Title

The Search for Edna Lavilla
Produced
Eurydice Aroney and Sharon Davis

Presented

Radio Eye, Australia, 2007
Collection
Re:sound, TCF Winners
Tags
Australia, Body, Family, International, Women
Edna_pidgey
51 29

Story

In 1942, Edna Lavilla Haynes died from a backyard abortion. After her death Edna was never mentioned again.

More than 60 years later, Edna’s granddaughter looks for clues -- a search that leads through police files and government records and down Sydney’s back alleys of the 1940s, where one in four pregnancies ended in abortion and sometimes death.   

The Search for Edna Lavilla won a Best Documentary: Honorable Mention Award in the 2007 Third Coast / Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Competition. The story's sound engineer was Russell Stapleton.

Producer

Eurydice Aroney is an independent radio documentary producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation where she previously hosted and produced a range of radio shows over many years. These days her documentary work is a mix of the personal and political both in form and content, and she writes and talks about radio in her day job as a journalism academic for the University of Technology in Sydney. Aroney is a founding member of the Australian Radio Audio Researchers Association and international recognition for her work includes the Third Coast Directors' Choice Award in 2003. 

For more than 20 years Sharon Davis has made groundbreaking local and international documentaries for ABC Radio in Australia. As a founding member of the features program Radio Eye, she covered the first democratic election in South Africa, and was present when Kosovars streamed across the Macedonian border to escape the war. Davis’s work has been recognised by numerous awards including a Third Coast Award and Australia’s most prestigious prize, the Walkley Award, four times. She has been a finalist in the Prix Italia several times and received a Special Mention in 2006 for When Time Stood Still. Davis has also taught radio production across southern Africa and the Pacific, as well as lecturing at University.

Extra

Hear more audio work from Eurydice Aroney.

Comments

I am gutted with an overwhelming sadness.Abortion Poverty.Shame? Edna's story gets right inside me.More mystery emerges. Murder. Dreadful.
Posted by Judith Jaffé from judithjaffe@gmail.com at 10/04/2012