Notable absences
The following table lists events, figures, venues, and periods that the archive has identified as significant to Australian doof history but for which it holds insufficient documentation to produce a substantive article. Entries are listed with the archive's assessment of their likely significance and the nature of the documentation gap.
This page exists because the archive considers a transparent account of its limitations more useful than silence. The history of doof is substantially a history of people who did not want to be documented, events that were not advertised, and venues that did not have addresses. The absences here are not failures of the archive. They are characteristics of the culture.
| Subject | Type | Era | Significance | Documentation gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Western Sydney Underground (1988–1993) | Scene | Post-Amplification | High. Multiple sources reference a pre-rave informal electronic gathering scene in Western Sydney that preceded the inner-city warehouse scene. No documentary evidence located. | Oral history only. Sources reluctant to be named. |
| The "Fremantle Shakedown" (c.1989) | Event | Post-Amplification | Moderate. Described as the first major doof event in Western Australia. Single-source account. See also: Western Australia. | Single source removed from archive. See corrections log, Oct 2016. |
| The RAT party collective (c.1985–1992) | Organisation | Post-Amplification | High | Now has a dedicated article. The article documents what the archive knows. The archive notes this is not much. See: RAT Party Collective. |
| The Upper Parramatta Collective (c.1996–1999) | Collective | Post-Amplification / Boutique | Moderate. See: Disputed accounts. | Four oral history sources. No names, addresses, or documentation. |
| The Brisbane early warehouse scene (c.1990–1995) | Scene | Post-Amplification | Moderate. Queensland's contribution to the early doof era is documented at state level but poorly documented at event level. The archive's Queensland section is acknowledged as incomplete. See: Queensland [stub]. | No Queensland-based researchers have contributed to the archive. |
| The Spiral Tribe Australian reception (1993) | Cultural influence | Post-Amplification | High. The Spiral Tribe's activities and subsequent UK government crackdown are documented as influencing Spiro Boursine and Earthcore. The specific transmission of this influence - through media, personal contact, or Australian travellers returning from the UK - is not documented. | Assumed but not sourced. Spiro Boursine died 2018. |
| Ev Labsmith (c.1821) | Figure | Proto-Shed | Claimed: foundational. Actual: unknown. See: Labsmith Controversy. | Single source. Cannot be located. Has been disputed since 2014. |
| "George" (Bankstown, 1987) | Figure | Post-Amplification | Moderate. The organiser of the Bankstown Convergence. May have been significant within the Western Sydney pre-rave scene. Cannot be identified. | Two sources know him as George. Neither knows his surname. One says he "might have moved to Queensland." |
| The ConFest Doof Connection | Cultural link | Post-Amplification | Potentially high. ConFest (from 1976) shared several characteristics with the doof tradition. The relationship between ConFest's counterculture and the emerging rave/doof scene of the late 1980s has not been formally studied. | No academic work has specifically addressed this relationship. The archive has noted it. |
| The Helga surname | Figure detail | Post-Amplification | Low historical significance. High symbolic significance. The woman who named the doof is known only by a first name. | No sources have been able to provide further information. The archive has not tried very hard, out of respect for the situation. |
This table was last reviewed on 14 October 2021. The archive acknowledges that this list is itself incomplete - the archive does not know what it doesn't know.