Writer Jennifer Mills was recently interviewed by Anita Barraud about her new book Gone (2011, University of Queensland Press) about a hitchhiker making his way through the outback on a journey of thousands of miles. One of her answers is a nearly perfect statement of how Australian settler culture projects its own anxieties onto the landscape:

Anita Barraud: “Some of us are meant for the desert,” says one of Frank’s rides, a tough woman with dyed black hair. Do you think that holds true?

Jennifer Mills: I don’t know. I think you do get a sense that places call you. And I’ve been in Alice [Springs] for five years now and I sort of… I feel like that’s maybe a little bit of a myth that people hold on to, that they’ve been called, or that they have some reason to be there, because when it comes down to it, it’s just rocks and dirt, really.

AB: Ah, so you’re a bit more pragmatic about it?

JM: Well, I don’t know. I’m kind of…

AB: Because part of it—the story here—there is quite a lot of discussion, and mainly from women, I think too, interestingly, that the rides he gets some of the women—“Out here, you change your mind about a lot of things,” says one woman that picks him up.

JM: I think the desert is transformative, and I don’t think that’s because of anything the desert’s doing. I think it’s because of what the desert represents to us, and what human culture says about the desert. And we have a very precarious and contested relationship with the Outback in Australia. It’s very large in the national pysche. We’re a very urbanised population and at the same time and yet we constantly refer to this great so-called emptiness at the heart of the country, which was never empty and isn’t really our heart. And so I think there’s an element in the book of trying to interrogate that kind of mentality in our culture, and I don’t think I have any answers for… what the truth of it is. A lot of questions, all bunched together.

The book goes on sale in Australia on Monday. See also…

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My brother Lockie recently got himself a serious person’s camera and a tripod. (Lyds has been urging me for ages to get a good camera. I hem and haw, evaluate, etc. and finally, thanks to Elena, I now have a great little point and shoot. My little bro, on the other hand is a doer.) Anyhoo… after much nagging on the part of Yours Truly, with assists from other players, he now has his very own Flickr account and I urge you to check it out to get a taste of southeast Queensland in the summertime.

Golden cane (Image: Lockie Cooke)

Lockie and Elena have the following trait very much in common: they both focus intently, obsessively even, on a particular interest for a period of time, sometimes returning to it, sometime not. E with her garden, her drawing and painting, and of course the baking. Lockie with boats and fishing, cars, his own garden and now his photography. I am hoping (and intend to back this up with practical action such as nagging) that this particular pursuit will stick as a kind of meta-interest that can be applied to all subsequent obsessions. Otherwise I will be hitting him up for his camera if he should ever lose the bug…

Magpie (Image: Lockie Cooke)

These images mean a lot to me, especially today, as gusts of wind through up snow around the house and street, coating everything like sand. My last few trips to Australia have been in the cooler months (“winter,” such as it is in Brisbane), but right now it is wet and stormy and very hot there. I will confess to you that I have never liked the heat, but I suppose I can appreciate it. The photos of Kondalilla Falls, Maleny and the Glasshouse Mountains, the storms over Moggill, the birds, the hibiscus flower—Elena says, “you have those there?”—are not only signs of home, they are memories.

Thanks Lockie.

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Nothing to worry about here Tony. Climate change freak out dupes, kindly return to your porch rockers and resume whittling. I mean, it’s obviously a conspiracy, and I wouldn’t expect any different from the Greenies. But I just can’t believe that so many scientists have been taken in by it. I used to think scientists were smart and sensible people. I suppose they will come to their senses eventually. Purple skies—yeah right. Good one NASA. Kidders. Bunch of Photoshop junkies. Go launch a rocket!

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Some points made in the interview:

• White people in Australia use a discourse of possessiveness when talking about their relationship to the country. This gives any discussion of citizenship—especially questions about what it means, who has it, and who deserves it—an inherently possessive quality. In fact, Moreton-Robinson argues that citizenship itself is inherently possessive.
• The very presence of indigenous people “ontologically disturbs” whites. Aborigines are, in a sense, upsetting to the Australian mindset in their very existence. Anyone who wants to get an indigenous issue on the agenda—whether in government policy, in public discussions, in talking with their neighbours, in trying to establish a program or a radio station, in trying to get access to resources, etc.—always faces a struggle. The “unfinished business” between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians hangs over every encounter.
• A misconception about race relations in Australia today is that the Mabo decision in 1991 overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius (that the land belonged to no-one when Europeans showed up). It did not; it diminished terra nullius by acknowledging the existence of native title rights to land, but it maintained the legitimacy of the state’s right to Aboriginal land.^†
• Mabo saw the development of a specific white fear: that Aborigines would take over peoples’ homes by staking a claim to their properties and surrounding land—and, in a sense, forced the reassertion that “Australia is a white country.” A lot of talk by Australians since then about what Indigenous people receive from the state has unfolded in light of this panic.
• The Keating government brought legislation following Mabo intended to clarify some of the issues raised by the decision, but it stopped short of resolving the right-to-land question. It established some Indigenous rights, namely the right to hunt and gather, but it did not establish a right of residence for Indigenous people. Indigenous sovereignty is still in a murky place legally, and therefore every other way, as a result.

Moreton-Robinson and Kauanui also discuss the Howard government’s Northern Territory intervention in August of 2007, the importance of the “children overboard affair” in Howard’s 2001 election win, and the Rudd government’s apology to Australia’s Indigenous people for the “stolen generations” (the subject of the film Rabbit-Proof Fence) on February 13, 2008. I urge you to check it out; it’s a pretty great interview.

† For those who are interested in the Indigenous perspective on terra nullius and the arrival of European settlers, the book Follow the Rabit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington (a.k.a. Nugi Garimara) has a lot to say (not to be confused with the film which, though excellent, doesn’t really touch on this).

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Great George St., Paddington, Queensland

Until next time, then.

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Birrarung (also known as the Yarra River), viewed from Princess Bridge

We caught up with friends, looked at tons of art and a fair bit of graffiti, drank copious amounts of coffee and ate our way around the rainy city. It was hard to leave, and the loved ones are greatly missed already. Of course, there’s now a Melbourne photo set on Flickr.

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View the Brisbane Citycat set on Flickr

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D’Aguilar Range, overlooking Samford Valley (view the set)

Jolly’s is in the D’Aguilar Range on the western side of the greater-Brisbane area, and about 30 minutes drive from where I grew up.

A Google map of the area

The lookout was built in the 1930s and is named after William Alfred Jolly, first Lord Mayor of the modern City of Brisbane. (Jolly was a conservative, but he turned down a knighthood, so he can’t have been entirely bad.)

The Cookes spent a lot of time at Jolly’s Lookout back in the day, especially for those early Sunday morning breakfasts of which Pete was so fond, and when I was still biologically capable of rising before 7 a.m. A few Gilberts were lost to the surrounding scrub as I recall, being a less than completely accurate kicker and not enough of a hero to fetch them back from the sharp slopes of Mount Nebo.

I made a Flickr set for old time’s sake.

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Flickr photo set from our trip to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary

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I’ve updated Best Australian Films based on feedback in the comments, and started a new section to mark the changing of the guard. To keep it consistent, anything released since 2008 will go in the Rudd Years, while all 2007 releases will go under Howard. I think Mabo was the real turning point for Australian movies; the Prime Minister thing is a way of giving some shape to the intervening years.

First addition to the new category is Nash and Joel Edgerton’s The Square (2008), which I am keenly anticipating seeing again (DVD in March) because the back of the seat in front of you on the long haul from L.A. to Brisbane is no way to fully appreciate the best new Australian movie in years. The Brothers Edgerton are here to tell you about the terrifying things that can happen to a structured life when you start pulling at threads… Enjoy!

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SitePoint is running a special offer for the next three days in support of the Victorian Bushfire appeal—any five of their books in PDF format for US$29.95 with all proceeds going to the Australian Red Cross. They are hoping to raise $50,000.

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The Australian Government wants to censor the Internet and the push seems to have gained ground because of concerns about child safety. The proposal calls for mandatory ISP filtering of Internet traffic that is supposed to prevent access to “illegal material” (content featuring child sexual abuse) and child-inappropriate material (pornography).

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is at the centre of a growing debate about the true scope and feasibility of the plan. He has equated it with similar systems in countries like the UK, Sweden, Canada and New Zealand, but there are fundamental differences. Australians won’t be able to opt out. According to network engineer Mark Newton, in a recent opinion piece for ABC News:

In actual fact, none of the countries Senator Conroy cited have anything like what he’s proposing for Australia. [...] The only countries which feature government-imposed internet censorship are nations which place more emphasis on opinion suppression than internet access, such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Newton points out that Conroy has used the term “illegal” in the Senate to refer to a government blacklist of material designated as “prohibited” (deemed unsuitable for children). Former Senator Andrew Bartlett recently echoed criticism about where such a censorship plan would end. Not to mention whatever they mean by material that is “inappropriate:”

The catch-all nature of the term “inappropriate” gives me concern. I have little faith that the current government will prove much better than governments everywhere, and be unable to resist the urge to continually increase the scope of what they try to control.

Beyond this, it seems highly unlikely that the plan can be implemented as intended. ISPs hate it claiming that filtering will be extremely costly to implement, easy to circumvent and would likely yield a lot of false positives (hundreds of thousands?). The Angry Aussie says it best in a recent rant:

If you put some filter between the big wide Internet and the poor little defenseless Australian users it would strangle our already shit Internet access, let a bunch of stuff through anyway, be trivially easy to get around, and would block sites that shouldn’t be blocked. In other words, there is not a single thing an honest person can recommend about this approach.

Way to go Labor. I bet this will haunt the Rudd government if it goes much further. Why not spend the $189 million on building media literacy instead?

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Max almost shredded my hand the first day we met. My dad had plenty to say on the topic of how easily he turns. In the two weeks we spent together I came to recognise that barely perceptible charging of muscles—whenever I leaned in to touch him—the tightening of his frame and the bright beam of his eyes that said, ever so steadily, “Shall I bleed you?”

If you recall the end of Terminator 2, when Arnie is lowered into the smelt and finally his lights go out—that’s what our TV did tonight. Compressed to a single, hot white line, then gone. Cathode Ray Tubicide. And like the end of Terminator 2, tonight’s turn of events was hard to accept. How could something that powerful just be gone? (And why now? Our microwave went into a coma several weeks back—all 88:88, and the DVD player has been ticking monotonously since Labor Day, and the muffler fell off the Dodge a few weeks ago… Seriously, WTF?)

Fortunately, there is Triple J.

Elena says, “This music is so good.” I say, “Yeah! Triple J.” The Monday morning news comes on, she says, “They can say ‘arvo’ on the news?” I say, “Yeah, it’s Triple J!” And, they never ask you for money? Triple J! (You could probably run a successful marketing campaign here just based on this.) And they talk about U.S. politics? Triple J! And Australian politics? Triple J! And indigenous issues? Triple J! And no frickin’ ads? Triple J! You’re just making it up now. Triple J!

There is currently no equal in the world to this radio station, and the way that media (and political economy) is changing there may never, ever be. Our new TV should arrive by the end of the week (don’t even start with the whole, people can live without it, you know) and I for one would just like to say thank @#$% for Triple J.

Postscript: It’s nice to pipe the sounds of home right into your living room. Thank @#$% also for the Internet.

What began during a conversation with Dan and Jody a few weeks ago about good Australian Cinema, and continued last night as a list of Australian film recommendations for Shoham and Michel from the local video store, debuts here as the preliminary list of best Australian movies in the last fifteen years. The following list is compiled from a combination of unreliable memory traces, favourite actor preferences, and IMDb assaults undertaken by Yours Truly. It may not be the most systematic list ever put together. Do you spot any errors or omissions? Leave a comment. Let’s sort this out.

(All title links point to the IMDb.)

The Keating Years (1991–1996)

• The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
• Bad Boy Bubby (1993)
• Cosi (1996)
• Dating the Enemy (1996)
• Dead Heart (1996)
• Flirting (1991)
• Hercules Returns (1993)
• Idiot Box (1996)
• Love and Other Catastrophes (1996)
• Love Serenade (1996)
• Muriel’s Wedding (1994)
• The Piano (1993)
• Proof (1991)
• Romper Stomper (1992)
• Shine (1996)
• Strictly Ballroom (1992)
• The Sum of Us (1994)

The Howard Years (1996–2007)

• The Bank (2001)
• The Boys (1998)
• Candy (2006)
• The Castle (1997)
• Chopper (2000)
• Dirty Deeds (2002)
• Erskineville Kings (1999)
• Feeling Sexy (1999)
• Gettin’ Square (2003)
• The Hard Word (2002)
• The Interview (1998)
• Jindabyne (2006)
• Kiss or Kill (1997)
• Lantana (2001)
• Little Fish (2005)
• Look Both Ways (2005)
• Looking for Alibrandi (2000)
• Oscar and Lucinda (1997)
• Oyster Farmer (2004)
• Praise (1998)
• The Proposition (2005)
• Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
• Redball (1999)
• Somersault (2004)
• Suburban Mayhem (2006)
• Ten Canoes (2006)
• Thank God He Met Lizzie (1997)
• Two Hands (1999)
• Wolf Creek (2005)

The Rudd Years (2007–2010)

• The Combination (2009)
• The Horseman (2008)
• Love the Beast (2009)
• The Square (2008)

The Gillard Years (2010–)

Time will tell…

Contenders

• Alexandra’s Project (2003)
• Angel Baby (1995)
• Animal Kingdom (2010)
• Australian Rules (2002)
• Bad Eggs (2003)
• Balibo (2009)
• The Black Balloon (2008)
• Boytown (2006)
• Bright Star (2009)
• Clubland (2007)
• Cracker Jack (2002)
• Cunnamulla (2000)
• Death in Brunswick (1991)
• The Dish (2000)
• The Final Winter (2007)
• He Died With a Felafel in His Hand (2001)
• Head On (1997)
• Holy Smoke (1999)
• Innocence (2000)
• Japanese Story (2003)
• Last Train to Freo (2006)
• Life (1996)
• The Magician (2005)
• Ned Kelly (2003)
• Noise (2007)
• Occasional Coarse Language (1998)
• The Quiet Room (1996)
• The Reef (2011)
• Three Dollars (2005)
• The Tracker (2002)
• The Wog Boy (2000)
• Undead (2003)
• What I Have Written (1996)

Rules for Inclusion

To plug for having a movie added to or subtracted from the list, please keep the following points in mind. An “Australian movie” is taken to be any movie that is set, filmed and produced mostly in Australia. Examples: Oscar and Lucinda is an adaptation of a Peter Carey novel, set in Australia, therefore it’s Australian. The Matrix was filmed in Australia, co-produced by an Australian company, and stars many Australian actors and the city of Sydney, but since is not set in Sydney and since all characters have an American accent, it is not Australian. Similarly, though Finding Nemo was set in Australia, and starred some Australian actors, it was produced, written and directed by Americans in the U.S., and is therefore not Australian. Finally, since most movies begin production at least a year before they are released, Keating gets all of 1996, even though he lost the bloody election in March of that year.

Update: I’ve had a lot of feedback and suggestions, so I made some changes.

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