Welcome to Illawarra Stories, an oral history project of Wollongong City Libraries capturing people’s recollections of life in the Illawarra.

The project aims to document the social and cultural history of the region through the voices of local residents and visitors using recordings of interviews facilitated by library staff and volunteers.

Locals bring to life the importance of their community through stories and build a picture that otherwise may be lost.  This project preserves the way people speak through voices, accents and vocabularies, creating a valuable record that can be accessed by educators, researchers, community groups and interested individuals. These are real people, with real stories. The views expressed in the interviews are the speaker’s own and do not represent the policies of Wollongong City Libraries or views of its employees.

Exhibitions of images held in Wollongong City Council’s Illawarra Image Collection which tell visual stories, are also hosted on this site. For more information about images go to: Illawarra Images

Illawarra Stories is a new and growing collection of local history with new interviews and exhibitions being added. If you are interested in taking part in the project by sharing your memories of life in the Illawarra or donating images, please contact us.

Amplify is an online tool which allows anyone to search, listen to and transcribe local audio collections. Amplify delivers digitised audio materials online, paired with computer generated transcripts. Users can listen to these recordings online and help correct any errors they find in the transcripts as they listen along.

Anyone can be a digital volunteer, choose a local story and start transcribing!

Varying copyright restrictions apply to all content on Illawarra Stories. Click here for more details.