Vocalist and acoustic duo Dookie Thorne recorded music and stories to be preserved in the National Library of Australia

Dookie Thorne is made up of Wiradjuri vocalist Damian Thorne and guitarist Shane Ronan, who have been working together for the last few years.

Mr Thorne had been singing for 25 years prior to the partnership, but had mostly kept it to himself before recently embracing performance.

Mr Thorne explained that their partnership worked through himself writing and simply singing from the heart, while Mr Ronan put the words to chords and added musical structure.

"Before I met Shane, I had this book where I just jumbled down things and words for a song but of course I didn't know anything about music. I didn't know what an A or an E or a G was, I just sang from in here."

"When I met Shane, he said you just sing and I'll put it in key for you. It was just a match made in heaven."

Dookie Thorne shared a number of songs with the library, including a powerful original song titled 'Crying Children' inspired by the recent increase in suicides across the region.

"The stories, they need to be heard," Mr Thorne explained.

The duo also shared some covers that had resonated with Mr Thorne, including 'Tennessee Whiskey' by Chris Stapleton, 'Took the Children Away' by Archie Roach and perennial Aussie classic 'Khe Sanh' by Cold Chisel.

The collected group was brought to tears by a cover of 'Bapa' by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, dedicated to Mr Thorne's late dad. The song was played at his funeral in 2009, and is an intensely meaningful song to Mr Thorne.

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Ken Dachi, Leeton Council's Multicultural Programs Co-ordinator came along to the recording event after being hard at work organising more cultural events and awareness, and said this would be a good way to bring cultures together.

"We want to get participation from across the community. One way, perhaps obvious but less used, is cultural expression - things like music and art, you can easily draw participation by community members."

"You can run workshops and that's wonderful, but when you have things like music and exhibitions, you're likely to bring all these disparate groups together."

The recordings will be added to the National Library of Australia's Willis Collection.

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