Ten Canoes

Kim ,
Gee I'd like to see the early documentary . I have fished in the Arafura Swamp when we were fishing out of a camp near Manangrida .
Cheers ,
Willie .

Same same Willie, Kim. Reckon you just might be swamped (no pun intended) by similar requests.
Mate, I couldn't organise a screw in a brothel: is there some way that the older film could be made easily accessable? Jeff.

Kim, interesting stuff. There used to be a film titled "Aboriginals of the Western Deserts" I think, made yonks ago. It depicted aboriginal people around the 1900's I'd guess. But it was still being shown to schoolchildren in the 70's, giving them a very wrong picture. I wonder how many still have those sort of memories when thinking of modern aboriginal lifestyles?
There's a story I tell about a classroom full of aborigininal kids and a Science teacher who still thought that they hunted and ate snakes. In fact they were terrified of them. Talk about stereotyping !

Ten Canoes is a fantastic film. I saw a documentary on the making of it, and the actors in it were proud to make it as it kept alive their history and cultural stories.

There were some problems finding actors as the only people who could portray the original characters could be descendants of them. There was only one person who could play a particular character and half way through he decided that he'd had enough so just walked off LOL. Luckily he came back later on to film some scenes that he was required to be in.

Barnesy

Off the original subject a bit, but the family and I saw a documentary called The Last of the Nomads, which was shown at the interprative centre in Karijini NP. A very interesting film which:

'tells the moving story of Warri and Yatungka, the last of the Mandildjara people to be living a traditional nomadic lifestyle in the remote Gibson Desert of central Australia. Like an antipodean version of Romeo and Juliet, it emerges that they became the last nomads because they had married outside their tribal laws and eloped to the most inaccessible of regions. In 1977 the land was stricken by a severe drought and their tribal elders mounted a search for them with the help of a party of white men led by Dr Bill Peasley and one of their own number, a childhood friend named Mudjon. The film takes Dr Peasley back into the desert to relive his momentous journey with Mudjon and culminates with poignant archival footage of the elderly couple found naked and starving'.

It was a fascinating doco and amazing to see the archival footage and realise that these events took place only 30 years ago.

Matt.

Hello Kim

I wonder if the Film Sound Archives in Canberra has a copy of the documentary film from Billinuna Station?

If they don't I am sure they would be interested in making a copy if anyone could get their copy to them. They would register and catalogue the film so that it was never lost.

Cheers
Phil

Willie

I remembered the name of the documentary after closing the computer down:

The Great Unfenced (Directed by Harry Atwood).

I did a quick Google search at work, but couldn’t find anything of value on the subject. A search of the National Film and Sound Archives (NFSA) was also unsuccessful.

Once I get the film back, I’ll send you a copy and another to the NFSA (it could be the only copy left).

Regards

Kim