Academy Awards

Dont think Australia-the movie got even a mention. Which in context is not a bad thing. It was worth seeing, that Baz Luherman larger than life story telling. The mixture of fact and fantasy. How the large cattle stations over took the great Australian Outback and the true loss of culture and identity for the Australian Aboriginal. It does really show how one culture has been overlayed upon another. Another great Australian Movie is The Castle. I saw it the other night on television again and it was an interesting play on a man and his home versus the big airport companies and how the Aboriginals must feel. It might not be what we think is a castle, yet it is someones home and Mabo was the legislation that began the reconcilliation process and the steps to somehow right some of the wrongs of British colonization. I try to reconcile in my own mind, my British ancestory, the nature of exploration by European explorers and the building of empires. I try to see this in context to global history and understanding of the beliefs regarding different cultures and ways of life and still find there is more to understand. I watch now, as some of the old exploration nations are a bit lost at taking over other little pockets of land for resources and expansion of empire .. to see that part of the psyche of those that explore is a bit lost and its like we want to take over from each other. Hopefully we can work this all out learn to create space for many different aspects of belief and lifestyle without destroying each other and the planet.

Aboriginal land and the white settlement

I am attempting to be kind here to my own. If you notice in the movie Australia, they seem to easily gloss off that the land the Cattle Station is on was originally aboriginal land. I saw something today that made me realize that we, the decendants of the British Colonials are the nomads. The aboriginal people have been connected to this land over a much greater length of time than any other race or nation on earth.

Black america and aboriginal australia

Aboriginal australia suffered slavery too. With many aboriginals working in large houses up until at least the 1930's and having curfews at night. Can we overcome just as they did in the USA? Australia, the movie - maybe The proposition or The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith or even Rabbit Proof Fence are more representational of our true history. SORRY

Other reviews of interest...Gurindji people and Lord Vesty etc...

After seeing Australia the movie, I was and am interested to learn more about this part of our history and the different properties and people of this part of Australia. My own family history links to Materanka and Elsies Station - which I understand, has now been given back to its traditional owners. There are other less happy family history links that I am still learning to understand. I am only just beginning to understand the British Empire and our past as oppressors and what we believed was exploration and empire building, with the opposing truths of invasion and assimulation. Marcia Langton in The Age newspaper wrote a stirring review which gave me answers to questions I was wanting answered. The map in the story outlined an area of land south of Darwin and I had planned and will still delve into the history of this land and its characters. She led me to the next step in the story about the true strength of the Australian Aboriginal people and the strike of stockmen working on Lord Vestys station. The Gurindji who worked on Wave Hill Station and their famous strike. A good description of this may be found on Ian Thorpes Fountain for youth website. Again, water...a famous swimmer. Good swimmers have the strength to swim through all sorts of emotions and are symbolically survivors. (Read my next posting regarding water symbolism..and as I am learning as I write, if anyone is of great profound insite into water symbology. Please, please add to my posting. I havent read Germaine Greers review of the movie. Marcia Langton seems almost in direct opposition to Greer in her musings. Yet I think we have not given Ms Greer her true place in Australian History. Many women I see now in their 50's 6o's and even older may not have such self respect if they had not had Germaine in her time and space. It seems to me sometimes they are trying to pretend they are the true feminists without having really understood the struggle. Thats another blog all together. Yet I would not be so dismissive of Germaine Greer and applaud all the work she has done before many others decided they knew all - later.

Merry xmas

Since my original blog relating to the film Australia, I have been thinking and reading. My main thought strain has been regarding the water tank scene and the more I think of it the more significant this one scene is. Water is very spiritual. It is healing, it is symbolic of emotions and may be seen as the element that represents connections to the female and earth elements. This spiritual symbolism may be taken further as relating to the masculine barren dry land and the female water energy associated with forests and oceans. If I chose to view this film only according to natural element symbolism, I am sure I could see symbolism in almost each scene. I am most interested in the symbolic link between mother and emotion which is I believe the central theme of the whole movie. The implication that water is symbolic of the hidden truth tells it all. I have yet to read the link between water and aboriginal dreamtime. That is the next step.

Observations

Once you have seen the movie AUSTRALIA you may start to look at the true history of our land. I might suggest you take a quick peak at the promo running on the official movie site that shows an African American slave running up the lawn of a southern Mansion. A hint of parallels that may exist between the American slave culture and the treatment of aboriginal people by the subjects of the British empire. In Perth as late as the 1930s Aboriginal women worked in the wealthy homes of white Australia and were subject to curfews in the evenings. There is much debate as to our right to be here. Many non indigenous Australians are immigrants or were infact convicts sent out to the colonies. Many had no choice to come here. Thus there are mixed emotions for many who landed on this continent far from their own relatives and families. I cannot speak for people of aboriginal origin, I can respect their history and regret any harm done by mine. I say sorry and I listen. I am in awe of their gentle natures and kindness when many have suffered so much. I do not understand why we have not given them more. People talk of the welfare state and aboriginals taking advantage.... I cannot agree and believe they are due much more than we have ever offered. Much like the silence in America about the American Indians, the movie Australia looks to comparisons with the African american experience, (which I would never wish to play down.) not the Native American.

I wandered down Fitzroy Street on Thursday night and guiltily chose to see Australia - the movie over the story of the boy in Mumbia. Yet the movie Australia has more cultural linkages for me and living in a small flat in St Kilda, I felt like a little bit of light entertainment and a glimpse of the Australian outback that I miss so much. I also wanted to see the real story behind the hollywood epic title. How would Baz Luhrmann introduce the topic of the stolen generation? Why was the aboriginal woman crying at the premier saying it was not the real story? I got my choc top and wandered into Cinema 3 of the George Cinema. Its not the plushest cinema, but its local and comfortable. Settled down on the far right aisle and waited whilst the usual previews ran. Unsure of what to expect from another Baz Luhrmann movie, it became immediately apparent that his signature larger than life caricatures were there up on scene. In the opening scenes, I was made fully aware of the sparseness of Australian station country. The dry and the hard to endure life that can exist during harder times. Mixed with reality was the larger than life characters of Lady Sarah Ashley and the drover... This touch of magnification serves the story well. Nicole Kidman does a good job of Lady Sarah Ashley, as Hugh Jackman plays a much better drover than expected. I can see why he has been getting the sexiest man alive label..... He scrubs up OK for an Aussie bloke. The movie is filled with Australian stars. David Wehnam, Brian Brown, Jack Thompson and Ben Mendelson just to mention a few well known faces. The young aboriginal boy, Brandon Walters plays Nullah and is a natural star, along with David Gulipilli as his grandfather King George. You may get a glimpse of the true aboriginal spirit from these two amazing characters - It is as magical as the stars on a clear outback night. I have a friend in Perth, whom I tell people about. I say I met God on a park bench in the City Mall. God is short for Godfrey. A local aboriginal man with a smile bigger than any white fella every gave me. The story is one interwoven with adventure, fiction and smidgens of reality. The scene where Nullah hides with his mother from the police so he cannot be taken away from her, is to me the central scene of the movie. All else is filling. There are small shots of the Wizard of Oz inserted intermittently in the movie. (I have to see it again to understand where exactly they are and what/why exactly they might be placed where they are.) I thus translate this into a clever fabrication of the separation of aboriginal children from their families and culture with this illusionary or fairytale like description as a way of introducing a part of our countries history in a manner palatable to all. The true stories of the outback and the stolen generation are too difficult for us to truly face at present and maybe this film would not have received funding if the truth had been told. With loss of the aboriginal mother, many historical and politically confronting issues have been avoided. Yet, the topic of the stolen generation has been introduced to the global community in a abet in a very watered down manner - if you refer to this particular scene, you could almost say its been drowned out by propaganda. Is the movie worth seeing - yes. Is the outback anything like what was in the movie - yes There are a great number of cross cultural and religious topics that you can expand upon here. From the class structure of the British homeland, to the overlaying of one culture upon another. Our ignorance and denial is celebrated. If you know the stories of aboriginals who say their hands and arms cut from being caned and then the wounds filled with salt by nuns of the Catholic homes they were sent to. Or of Aboriginal women fed alcohol by mining men and left in creek beds after being raped. The film, a fiction, as identified by the insertion of the Wizard of Oz fantasy scenes... is a fantasy. It is how we would on some levels like to think our outback was. And that is the message I got ... We I believe were meant to understand the movie is a fictional portrayal of a beautiful rugged land, its people and our occupation of it.