Morning Melodies: Yarns From Here, There and Elsewhere

Yarns From Here, There and Elsewhere Award-winning storyteller and yarn-spinner extraordinaire Kel Watkins kicks off Don Russell Performing Arts Centre’s Morning Melodies programme for 2007 on Wednesday 28 February. His show, Yarns from Here, There and Elsewhere, combines his own stories from the WA wheatbelt with recitals of some classic Australian bush ballads. Twice winner of the Australian Yarnspinning Challenge, Watkins tills the fertile landscape of everyday life in the bush with tall stories and yarns about subjects such as Merv, the ‘missus’, their friends’ neighbour’s dogs and growing wheat. His bush ballad recitals include Banjo Patterson’s Saltbush Bill, South Australian poet Graham Jenkin’s The Ballad of the Birdsville Drover and 19th Century bush poet, Thomas Edward Spencer’s How McDougall Topped the Score. Watkins’ storytelling and comic abilities have taken him to venues and festivals in the United States, Canada, Scotland, Europe and Asia. Yarns from Here, There and Elsewhere starts at 11am with morning tea from 10.15am. --