue Swan Events (formerly known as Sound Tracks Travel).
After a background with some of our most talented and successful rock and roll bands such as Midnight Oil and The Angels, Ray first turned from Rock and Roll to classical and opera music before discovering the joys of singing in choirs.
Ray tells us about his journeys in Central Australia among the Dreamtime people who with their singing can draw on over 50,000 years of living in Australia, a country that has been here for billions of years. Ray has organised singing tours where his world standard conductors have drawn out magnificent performances from people with nothing more to place them in a choir than a love of music. This combines two common urges most of us share, the love of travel and the love of music.
The choir tours have allowed cultural links to be made between Europeans and Aboriginals. In future planned tours links will be made between the Australians who went to Europe in the world wars and the descendants of those combatants and civilians living there today.
With his choir tours to remote Australia Raymond hopes that some of the problems experienced particularly among young males can be reined in and a much healthier way forward can be developed. This show will inspire you and if you want to see for yourself what is available go to the website.
Raymond Hawkins
In 1974 Raymond Hawkins dropped out of studying Law to work throughout Australia and the world with major rock groups such as Midnight Oil and The Angels. In 1988 Raymond became the head of Audio/Visual at the Sydney Opera House working with Opera Australia, Sydney Dance Company and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. In 1988 Raymond organised specific walking programs for writers, artists, photographers and choirs. In 2018 Raymond launched Sound Tracks Travel. And in 2023 he created Blue Swan Events.
Song selections by our guest: Outcast by The Angels & Sweet Home by Ray’s Gospel Choir
Note: This program is an encore presentation of the one aired on 2 August 2018.