the 'Poets Corner' program, she relates how, from childhood, she enjoyed the poet whose On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and his I Had a Dove and the Sweet Dove Died were dear to her. On March 13, 1960, an edition of the Australian Broadcasting Commission's radio program 'Quality Street' was produced by John Thompson from Hazel de Berg's recordings of South Australian poets. By 1961 she had tapes of all sixty-eight living recognised Australian poets reading their own verse. De Berg did not intrude her own voice in any of her recordings nor her questions, but let her subject speak for themselves. She also photographed each of her interviewees, funding that, travel to capital cities, and the recording out of her own pocket, until in 1960 she was granted £100 from the Commonwealth Literary Fund after presenting her work at the Adelaide Festival, and for donating the tapes to the National Library of Australia was provided a further Commonwealth Literary Grant by Sir Harold White, the Federal Parliamentary Librarian and National Librarian. This encouraged her venture to bridge history by compiling a forty-five minute tape of people who had personally known Henry Lawson, who had died in 1922. The 1963 annual National Library report to Parliament notes that "Further recordings have also been made by Mrs. Hazel de Berg, this time of Australian artists discussing their work." Though rarely passing her opinions on her subjects, The Bulletin in 1964 did obtain this comparison of artists and writers; "The artists are right out in front. They’re more sophisticated and up to date than the writers. Our poets are wonderful, but a lot of the fiction writers tend to write backwards towards what is familiar and old-time. It’s not us they’re writing about.” In 1972 de Berg transferred the rights in her tapes to the National Library which made her its Oral History Consultant under contract, was paid an annual grant and the library funded the transcriptions, a more easily searched format useful to historians. She continued to select interviewees herself and to do the background research. Poet John Thompson, who was employed by the Australian Broadcasting Commission, edited and processed her recordings. She travelled to every state, and de Berg also interviewed expatriate Australians in London and New York. By 1973 she had made over 700 recordings of 787 people, and