2000 Onwards
In 2000, Tony created (with sound engineer Russell Stapleton and researcher/translator Rick Tanaka) a major audio study of montage and collage, both visual and audio. It was broadcast by the ABC's Listening Room (now defunct). The ABC website carries Must You See the Joins?, an illustrated article about the great collagists including the veteran Japanese artist Kimura Tsuneihisa who celebrated his 80th birthday in 2008.
In 2000, Barrell was commissioned to produce a one-off report for the ABC TV's leading currents affairs program Four Corners, a study of how the service industries have grown and changed Australia's working life. "The Business of Change" was shot in Sydney and included scenes at the now-defunct One.Tel telco, interviews with life coaches, dog walkers and other 'new' professions.
In 2002, Barrell's Japan expertise earned him a commission to present the BBC World Service co-production (with the ABC) of six radio documentaries broadcast in the run up to the 2002 FIFA World Cup held in South Korea and Japan in May 2002. A feature about the older parts of Tokyo, called What Tokyo, shared the 2004 Prix Marulic, awarded at the annual drama and documentary festival sponsored by Croatian radio—HRTV—on the island of Hvar.
Also in 2003, BBC World Service and ABC sent Tony to Singapore, Vietnam and Okinawa for a series about the effect of Chinese and Confucian values in the Asian region. The Okinawa program, Live Slow Live Long, focussed on the island peoples' claim to be the oldest in the world, and included interviews with a centenarian who said the secret of her longevity was to work every day, sleep every day, eat plenty of Okinawa's national dish chanpurū (which includes pork and 'bitter melon' known in Okinawa as goya) and take a little awamori, Okinawa's own drink distilled from Thai sweet rice. Barrell made a third series for these two broadcasting networks in 2004 when he visited the Russian Far East—Sakhalin island, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. In 2005 his book of the series The Real Far East was published by the independent Melbourne company Scribe. In 2006, Barrell presented Rice Bowl Tales, a fourth series for the BBC and Radio National about the rice cultures of Asia.
Barrell was working with his wife on a DVD film about their many visits to Molivos, Lesbos and a book on the same subject. He retired from full-time employment with the ABC in May 2008, and had hoped to complete work on his own story—Your Island My Island—in 2009. He died on 31 March 2011 of an apparent heart attack.
In 2011 the Australian Paul Gough aka Pimmon dedicated his The Oansome Orbit album, released on Room40 to Tony Barrell.
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