Another Warning
and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
Also, hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.
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Australia - Movie 2008 Australia 165 Mins - On DVD or Netflix
I love this movie so much I want to hug it.
(You’ll need an intermission.)Following traditional Australian cinematic styles and themes, Australia, set in the Northern Territory during World War II has something for everyone; it’s a story of love, war, stockmen, and cultural conflict.
Some people think Australia is a parody, perhaps because of the camp over-exaggeration in the first part of the story. Because it’s so laden with clichés the nostalgia rating alone makes the movie almost criticism-proof, but this also makes it look to some like an excessively nationalistic piece of white chest-thumping. Other people again think it’s been made by someone driven by white guilt.
My own take is that Australia is just a masterful piece of piss-taking – I suspect Baz Luhrmann knows and set out to show that myths about Australia’s national identity are mostly craptrap.
Is the movie set during WWII because Baz thought the story needed to be nearly 3 hours long, or because he wanted to make a comment about the invasion of Australia, or both? (Invasion not just by the Japanese, but by the British... I mean.) In the end, so long as the movie continues to generate some interesting discussions it’s not a total waste of time and money.
--o0o--
First, for those unfamiliar with Australian Geography or History, a very quick overview of some basics:The size of Australia compared to Europe;
And the size of Australia compared to the U.S. A.
The movie is set between 1939-1942, when the population was around 7 million people in total. This does NOT include Indigenous Australians who were, because of the Constitution, excluded from the census.
The events in the movie take place near Darwin, the capital city of the Northern Territory which belonged to the Federal Government but was - at the time - administered remotely by the State of South Australia.
In 1901 Australia became a Federation, independently governing itself though Australians still travelled on British Passports. The first act passed by the new Federal Parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (aka The White Australia Policy). The States retained responsibility for most "stuff" including "Aboriginal Protection" as distances and technology and nobody really giving a toss made any other arrangement impractical.
Cattle stations (ranches) were actually leased from the government in outback areas - sometimes they were as large as several European countries. For those of you who are really into the detail, we are talking an average one beast per 4 acres (after destruction of local ecosystems). Drovers or stockmen (cowboys) helped move massive herds when necessary. Indigenous people adapted to the work - usually in exchange for rations. On the plus side, it offered an opportunity for them to stay on their own country without being slaughtered or evicted. Aboriginal stockmen were usually given the name "Jackie". Their labour was effectively unpaid, and the industry is widely referred to as "the pastoral industry".
Australia entered WWII on 3 September 1939 because that is when Great Britain declared war on Germany. Many of our soldiers were deployed around the Empire to assist the British, leaving Australia exposed. To a large extent, Australia was very much a "food bowl" for Britain at the time.
The Japanese advanced on British territories in Asia, and also attacked the U.S. at Pearl Harbour then advanced through New Guinea. In February 1942 they bombed Darwin.
--oo0oo--
Since it was first invaded by the British, “Australia” has been code for something unknowable and scary and challenging. When the grown-up equivalent of being sent to bed without dinner - “behave or I’ll cut you off without a penny” - did not work, desperate parents often followed the example of British monarchs by exiling errant children to Australia. We are not simply the nation of convicts some outsiders believe; since 1788 our population growth has depended on an influx of all sorts of refuse – of rejects, refugees, and remittance men – our Western culture always overshadowing pre-existing cultures.
The truth is, even in the settler/ white Australian mindset, Australia the country really is “Other”. Most of us live huddled in cosmopolitan cities on the coast, but have internalised some notion of ourselves as a people who know and inhabit a unique land of bush and desert with a timeless, mystical history. We conveniently forget that we mostly avoid visiting the interior of our own country, or care little how it is being raped by mining companies; we forget or have never believed that we have treated and continue to treat the First Peoples who were/are here with contempt.
Just as some Christians are able to accept the mysteries of a Holy Trinity, many Australians are able to believe this is both the oldest country on earth and at the same time, one of the youngest; the two histories and cultures – pre or post 1788 – merged or mutually exclusive depending on whatever the occasion requires. The self delusion, hypocrisy, racism and more that are typically Australian stand out like balls on a sheepdog, but it’s as if most Australians can’t see the balls for pizzle. The movie Australia, for me, somehow captures a sense of that mindset perfectly, and that’s why it makes me feel so huggy.
Using the finest traditions of the first golden age of Australian movie-making (Longford in the silent era, Hall with talkies, and Chauvel the ardent Nationalist who took us into the 40s and 50s) Baz holds up a mirror – but the question for many is what is he showing us? Some believe the movie Australia is a story of Australia’s beginnings – this is how we were but no longer are. For others it’s a joke, either because Baz is a poor film-maker who uses too many clichés or, as the ever disgruntled Germaine Greer claims, he is ignorant of Indigenous history and realities, and disrespectful.
Our Germs is often wrong – outrage is her product; she sells her opinion by the word and “four legs good two legs bad” hyperbole is her shtick. For me this movie shows us what Australia believes about itself – what it has long believed and still officially believes. This movie relies on a lot of classic Australian stereotypes to do that, and the fact many Australians do see themselves in this movie but do not see that what they believe is wanting makes the joke even funnier.
While some people hate the Australian identity clichés in this movie - like those found in school books or story books like the Billabong series or classic movies – I love them. They are an important part of our story because they don’t just reflect us, they are our history and our truth because they were deliberately designed to mould us in the first place.
As Nullah continues relating his tale from his POV we then see the traditional “Australia-is-a-British-Colony” graphic.
Yes, right up until then lots of young Nth generation Australians would save up for a boat ticket and "go home" to see England after leaving school.
And in fact it’s ironic Greer should question the need for a titled British character in this movie about Australia when she was amongst the last batch of Australian Brainiac expats able to “go home” to Britain before the door slammed shut in the 70s.
It’s also astonishing criticism from someone as well informed as Greer given Lord Vestey’s name is the one we associate with the end of the old pastoral industry era of slave labour.
When Lady Ashley (Nicole Kidman) arrives in Australia she is to be collected by a hired hand called “Drover” (Hugh Jackman). (“Hired” is my hint that Drover is white. Most non-white labour was unpaid.) If Drover’s name doesn’t make it clear he is a stereotype, perhaps his physical “type” will drive the point home; Lady Ashley is herself the perfect English Rose to complement him.
Before he collects Lady Ashley, Drover gets into a punch up in the pub over racism.
White guilt cannot be driving this movie – that would require evidence of some sort of delusion or self-deception. I think this scene shows Baz remained decidedly anti-revisionist in his approach. The dialogue tells us that someone was rude to a coloured person, but specifically shows Drover was not upset enough to fight about it until he was himself demoted to the rank of coloured person because he liked/accepted “Boongs”. Our faults remain transparent here.
White guilt cannot be driving this movie – that would require evidence of some sort of delusion or self-deception. I think this scene shows Baz remained decidedly anti-revisionist in his approach. The dialogue tells us that someone was rude to a coloured person, but specifically shows Drover was not upset enough to fight about it until he was himself demoted to the rank of coloured person because he liked/accepted “Boongs”. Our faults remain transparent here.
The punch up is over in minutes; Australian attitudes to race are not affected one jot by this episode and are, in fact, quickly forgotten when Lady Ashley’s undies spill from her luggage. We know what our priorities are.
Middle-class wannabes wait on the wharf to greet the real titled English Lady when she arrives. “Normal” Australians, on the other hand, believe they reject Britain’s rigid class system and so will be delighted to see Lady Ashley has to sit up front in the truck with the dog, Jedda. (When I heard this dun-coloured dog was named Jedda I thought Baz was having a sly laugh, but the credits tell me Jedda is actually played by a dog whose real name is Jedda. Credit for the sly dig goes to the dog owner, I guess.)
Any romantic notions Lady Ashley has about Australia are quickly dispelled when she sees kangaroos during this journey.
Baz makes another comment on the Australian character when he has Drover say to Lady Ashley, during this journey, what most Australians would say to any outsiders who dare criticise us: “Don’t presume to judge us, because you don’t know us. If you ever get it into your head you have a problem the problem will be you because there’s nothing wrong with us ” – an attitude that might smack defensiveness or of dysfunction. (Personally, I don't think we are all bad, I just sound like it most of the time cos I'm paying attention.)
Continuing to play up to old myths about the Australian character, we circle back again to our “British colonial past and pat ourselves on the back tradition” with a cattle drive. During WWII there really was a long cattle drive overland to keep bullocks from the Japanese, and this was memorialised in 1946 in a popular movie, The Overlanders, starring Chips Rafferty. Fortunately, the English Director Harry Watt was a lefty who gave a prominent place on screen to two Indigenous stockmen and a woman – not exactly the combination shown here. (Oh gosh, not radical enough, obviously, because one of the Aboriginal stockman is named Jackie.)
Next we get another glimpse at how old-school child snatching worked, and discover Lady Ashley has some moral fibre. We also learn the truth about Drovers’ Boys. (Not Drover the character’s boys, but drovers generally and historically.)
Of course, no story is the whole story – Baz Luhrmann set out to give us an epic and made it clear from the beginning that while the pastoral industry provides a backdrop, the framework that holds this story together is the Stolen Generations. There will be more cattle, but our focus is the fate of the young mixed-race boy, Nullah, not learning more about what was effectively a slave-based cattle industry (though people were not legally assets for sale or purchase by station owners).
Later, at the Charity Ball in Darwin some cove delivers chapter and verse crap about half castes. Why don’t I shoot myself in the foot completely by saying this half-caste speech is not 100% what Neville the Devil (in WA) was on about nor is it 100% what assimilation policy was about either – though this speech represents a common viewpoint. All revolting stuff. (I’m not defending any of the players, I’m just sick of people automatically misrepresenting them. A. O. Neville, however evil, actually knew that White Australians were coalholes who would never accept mixed race people, and he was not impressed.)
Part One more or less begins to end with Begin the Beguine – a good place to have an intermission is just after Drover and Sarah dance, vertically at first and then horizontally.
I would like to say the suggestion of lovemaking is tastefully filmed, but the fly-wire door flapping wildly just brings to mind another Australian cliché; “see ya later sweetheart, ya bang like a dunny door in the wind…”
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In part 2, Drover and Sarah become a couple, and Nullah their unofficial child, but more so in Sarah’s mind than in Drover’s. Sarah means well but has NFI and doesn’t want to have any FI. When it is time for Nullah to go with his grandfather to become a man, Sarah does not want to let go.
Interesting point made elsewhere–this follows the party line of both Jedda (1957) and We of the Never Never (1982) with a conveniently orphaned Aboriginal child and a distant Aboriginal father figure. As someone else points out, not just conveniently orphaned (sorry I can't remember who or why) – Baz goes to a lot of trouble to drown Nullah’s mum when he could have just said she was already dead.
(At this point I’ll reiterate – Baz is not driven by white guilt, but sticks to white values of the era. White Australia now generally understands that traditionally Aboriginal children without a first degree relative weren’t always orphans in the way we once assumed – i.e. an aunt = a mother, an uncle = a father, a cousin= a sibling and so on.) (This sense of community and other factors have significance for the difference between the way transgenerational trauma affects Indigenous Australians and the way it affects settlers, but I digress...)
In x words or less a white male advises a white female “don’t interfere in Indigenous culture”. (It takes a man to know these things because anthropology was still a male sport.) This time we depart from tradition, though, because the sentiment is less harshly conceived and worded, and far less self-righteous. Here, Drover is not suggesting missions are doomed to failure because Aboriginals are helplessly thick – as Aeneas Gunn said in We of the Never Never, for example – just implying religion is for tossers, though he still does not question his right to occupy the land now known as Faraway Downs.
There aren't many Indigenous people on the property or in this movie - one critic suggested Luhrmann was using Faraway Downs cattle station as a metaphor for terra nullius itself.
The cattle industry did not invariably displace Indigenous Australians and create a totally whites-only landscape until after equal pay and helicopters were phased in decades later, rendering the exploitation of Aboriginals as stock workers uneconomic. In many places, cultural traditions had continued with minimal disruption despite the intentions or delusions of colonial powers – possible because the stations were so fracking huge, and people were not always immediately removed from the land that was central to their spiritual and psychic health.
Greer’s rant about the distance between Arnhem Land - the home country of Nullah's grandfather King George and Faraway Downs misses a couple of obvious points: Firstly, locations for the movie were chosen from the home countries of several different Indigenous Peoples, but the primary intention was probably to make the movie look pretty, not necessarily to represent specific cultural groups or discuss how spiritually cruel it might be to forcibly remove people from their country. (Let alone separate individuals from their community etc...)
Secondly, the contrived point made in Australia the movie – the idea that boys coming of age had to go “away” enormous distances to become men and that this was both an unusual event and also a failing because it interrupted or interfered with station life or a white manager's plans - is a white movie-maker’s trope.
The reality on many stations in this era was that the “walkabout” white people once equated with Aboriginal unreliability or laziness was just a sign Indigenous people often came and went as they saw fit – not to avoid work but quite purposefully to honour cultural obligations on a timely basis. Yes, they went “away” from the homestead or the immediate gaze of managers or overseers, but there was no special going “away to another place" they went away to another place on their own country - this was just “cultural business as usual”.
Australia’s First Peoples often lived a semi-nomadic life of purpose and had a strong relationship with a specific area. There was no application for leave form to be lodged with HR. White people put their own (often negative) interpretations on the behaviour.
I’m not suggesting the relationships between the local people and the station licensees were all idyllic relationships, but they were not purely boss/slave relationships either – many of the assumptions we bring to our own history and story-telling are imported distortions. It’s unlikely that a white station manager would be given much information at all about comings and goings, or if he was told someone was going “away” for a while, what he was told might not be more than a convenient half-truth because the truth is that the reason would – on many levels – be literally and culturally none of his business.
Nullah only had to “go away” in the sense that although he had not been taken by the government he had been coerced by Lady Ashley into her version of whiteness – the lesser of two evils.
Please feel free to criticise my review. I’m just an Anglo-Celt. This is a movie put together by a bunch of Anglo-Celts (or Europeans) and some of their research relied on information collated by… Anglo Celts/ Europeans.
This movie is full of what might be bleached or faux Aboriginality. Is this cultural appropriation? Isn’t the very point Drover is making right here the point that Indigenous kids need to get their culture from Indigenous sources; that white bread just isn’t nourishment enough? Why are all the non-Indigenous viewers of this movie getting only white bread nourishment – is that a good or a bad thing?
To appropriate one of the many versions of Pastor Niemoller’s speech, white bread is okay when there is no one else who will or can speak up. My own people have done an excellent job of invasion and erasion.
As westerners, most viewers are probably accustomed to seeing an individual’s spiritual and secular life treated separately; with only token rituals incorporated into daily lives like saying grace before eating a meal or going to church once a week. Important rites of passage are marked by sacraments like baptism or weddings and in this movie, the idea Nullah had to go away to become a man would be the equivalent of confirmation.
I can’t deny this white movie maker’s trope as shown here demeans traditional Indigenous cultures by separating the arcane from the mundane the way western cultures do, but I don’t believe Baz has committed a crime here. The character of Nullah seems to be relentless in his search for a spiritual meaning in the mundane lives of the whites who govern his world. This is not condescension in the writing, this follows from the fact that he spent some time with his mother before she was drowned to move the plot forward.
It would be reasonable to assume Baz Luhrmann and others investing in this movie project included input from Indigenous People at the development stage. Two things probably kept the movie "white"- the first is that Baz is a unique film-maker and like most film-makers began with a very clear idea of what he wanted to do and say with this movie. If he had no hope of realising that vision then why would he bother? (The credits at the end give a nod to the writings of Xavier Herbert). The second is that there is a limit to how far a movie like this can cross over from white bread to something with an Indigenous point of view.
There is no simple way a wadjela can buy a ticket for a day trip to the inner sanctum of Indigenous cultures as if they were some carnival sideshow (nor should we be able to). “We” are not and cannot be privy to cultures that are generally speaking not designed to be shared – cultures that usually include “men’s business” and “women’s business” as distinct categories for initiates only. What Baz has done on screen is confirm white Australia’s assumption that there is something special about Aboriginal cultures we do not understand, and he has deliberately contrasted that with Lady Ashley’s half-baked offering of what Nullah thinks is white magic from the Wizard of Oz.
If you've not seen the movie yet, please enjoy just how crap Baz allows white culture to appear relative to what Nullah is hoping for from Lady Ashley.
The white bread version of Generic Aboriginal Culture here, in this movie, seems respectful, and seems to demand respect, which is more than we usually get. Infinitely better this generic white bread version of Indigenous culture than the continued denial, silence, lies, misrepresentation, whitewashing and so on that is - behind all the spin - still the official stance. (Or, god forbid, the patronising rot in my old Victorian school readers.)
When Christianity is imposed on Aboriginals in this movie it is not shown as a superior culture but as one which places lives in danger because it means innocent boys are rounded up and taken to an island mission where they are in the path of Japanese invaders.
A movie can say something important but if no one will see it, is there really a tree in the forest? (bad joke, can't help myself.)
(Samson and Delilah is a brilliant and vital Indigenous production that has not reached anywhere near the audience Australia has. … there is a lot we could say about this marketing problem, or what sort of movies should be made, by whom and for whom in an ideal world, but this is not an ideal world.
Yes, there are Indigenous writers, activists and film-makers in this country, but I don’t believe this movie takes anything from them. I live in a country where the dominance of the git is disproportionate; white control of the narrative that is Indigenous Australia's history and tradition is systemically guaranteed. I prefer the narrative provided in this movie to any I've been offered by a white government or white corporation. More importantly than anything else in a country with a limited media market, this movie publicises a non-government narrative. Well, yes, this and all the other guff I've already said elsewhere on this topic.)
The last part of this movie is not just about Drover and Sarah – turns out Nullah did not get a chance to go walkabout with his grandfather before February 1942 when Darwin was bombed by the Japanese.
The Australian military and civilian administrative response – a total SNAFU – occupies the remaining hour of the movie. Nullah is sent to a mission island, and Sarah searches for him.
Near the end of the movie Magarri gets to drink inside the pub – but this is no sign of any real change. Once again, it is just a matter of extreme circumstances allowing for an exception to an inflexible social rule. Yes, it was illegal to give Indigenous Australians alcohol, but this was Australia, this was then, and this was the Territory and if they wanted to, the white people would have simply ignored the law, therefore it was a social rule. It all seems perfectly Australian to me. The Aboriginal man could not drink inside the pub and it was the white man who took offence. Nobody really gave a toss what the Aboriginal man thought or felt. White men react locally, they never act globally. La plus ça change...
A more academic review than mine (some parts of which are just way over my head) says, in part,
"Whiteness works as the invisible hand of the film. The conflict between Fletcher, the Drover and Sarah drives the plot. The Drover speaks for and about Indigenous peoples. The Drover changes history. Aboriginal people help him. Bandy, the Aboriginal woman who serves as a drover, becomes invisible after her introductory scene. Ivan serves Magarri at his whites-only bar only because The Drover demands it. And while the idealism of Sarah Ashley sets the drama in motion and Nullah’s eyes and voice serve as an innocent witness, it is The Drover who carries out the action in Hollywood style, reproducing the mythology of the bushman as the founding force of Australia."
Firstly, it should be no shock Bandy quickly becomes irrelevant to the story; she hasn’t got a dick and this story is set in Australia (bad enough for any chick) but it is also set during WW II. Gosh, you could put her in a story 70 years later, make her white and make her Prime Minister and she would still be largely irrelevant – all anyone would care about is what she is wearing and why she wasn’t legally married to the man she was sexing.
Secondly, the Aboriginal people help Drover change history and their efforts are largely forgotten. Well, yes, that is pretty much how Australian history has always worked. There is so much never volunteered to the public I don't know where to begin…
Thirdly, yes, the movie does revolve around whiteness, but to suggest white people did not run the country at that time would be a lie. That Australia is a white movie is not necessarily a bad thing; it holds up a mirror and shows white Australia what it believes about itself. It IS a myth that the bushman is the founding force of Australia. That’s exactly why I like the movie. It suits us (the wadjela majority) to believe we are rebels and independent thinkers, yet we are content to cheer the rescue of mixed race boys from an island mission only because of our attitude of “stuff the government that put them there”. We cheer because it shows the whole debacle that was the response to the bombing of Darwin is living proof governments are run by fuck-knuckles.
But, boys rescued, “we” wadjelas are then content to wait until 1973 for the government to put an end (sort of) to its own unwarranted interference in the lives of these “other” humans, without much prompting from us.
We hate governments, but want them to do everything for us – we literally want them to go screw themselves because we are not likely to get around to screwing them our-selves. By mentioning the stolen generations the way he has rather than relying on exposition in the story, Baz Luhrmann has deviated from classic movie tropes.
A Hollywood movie that opened with a mention of the Stolen Generations would end with details of the movement to put an end to child-snatching, but Baz has not done this because there was no huge great popular outrage and this movie does not revise history. When political change happens in this country it is often a long, hard slog that starts with a small group of people who are vilified and marginalised for their efforts. Australia the movie is not a story of a fight to end child-snatching, nor of Australia’s democratic foundations (driven by the bushman) or rebel character, it is just another story of the traditional white Australian larrikin character who gets annoyed, makes a half-arsed protest then goes back to happily being screwed over by his own government.
As democracies go this is a particularly shite one precisely because we have always been “content to resent”.
(It’s why films about the Eureka Stockade or Ned Kelly or other standard Australia-making myths repeatedly bomb at the box office – rebellion and resentment are part of White Australia’s DNA, but are not the standard fare of western democratic culture at all. The failure of Australian myths to do well at the box office has nothing to do with local market size – they are not exportable because losers and underachievers are not inspiring.)
At the very end of the movie – and only at the very end – Lady Ashley lets go of her assumption that she should convert or can own Nullah. He discards his clothing and goes with his grandfather – and Lady Ashley understands. This part deviates from the traditional Australian movie ending, and it would seem anachronistic except it’s immediately followed by a message about the end of the Federal Government’s assimilation policy (not the same thing as the (State) child snatching policies) - not abandoned until 1973 – Baz’s ending was pure fantasy to tie up loose ends with his character, but Baz does not revise history.
(Removal of western clothes is an interesting choice of visual metaphor for western culture. Lady Ashley might be seen to let go of her assumptions that Nullah should be totally westernised, but when the government abandons the policy of assimilation it does not relieve Aboriginals of the obligation to cover their bodies in public or in many other ways still become westernised. Neither Lady Ashley nor the government will question her assumption she has the right to stay on Faraway Downs without further prompting – it is Nullah who has to leave if he wants to revert to tradition because the future is Western culture and it is here to stay.)
The music that we hear while the credits are rolling includes "The Drover's Ballad" - its cringeworthy lyrics written by Baz and others, with music and vocals by Elton John. In this song the point is pounded home - melodramatically - the white Drover was shunned for giving his heart to a dark-skinned girl. This is possibly one last stylistic nod to Australian myths about bushmen (without the drover his horse and his dog all drowning in a flash flood, Henry Lawson style) - but also ties in with the end of the whole movie - "the outcast is a free man if he sleeps under the stars"... Here's a very Australian attitude for you: if you don't want to conform, bugger off.
(Poor Drover.)
Ultimately, the Government did not apologise to the Stolen Generations until 2008 (the year the film was released). Since then, the name of the child removal policy has changed but the practice/ outcome has not. Really, things are much worse in a lot of ways (our federation is complicated when it comes to matters of race). People who want to place Indigenous children who might be at risk with non-Indigenous families often have NFI of the point Drover was making in his argument with Sarah.
Baz Luhrmann’s website still has some links to historical facts on which the script was based. Australia the movie is a great big long epic story about Empire and Colony and War and Romance and Cows and White People and Aboriginals. And for all that it had all these things in it, right there at the very beginning, the director began with an explanation about Stolen Generations but did not explore how the practice was resolved. He could not, because it has not really been resolved at all – at the very least, such a claim would be highly contentious.
Those of us wadjelas who care about the truth have a duty to educate ourselves. Those who do not care have made it bloody hard for those of us who do care. People like Baz provide hints and portals. Every movie like Australia, perfect or not, is better than nothing.
Australia - the country's - continued unwillingness to live up to its claimed belief in a “fair go” is offensive. Like Drover, many of us who buy the myths see racism as something that is only a problem when it affects us personally and that is pretty well going to be never. As individuals, most of us do take people as we find them, and that is part of the problem – we assume what happens at a micro level is the same as at every level; we do not grasp the concepts of systems or systemic disadvantage and, sadly, for the most part we are far too privileged and comfortable to make the effort to understand.
I really do love this movie. For all that it appears to perpetuate myths about Australia’s identity, I think it is honest about what the myths have always been and, given what Baz knew when he made the movie and what his influences were, he has been honest about how transparently hollow the myths are. On top of all that, Australia is a rollicking great yarn, is beautifully filmed, and because it is entertaining people are more likely to watch it than ignore it.
So much of the truth about our history has been hidden from us, and without a whole lot of blah blah blah there are sound reasons it has taken me nearly 50 years of hard work to piece together as much as I finally have (the Internet has certainly made a difference but on its own it’s not enough. Thanks a lot for the National Broadband NOtwork, Malcolm.)
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For more on the pastoral industry the best thing I have found is It’s Not The Money It’s The Land Aboriginal Stockmen and The Equal Wages Case by Bill Bunbury,
Fremantle Arts Centre Press, North Fremantle 2002.
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Podcast from ABC (about 14 mins)Daisy Bindi could never understand why her boss paid wages to white workers but not her.
In 1946 the Nyangumarta woman decided enough was enough
(Aimed at young girls, so possibly a bit simple in tone but gives a third person account of Daisy's walk-off and the standard white response in 1940s W.A.)
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/fierce-girls/daisy-bindi-the-girl-who-fought-for-more/9550202
Nyangumarta People are from The Pilbara Region of W.A.
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