A Study Guide by Paulette Gittins

Home , Adam Goodes, Andrew Denton, Aussie, Jacki Weaver, Lisa McCune, Paul McDermott

Series 6

A STUDY GUIDE BY PAULETTE GITTINS

http://www.metromagazine.com.au

ISBN: 978-1-74295-477-6 http://www.theeducationshop.com.au Finding their story: Eight Australians play detective! SBS Australia Serendipity Productions and Artemis International in association with Screen Australia, ScreenWest & Lotterywest present WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? SERIES SIX

Series Producer: BERNICE TONI Line Producer: ROBIN EASTWOOD SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Executive Producers for Artemis International: CELIA TAIT & BRIAN BEATON Executive Producer for Serendipity Productions: MARGIE BRYANT

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 INTRODUCTION TV presenter and broadcaster Andrew Denton discovers the depth of his Jewish lineage, and delves into one of the ‘The past is a foreign country. They do darkest chapters in human history. But the talent, enterprise, risk-taking and above all, the love of books and writ- things differently there.’ ing of this family, he realises, has clearly impacted upon the person he is today. He also learns of a possible connection So begins L.P. Hartley’s novel of his Edwardian childhood, to one of the best-known figures in the Bible. The Go-between, in which Leo, the protagonist, reminisces and reflects upon a past world, of class and gender dis- Actress Rebecca Gibney searches for the reasons behind tinctions, of rigid social conventions, of the innocence of her family’s troubled past, bringing a dark secret to light, childhood and its loss, and family life (or its absence), and, to heal a long-standing family wound. She also discovers of course the approach of a new century. The past, he an ancestor who played a role in New Zealand’s forgotten sadly concedes, has made him the solitary, psychologically tragedy. scarred older man he has become. Actress Jacki Weaver never knew her Grandma. Jacki’s Was the world so different then from what it is now? How dad Arthur was a ward of the state and she doesn’t know might our past impact upon us? Do you think it’s important anything about his biological family – except for his moth- to know who your ancestors were? Why? Might what we er’s name. Jacki wants to know who her Grandmother was discover change our lives today? and why she had to give up her baby.

Well, we’re are about to find the answers to these questions Actor Richard Roxburgh discovers his family’s footprints for some well-known Australians: beloved and iconic celebri- in an unexpected corner of the world, finding two ancestors ties Andrew Denton, Rebecca Gibney, Jacki Weaver, Richard on opposite sides of the fierce struggle over slavery. In a Roxburgh, Amanda Keller, Adam Goodes, Lisa McCune and cruel and unjust world, he finds a courageous figure giving Paul McDermott. Taking us to all corners of the world, they hope and guidance to the oppressed. will be ‘playing detective’ in tracing their family trees back into the historic past, seeking to find the definitive answer to TV and radio host Amanda Keller discovers her bloodline where they came from. Their journeys will take them from the has survived against all odds; finding an ancestor who former Russian Empire to the Promised Land, from the fallen faced hell on earth in Australia’s most brutal prison and a Colonial glory of the Caribbean to Australia’s near neighbour. mother fighting to save her family in the face of tragedy. And across six vast Australian states and one territory. Australian of the Year and AFL star Adam Goodes investi- Along the way, secrets are uncovered and struggles over- gates his long-lost Aboriginal heritage, uncovering a royal come, but most of all, each person is going to discover that bloodline and a 19th century mining magnate in his family the stories of individuals are inextricably linked to the story tree. On a quest to learn about his ancestors’ culture he SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 of the nation – that their identity, just like all of ours, is part of journeys deep into the remote Flinders Ranges and finds Australia’s identity. evidence of their lives from thousands of years ago.

Combining emotional personal journeys with big-picture Actress Lisa McCune uncovers a sensational Gold Rush history, these are inspiring, sometimes challenging stories murder and learns the tragic secret behind her own father’s which remind us how we’ve come to be the people that we childhood. are today.

Series 6 INTRODUCTION On the trail of his ancestors, entertainer Paul McDermott Apparently, family history is one of the most popular par- delves into the mystery behind his mother’s adoption and ticipation hobbies across the world. Some people say that the cruelly brief lives and loves of his ancestors. He also it’s the second most popular use of the internet. And, to uncovers a tale of hard times and great expectations in illustrate the interest in the subject, there’s a Google search colonial Adelaide. which says, for the word ‘genealogy’, there are over a hundred million entries. The online service Ancestry.com.au So welcome to tales of scandal and scholarship, pioneers commissioned a survey at the end of 2006 which showed and bushrangers, artists and royalty, heroes and villains. that 83 per cent of Australians claim to be interested in Welcome to Series Six of the celebrated genealogy se- tracing their family history. ries Who Do You Think You Are? – exploring the family history of another selection of high profile Australians. However, even though this appears to be quite a wide- spread interest, the depth of people’s knowledge is a little Who Do You Think You Are? is an adaptation of the BBC more limited. For instance, the average Australian’s knowl- series of the same name, airing on SBS One. SBS first aired edge of their families only goes back to the 1860s, and 29 six episodes of the BBC series in late 2007, followed by per cent of people didn’t know where their grandparents six Australian episodes beginning 13 January 2008, and were born. Similarly, 41 per cent of people under the age of then six more from the original BBC version. Each episode 25 didn’t know when their family first arrived in Australia. profiles a celebrity tracing their family tree, and is narrated by Richard Mellick. It’s fair to say that people often come to family history somewhat later in life. The reasons for people’s interest in The success of the series led to SBS One and the National the subject are many and varied. Some people have sug- Archives of Australia jointly organising a Shake Your Family gested that the breakup of the family unit as children move Tree Day on 27 February 2008, to promote an interest in away from the family homes, people not having so many genealogy. SBS One renewed the series for a sixth series children in the first place. Not too many people today are on 29 August 2012. born, married, and die in the same place, as would have been the case 100 to 150 years ago, or even earlier.

Why do so many of us want to find So the breakup of the family unit is one impetus for people. out about our past history, to trace They want to find out how they belong, where they come from, how their family fits into the society into which it was our family tree? living.

To begin to answer to this question, we should listen to Other people are simply curious and enjoy ferreting around

Andrew Denton, musing on this question: and finding out what they can about people, albeit, usually SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 ones long departed. Some people have a medical interest As you get older, you get curious about where is your place in the subject, want to find out about some genetic pro- in the universe? We’re all impermanent and I think there pensities, want to find out about deaths, death certificates, comes a point in everybody’s life, no matter what your belief causes of deaths and those sorts of things. structure is where, somehow or other, you have to try and fix yourself in time, fix yourself in space and the only way to And others have just interesting family stories that have do that is to find your story and make sense of it... been passed on to them by grandparents about being

Series 6 INTRODUCTION descendents of Captain Cook, or grandfather being a cock- ney, or illegitimate children, lost money, all sorts of family stories that get passed on from generation to generation. This study guide aims to:

And it’s very much a detective story, putting the assump- • Introduce us to the personal histories of a se- tions together, proving your findings. Some people also lection of prominent Australians with a view to describe it as a jigsaw puzzle, where you don’t know what teaching us the value and impact of tracing one’s the picture is, nor how many pieces there are, or how many ancestry; you’ve got. And none of them have straight edges. • Show us the varied backgrounds of Australians Up until the 1970s tracing of ancestry was very much an which illustrates and reinforces the principles and affair of well-to-do families, landed families, nobility and ethos of multiculturalism in Australia; gentry. People wouldn’t have thought about tracing the ordinary ancestry of an agricultural labourer or convict.But • Illustrate how societal attitudes, views and values attitudes toward our ancestors have also changed. Terms have evolved and transformed over time; such as ‘the convict stain’ are no longer heard. And if you saw the first episode of Who Do You Think You Are? you • Illustrate how history and historical inquiry are not would have seen Jack Thompson’s delight at discovering simply confined to textbooks and specified cur- that he had a convict in his family history, quite a badge riculum, but are an integral part of everyday life; of honour now in many respects, especially if it’s a ‘First Fleeter’. • Link this series to a variety of classroom activities in subjects such as English, History, Civics and

And of course technology has revolutionised the subject as Citizenship. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 well.

For more information on the growing enthusiasm for family history, see the excellent transcript of Climbing your family tree, a speech given by Jeremy Palmeras part of Shake Appendices Your Family Tree Day at the National Archives of Australia on 27 February, 2008. In this series, there will be some terms and references that may require some clarification. For this purpose, Appendi- ces have been provided at the end of each Episode. 5

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 INTRODUCTION EPISODE ONE

Andrew Denton explores faith, family ties and books, books, books

omedian, social critic, producer and media personality Andrew Denton is perhaps best known for his in-depth interview series Enough Rope. (The title of the show came from the phrase “give someone enough ropeC and they’ll hang themselves”.) This popular hour-long chat show aired from 2003 to 2008. The show was based around in-depth interviews Andrew held with a celebrity or person of note, usually before a studio audience. He has garnered a reputation for intellect and irreverence and many high-profile guests would comment on his meticulous research in interview preparation.

In addition to celebrities, his interviewees have included people who have extraordinary life stories or hold interesting professions, such as veterinarians, taxi drivers and div- ing instructors. A feature of the show was “Show & Tell”, in which Andrew interviewed members of the studio audience, who revealed unusual stories about themselves.

But how closely has Andrew interrogated his own story?

Not very intensively, he observes. And so his journey begins, tracing his paternal line.

Andrew is one of three children born to Lenore ‘Le’ Pearson SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 and Arnold Christopher ‘Kit’ Denton. He has fond memories of both parents; his mother:

My mum, Le, was this tiny, “mad” Irish woman, she was incredibly gregarious,and she just had this hilarious way of looking at the world’.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON And his father: ‘he was a very strong-minded, intellectual, intense man, but also a very bizarre “Goon-like” sense of humour. My father was a strong atheist, fierce with his beliefs and ideas,’... Between the two of them I had a rich, very creative, vibrant – sometimes very loud – upbringing.

Family photographs of a happily married couple, wedding pictures and portraits create for us a visualisation of this happy, fun-loving household.

Kit Denton, now deceased, was also a well-known writer and broadcaster; his most significant work was The Breaker, the history of the Boer War Australian soldier Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant. Kit was Jewish by birth, but as Andrew observes, there was no religious tradition in the household, given his father’s rejection of religious belief. However, as Andrew begins the complex and time-consuming journey to investigate his family’s past, he is going to find that his father is at the centre of a family rift that goes back two generations and has much to do with Judaism.

Arnold Christopher ‘Kit’ Denton, Andrew’s father:

Arnold was born in the East End of London in 1928. His family name was Ditkofsky, a Jewish name, which his father – Andrew’s grandfather – anglicised to Denton. Chang- that pursued Andrew’s father into later life? ing the family name to one sounding ‘English’ was due to the rising tide of anti-Semitism gripping the nation – and indeed, much of Europe in the 1930s. ‘Pandora’s box’

History, reflects Andrew, can come from anywhere; it can The young Kit be hidden under the bed or the kitchen sink; it flows from all over the place and just because it’s not in the official Changing the family name was merely the start of change records doesn’t mean it’s not out there, waiting to be dis- for Kit; over the next few decades, the young man would covered. become increasingly separated from his Jewish faith, emi- grating to Australia in 1950, where he met and married Le Andrew now visits his two sisters, Jo and Pip, and they all Pearson, a Catholic girl, thus rendering all children of this sit down to look through the family ‘treasure trove’: an old marriage ‘non-Jewish.’ camphor-wood box, nicknamed ‘Pandora’s box’. Perhaps the memorabilia of old photographs, letters and documents Kit also left behind a special literary gift for his children, a might “flesh out” the family history? ‘mini-memoir’, in which he revisits his long-past Jewish family roots in order to pass on this history to his children. Kit Denton has a sister, Stella, with whom he was very He movingly writes: close. During World War Two (1939–1945) in England, the capital, London, was under fierce bombardment from the It appears that in spite of all my beliefs, I believe in some German airforce and both children, like so many then, were kind of after-life. How else could all these people, so long evacuated to the countryside, away from direct danger. dead, live so clearly behind my closed eyelids, inside the tunnels and caverns of my night-time mind? Immortality, life SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 after death, all that stuff, boils done to someone’s memory, Andrew’s grandparents and the doesn’t it? And having children, and giving them what you weight of tradition can of those memories...

So here we have Kit Denton, professed atheist, finding a Kit and Stella were the children of Harry Ditkofsky and form of spirituality in the uncovering and passing on of fam- Fanny Baskin, Andrew’s grandparents –so now we have ily history. So how strong were the ties of faith and family three generations of the Denton/Ditkofsky family tree

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON clarified. But now, from the box, a mysterious, lengthy Harry, the writer piece of writing emerges: a ‘Document of Honour and Merit: giving detailed particulars of the renowned family While Andrew and his father Kit, share a common enthusi- Katzenellenbogen.’ The repeated reference to ‘rabbi’ shows asm for books and writing, and perhaps a considered tilt at that it is clearly a Jewish document, but who are the people rejecting conformity, it seems this is going to be an inher- named in these pages? There’s no mention of a Ditkofsky. ent family trait! Harry Ditkofsky also broke away from his father’s expectations; while his father Israel wanted him to And there is another surprise. Andrew finds a letter written become a rabbi, Harry, although he studied diligently, knew by his grandfather, Harry, to his son, Kit, and the message the life of a rabbi was not for him, and became a master is painful. In ‘marrying out’ – an expression for marriage cabinetmaker. to someone outside of one’s religion or culture – Kit has caused much pain and heartache to his father, who while And Harry wrote a book about his life as an English school- declaring himself ‘a fair-minded person. I accept individuals boy. A Boy Named Ditto, is an autobiographical memoir as I find them regardless of race, creed or colour in ordinary of his youth, his experiences and his family, recounting material things’ is dismayed at his son not marrying a girl incidents of racism directed at his father Israel, who, while of the Jewish faith. In Orthodox Judaism, Jewishness is a quiet, gentle man, was simply not going to tolerate this passed down the mother’s line, so Kit’s decision to marry attitude, having already left his homeland because of the a Catholic would have meant that his children would not virulent anti-Semitism his community had suffered. His be regarded as Jewish. This caused great turmoil to Kit’s brave response to the anti-Semitic thugs on one recalled father Harry – and yet, Andrew recalls, nothing was ever occasion, was out of keeping with what many, at the time, mentioned about this in the family as he grew up; the view expected. But Andrew’s ancestors would soon learn that from his grandparents that Kit ‘had walked out on his religious persecution would descend to unimaginable people.’ depths.

It’s a painful letter, even now, but given with love, demonstrating the depth of feeling generated by issues of faith In search of Israel’s heritage – and and family. What was the extent and quality of this ‘weight Andrew’s – and a link to Pandora’s box of tradition?’

Israel Ditkofsky came from the province of Grodno, in what A trip to London was then the Russian Empire, now the nation of Belarus, and so this means another journey for Andrew and the Kit Denton’s sister, Stella, is still living and it has been more aid of an interpreter. The director of the Grodno Archives, than twenty years since Andrew has seen her, so it’s off Tatiana Afanasieva, has uncovered traces of the Ditkof- to the United Kingdom to put together more pieces of the skys. She shows Andrew a document from 1891, a list of Denton/Ditkofsky puzzle. Jews living in the village of Suchowola. Israel is mentioned on this document, a seventeen-year-old boy. (It would be Stella has remained in the East End – once a strong cultural some ten years later that he left Suchowola for London and business centre for Jewish Londoners – and is at the and the life of a cabinetmaker.) And it’s here that we are heart of the local Jewish community. She lives in a strongly acquainted with the parents of Israel – Asher Meir1 Ditkof- Jewish household, eats kosher food and keeps the religious sky and his two wives, Sora Feiga, (deceased) and Masha traditions. In her youth, her family spoke Yiddish at home. Goldberg.

Examining Stella’s family photographs, Andrew is intro- Asher Meir the name at the head of the family document duced to his great-grandparents, Israel Ditkofsky and in “Pandora’s box” – is Andrew’s great-great-grandfather, Sarah, who emigrated to England in the 1890s, a time of who, it would appear, set down a family history of distin- great turmoil in history, during which over two million Jews guished rabbis and scholars. And yet again, we may be fled persecution in the Russian Empire. More than 120,000 observing a link to a familial trait: the leaving behind of a settled in the U.K., concentrating in London’s East End. In family tradition, either deliberately or by circumstance2. But 1903 Harry, Andrew’s grandfather, was born in London. this document: might it be a talisman or an amulet for future

generations of Ditkofskys, a reminder to the son from the SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 But the U.K. was sadly not immune to anti-Semitism, with father of what he was leaving behind? a growing presence of anti-Semitic fascist groups such as Oswald Mosley’s “Blackshirts”, groups who modelled themselves in uniform, conduct and political beliefs on the emergent Italian leader Benito Mussolini. 1 The anglicised spelling ‘Meir’ has been used.

2 Israel was a devout Jew. He did not leave the religion at all. Israel was also a master cabinet-

maker and Harry followed him into this trade after initially studying to be a rabbi.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON And so to Sucholwola be deported, and was brutally whipped by the Nazi guards for doing so. But even worse was to come. Next stop is the village where Asher Meir and his family lived; because the borders of European nations have been In 1942, Jan bore witness to the destruction of the ghetto. drawn and redrawn over the centuries, Suchowola is now All the Jews were forced onto carts and deported to their not part of Russia, but is in Poland. Might there be still one final destination – the Treblinka extermination camp. By the or two descendents of the family still living there? Who time the ghetto was emptied, Asher Meir’s son Israel would would know this? have been safely in England. But what of all those children of Asher Meir’s second marriage? What did happen to Jan Guzowski, a 91-year-old resident of Suchowola, has the remaining members of the Ditkofsky family? Andrew lived in the village all his life, and through the interpreter, he reflects: tells Andrew the sad news: no one of Jewish birth is left in the village: all were deported by the Nazis during World War I realised as I was talking to Jan what a darkly naïve thing it Two. was to imagine that there might be descendents here. I’ve never been to Eastern Europe, I’ve never been to Poland, Yet in the 1930s, in Jan’s boyhood, the local Jewish and I’ve never walked the streets, never seen, never been to the gentile (non-Jewish) community were on friendly and place so to actually experience that is as confronting as it compatible terms, sharing the food prepared on feast days, should be. trading together in the markets, enjoying each others’ company in a period of happy co-existence. Three thousand people lived in Suchowola then, half of whom were Jewish. Jan tearfully recalls the terrible tide of events for the village beginning in 1941, when the invading Wehrmacht (Germany Army) arrived in Suchowola, followed by the Gestapo (Se- cret State Police) and the SS (Protection Squad).

The Jews of Suchowola were forced to burn all of their To- rah (the central text of Judaism) scrolls and religious books SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 in front of the synagogue. The great wooden synagogue, which was established in 1743, was demolished and used for firewood. The Jews were forced into a ghetto to be physically segregated from the village. The ghetto became overcrowded, terribly under-resourced, beset by disease and malnutrition. Jan recounts a story of a local gentile neighbour who tried to speak to one of the Jews about to

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON The Yizkor Book This poignant and beautiful piece of writing is a devastating testimony to the brutality of so many innocent lives cut Andrew meets the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Sh- short by the Nazis, and yet is also a connection to another udrich, at the only Jewish community building left in writer in the family, one who, in a few words, recreates a Suchowola– the Beit Midrash, or “place of study.” In the old tranquil world of childhood brutally cut short. And, Andrew pre-war days, devout adults would come here to study; the reflects, “had Israel, Asher Meir’s son, decided not to emi- goal of life for the religious Jew was “to study and do God’s grate, I would not be here.’ commandments.” Rabbi Shudrich has brought a special book with him: A Yizkor book, a text written by survivors as If you want to see the actual Yizkor Book, it’s available a way to commemorate those who perished in the Holo- online at the New York Public Library at: http://yizkor.nypl. caust and to never forget the horror that was done to them. org/index.php?id=2510 (Click on Suchowola) However, There are more than one thousand of these books, com- since this is written in Hebrew, you may find a translation piled and written about Jewish communities across Europe, at:http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/suchowola/ keeping alive the memories of family and life that once was suchowola.html safe and happy. Yizkor is the Hebrew word for ‘memory’. The Suchowola Yizkor book was published in 1957 in Is- rael. In it, Andrew is able to see for the first time, a picture “Suchowola: the heart of the of his great-great grandfather, Asher Meir Ditkofsky. Holocaust”

- and Hanna’s testimony The plaque outside the Beit Midrash informs that on the 2nd of November, 1942, the Suchowola ghetto was liqui- And one of the contributors is Hanna Ditkofsky, Andrew’s dated and the Jews were sent to the Treblinka death camp. great grandfather Israel’s half-sister, and Asher Meir’s And so this is where Andrew’s journey must now take him. youngest daughter. Andrew reads:

Our home...stood on Church Street. I remember the wood Treblinka. near our house and can still see the sons of my brother Eliezer and my sister running after me whenever I was in Of the estimated 800,000 people who passed through the the wood. As alive as if it were today I see the dear children gates of this camp, only sixty-seven escaped and survived begging me to sing with them, and to dance, to dance.... In the war. For some detailed information about Treblinka, see 1932 I separated from my siblings and made ‘Aliyah’ – mi- the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: gration – to the land of Israel, hoping that I would see them again. Not a trace is left of my large family from Suchowola. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article. My brother Eliezer and my three sisters...and their families, php?ModuleId=10005193 were killed by the murderers. The tragedy is enormous and the hurt is overwhelming. Especially the thought of Only one survivor of Treblinka is alive today: Samuel Wil- those gentle children that were cut down...I will never know lenberg is able to talk to Andrew, once more through an in- peace. I will never forget them... terpreter, of how Treblinka was built solely for mass murder. No records were kept of the names of those murdered so their existence could be erased completely. And so grimly efficient was the murder of these men, women, and children that 15,000 could be asphyxiated in the gas chambers in a single day.

The horrific conditions of the trains that brought the victims to Treblinka is recounted by Samuel, as is the speed at which the executions took place. No official records of the camp’s structures exist as the Nazis did not want to keep evidence of what was happening there. If it were not

for survivors like Samuel Willenberg, we would not know SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 what the camp looked like at all. He has drawn a detailed map from memory which details the process from arrival to death - a drawing made so that he could show others the crimes committed by the Nazis.

Samuel was spared from imminent death when he was chosen to become a forced labourer. The horror he

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON witnessed is seared into his memory. The horrors of his life And so to find Hanna’s family are seared into his memory; he was forced to cut womens’ hair on their way to the gas chamber and his encounter In the Yizkor Book, Andrew discovered that all was not lost with an eighteen-year-old girl who had just graduated for his family: Hanna, daughter of Asher Meir Ditkofsky, from high school and her questioning him about how long emigrated to Israel in 1932 and was spared the horrors of it would take before she was to die is “seared into (his) war; although she died twenty years ago, might there still memory; you can’t erase it,” he declares. Samuel has also be some relatives of hers living there? crafted copper sculptures of this girl and of others, showing their vulnerability and despair at their fate. Grotesquely, the The answer is yes; Hanna’s son, Meir and daughter, Alona– hair that was cut from the victims was “used to stuff mat- cousins of Andrew. In Tel Aviv, the second most populous tresses in submarines”, a revelation that naturally appalls city in Israel, they meet and at last, Andrew is able to see Andrew, sitting here in this place of death, listening to this a photograph of Hanna. Reminiscing, the siblings recall a incredible old man recalling what can never be forgotten. core of sadness in their mother: “She had, inside, a balloon of sorrow” says Alona. In Israel, Hanna and her children In April 1943, the Nazis began burning the bodies of their were unaware of the Holocaust as it took place in Europe, victims to erase them entirely. Later that year they began and when she learned of it, Hanna sought to protect her to dismantle the camp itself – they leveled buildings and children from the knowledge, keeping their childhood as planted crops. In post-war Poland, the communist govern- carefree as possible. This seems very typical of Hanna, ment built a memorial on the site of the camp. Treblinka reflects Andrew, since her writing shows her to have been a was declared a national monument of martyrology during kind-hearted, loving, family-orientated being. an official ceremony held in 1964 at the site of the former SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 gas chambers, and this Andrew visits; each of the small villages that saw their Jewish community extinguished is And the document from Pandora’s commemorated by a special stone in this memorial, and the box? field of large, jagged monuments is a powerful testament to one of the most terrible events in history: the Shoah. Meir reveals that he, too, has a copy of this, and an original, older version written in Hebrew. It seems it was also passed

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON down through branches of the Ditkofsky family. In Meir’s that he has more of the story, he can see the connection Hebrew version, the family line goes back to a medieval that ties the family line together: scholar, Rashi. It’s all books, books, books, books. My father was a writer, my grandfather wrote a book, Hanna wrote so beautifully Links to King David? that short passage for the Yizkor Book. All these rabbis wrote these books and that’s why this family history exists... Rashi is believed to be descended from King David, a re- that seems to ring true for my family... vered figure in Judaism. David was, according to the Bible, the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah, But this ancestral journey has also shown up clashes of hero of the story of David and Goliath, and according to the faith, family and tradition and a fierce spiritual strength New Testament Gospels of Matthew and Luke, an ancestor against the darkest forces of inhumanity. Sorrows and hap- of Jesus. A genetic link to such an iconic figure is an entic- piness, deaths and survival, risk-taking and enterprise mark ing prospect. All Andrew has to do now is to prove it! the generations of this extraordinary family, recorded and passed down. “Despite the searing fire of the Holocaust, Sadly, it can’t be done; according to Israeli genealogist Irit despite the intensity of that heat, not everything was, nor Shem-Tov, an ancestral link to this heroic character is a can everything be, burnt,” declares our traveller. popular tradition, which, in the absence of proof, remains a myth. But while Andrew may not be able to trace his ancestry back into biblical history, Ms Shem-Tov gives3 him a proven, lengthy family tree for the Ditkofskys, taking the APPENDIX 1. family all the way back to 1482, down a distinguished line of rabbinical scholars and writers: the Katzenellenbogens The Goons: The Goon Show was a British radio comedy – the very name at the top of the page in the family docu- programme, originally produced and broadcast by the BBC ment, far away in Australia! from 1951 to 1960. The show’s chief creator and main writer was Spike Milligan. The scripts mixed ludicrous plots This research – and this journey – confirms and establishes with surreal humour, puns, catchphrases and an array of all those fascinating connections and legacy to a family liv- bizarre sound effects. Some of the later episodes feature ing in so many different parts of the world. electronic effects devised by the then-fledgling BBC Ra-

diophonic Workshop, many of which were reused by other SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 shows for decades afterwards. Many elements of the show Reflections on a journey satirised contemporary life in Britain, parodying aspects of show business, commerce, industry, art, politics, diplo- As Andrew wanders the streets of Jerusalem, Israel’s capi- macy, the police, the military, education, class structure, tal, he reflects on the story of the Ditkofskys. His secular literature and film. upbringing was founded on debate and intellect, but now

3 The WDYTYA team had done the genealogy, not Irit. • Fascism: Fascism is a far-right political ideology in

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON which the state maintains absolute power. All citizens from the Hebrew meaning fit, proper or correct. are obligated to obey the state. The head of state is an authoritarian leader, or dictator. This leader maintains The word “kosher,” which describes food that meets the law and order by use of a strong military and police standards of kashrut, is also often used to describe ritual force. He embodies the state and is loved and admired objects that are made in accordance with Jewish law and by the people. Benito Mussolini was one of the key are fit for ritual use. Food that is not kosher is referred to as founders of fascism, following his example was Adolf treif (literally torn). Hitler who came to power in Germany as head of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party in 1933. Fascist parties Kosher is not a style of cooking and therefore there is no also appeared in Spain, Argentina, and Japan. Fascism such thing as “kosher-style” food. Any kind of food – Chi- is associated with ideas of ultranationalism, militarism, nese, Mexican, Indian, etc. – can be kosher if it is prepared and economic self-sufficiency. in accordance with Jewish law. At the same time, traditional Jewish foods like knishes, bagels, blintzes and matzah • Talisman: an object, typically an inscribed ring or stone, ball soup can all be treif if not prepared in accordance that is thought to have magic powers and to bring with Jewish law. Many modern Jews think that the laws of good luck. kashrut are simply primitive health regulations that have become obsolete with modern methods of food prepara- • Memorabilia: objects kept or collected because of their tion. There is no question that some of the dietary laws associations with memorable people or events. have beneficial health effects. Here’s a rundown of kosher food laws:

1. Certain animals may not be eaten at all. This restriction APPENDIX TWO, EPISODE ONE: includes the flesh, organs, eggs and milk of the forbid- MISCELLANEA den animals.

2. Of the animals that may be eaten, the birds and mam- A glossary of Jewish terms and mals must be killed in accordance with Jewish law. phrases 3. All blood must be drained from the meat or broiled out of it before it is eaten. Judaism: A monotheistic religion whose origins date back approximately 5000 years. Today there are about 14 million 4. Certain parts of permitted animals may not be eaten. people who identify themselves as Jewish. Jewish communities are usually Orthodox, Reform, or Conservative. Like 5. Meat (the flesh of birds and mammals) cannot be eaten Christianity and Islam, Judaism is a monotheistic Semitic with dairy. Fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables and grains can religion. However, Judaism is unique in that “Jewish” can be eaten with either meat or dairy. (According to some also be used to describe a cultural or racial identity. Some views, fish may not be eaten with meat). people may identify as Jews without believing in the Jewish faith. 6. Utensils that have come into contact with meat may not be used with dairy, and vice versa. Utensils that For an excellent overview of this faith, see ‘Religion Facts: have come into contact with non-kosher food may not Judaism’ at http://www.religionfacts.com/judaism/index. be used with kosher food. This applies only where the htm contact occurred while the food was hot.

Rabbi: A teacher of the Torah. The title has evolved over the 7. Grape products made by non-Jews may not be eaten. centuries to encompass many roles and definitions. Today it usually refers to those who have received rabbinical ordi- This separation includes not only the foods themselves, but nation and are experts in Jewish law. Many countries have the utensils, pots and pans with which they are cooked, a chief rabbi. the plates and flatware from which they are eaten, the dishwashers or dishpans in which they are cleaned, and

• Rabbinical:the adjective from the noun ‘rabbi.’ the towels on which they are dried. A kosher household SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 will have at least two sets of pots, pans and dishes: one • Synagogue: A Jewish house of worship, prayer, and for meat and one for dairy. A number of orthodox houses learning. may even have two kitchens for preparing two categories of foods. Kosher: (Kashrut in Hebrew) is the body of Jewish law dealing with what foods can and cannot be eaten and how Yiddish: literally “Jewish” is the historical language of the those foods must be prepared. The word “Kashrut” comes Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON Central Europe, providing the pre-existing language of the dated in the fourth of the Ten Commandments. We sanctify nascent Ashkenazi community with an extensive Germanic the Shabbat and “rest” on this special day—defined by based vocabulary. Yiddish is written with a fully vocalized abstention from most activities. alphabet based on the Hebrew script.The term “Yiddish” did not become the most frequently used designation in • Matzah: Matzo, matza or matzah is an unleavened the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into bread traditionally eaten by Jews during the week-long the 20th century the language was more commonly called Passover holiday, when eating bread and other food “Jewish”, especially in non-Jewish contexts, but “Yiddish” made with leavened grain – is forbidden according to is again the more common designation. Jewish religious law.

Torah: The Torah, or Jewish Written Law, consists of the five books of the Hebrew Bible – known more commonly to Shoah: non-Jews as the “Old Testament” – that include within them all of the biblical laws of Judaism. The Torah is also known The Hebrew word for the Holocaust. The Shoah was a gen- as the Chumash, Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses. ocide in which approximately six million Jews were murdered by Nazi Germany and its allies under the command The word “Torah” has multiple meanings including: A scroll of Adolf Hitler. Killings took place with the German Third made from kosher animal parchment, with the entire text Reich and its occupied territories. The Holocaust began of the Five Books of Moses written on it; the text of the with the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933 and ended with their Five Books of Moses, written in any format; and, the term surrender in World War Two in 1945. Of the approximately “Torah” can mean the entire body of Jewish law. nine million Jews who lived in Europe before the Shoah, about two thirds were murdered. The horrors of the Shoah • Shabbat: Shabbat is the Jewish Sabbath, celebrated led to the creation of the word genocide and its codification

every week from sundown on Friday to nightfall of into international law. Apart from the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Saturday. In Hebrew, Shabbat means “resting.” As is communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically recounted in the beginning of the Book of Genesis, disabled, and others, were also targeted and murdered. God created the world in six days and on the seventh He refrained from creating. Adam and Eve celebrated • Aliyah: Hebrew for ‘migration to the land of Israel’ the first Shabbat in the Garden of Eden. • Anti-Semitism: Attitudes, prejudices and physical The observance of Shabbat by the Jewish nation is man- demonstrations of racial and religious prejudice against

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON members of the Jewish race and religion. explore the diversity of society. Who Do You Think You Are? Series 6 speaks clearly to these notions. In the lives of all eight subjects in this series, we are being confronted with a number of social, cultural, religious and political issues, all CURRICULUM RELEVANCE of which resonate in our contemporary Australian society.

Who Do You Think You Are? Series 6 is a useful supplemen- Civics and Citizenship’s Rationale sets out various expec- tary text for the following subjects: tations of citizens of Australia with a key to appreciating Australia’s cultural, linguistic and religious diversity. • Year 10 Civics & Citizenship Civics and citizenship entails knowledge and understand- • Year 10 Australian History ing of Australia’s democratic heritage and traditions, its political and legal institutions and the shared values of • Year 10 Film and Media Studies freedom, tolerance, respect, responsibility and inclusion. This study also supports the development of skills, values • Year 9 & 10 English and attitudes that are necessary for effective, informed and reflective participation in Australia’s democracy. • VCE English VCE Units 1-4 In the ‘Informing Principles’ section of the ACARA guide • VCE Media Studies, Units 1, 3, and 4. to this subject, Australia’s values are defined as including ‘freedom of the individual…equality of all before the law, social justice and equality, respect for diversity and difference, freedom of speech and religion, respect for human rights…. LINKS TO THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM support for the common good.’

Year Ten Civics and Citizenship: link Australia is defined as ‘a multicultural, pluralist, secular society with a multi-faith population’; the recognition of ‘the SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 to the National Curriculum contribution of major religions and beliefs and the voluntary, community, interest and religious groups, associations and Civics and Citizenship focuses on the development of skills clubs to civic life and to the development of Australian civic and behaviours involved in interactions with the community identity’ must be recognized. and in engagement with organisations and groups. Stu- dents think critically about their own values and those of ‘Civics and Citizenship’ is thus seen as ‘contribut(ing) to the organisations and groups across a range of settings, and concepts of individual identity and sense of belonging.It will

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON also help students develop inclusive attitudes and beliefs of the Australian identity. and liberal democratic values and challenge stereotypes based on difference.’ In general, Film and Media Studies at Year 10 level involves studying aspects of both film and television, with a series of Who Do You Think You Are? should provide students with projected Outcomes. greater understanding of the struggles experienced by those who come to Australia with a history of trauma; it will Who Do You Think You Are? addresses many criteria per- also provide students with background history of people taining to these Outcomes as shown: who suffered rejection and social ostracism in the past over issues of race and perceived breaches of moral/ethical • Students develop the ability to critically analyse film standards. Conversely, newcomers to Australia, in partici- and television texts in a range of ways; pating in this subject, will hopefully learn much about these Informing Principles and their expectations as aspiring • They are required to reflect critically on issues related citizens. to the production, distribution and reception of film through a range of practical and written assignments;

The Arts – Media, Film, Drama: Links • They work towards understanding the aesthetics, to the National Curriculum styles and formats of film and television texts;

• They learn to understand and control how audiences The scope and sequence of the Australian Arts Curriculum participate in the construction of the meaning of media; embodies: • They develop the ability and knowledge to explain . Dance ways in which media texts reinforce or challenge social, cultural and artistic values; . Drama • They learn to use appropriate media terminology and . Media Arts personal interpretations to describe the structure, content and aesthetic qualities of film and television texts; . Music • They study critical approaches to analyse and interpret . Visual Art media texts;

Through Media Arts, individuals and groups participate in, • The language of film and television; cinematography, experiment with and interpret the rich culture and com- sounds and mise-en-scène are studied. munications practices that surround them. In media arts, students develop knowledge and understanding of five Who Do You Think You Are? also provides an excellent key concepts: the media languages used to tell stories; the opportunity at Year 10 level to broaden students’ socio- technologies which are essential for producing, accessing cultural and contemporary historical horizons by introduc- and distributing media; the various institutions that enable ing them to the issues connected to ‘multicultural Australia’ and constrain media production and use; the audiences for and the cultural relevance of this while concurrently engag- whom media arts products are made and who respond as ing with the core criteria of Media and Film Study. consumers, citizens and creative individuals; and the constructed representations of the world, which rely on shared social valued and beliefs. LINKS TO THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM FOR YEAR 10 ENGLISH: YEAR 10 FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES: A number of learning areas in the National English Curricu- LINKS TO THE YEAR 10 NATIONAL lum are inherently addressed in Who Do You Think You Are? SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 CURRICULUM English Content Descriptions: Language.

Who Do You Think You Are? is a documentary series about Language variation and change. Students should: contemporary Australians and their place in their family history and the repercussions of that history on those • Understand that Standard Australian English in its spo- involved. It is a text that also speaks to us of the diversity of ken and written forms has a history of evolution and the Australia demographic, and of the multi-faceted notion change and continues to evolve (ACELA1563)

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON Language for interaction. Students should: ENGLISH/EAL YEARS 11–12 –

• Understand how language use can have inclusive and NATIONAL CURRICULUM LINKS exclusive social effects, and can empower or disem- The English curriculum in the senior secondary years power people (ACELA1564) continues to provide a range of choice of more special- ised courses to meet students’ needs and interests. Some • Understand that people’s evaluations of texts are influ- examples of options may include the study of film or enced by their value systems literature, a general English studies program oriented to vocational uses of English and English as an Additional the context and the purpose and mode of communication Language or Dialect (EAL/D). (ACELA1565) In the Language Strand, students apply their knowledge Text structure and organization. Students will: about language to a variety of disciplines and purposes. In doing so, they demonstrate a sophisticated understand- • Compare the purposes, text structures and language ing of grammar and language features from the textual to features of traditional and contemporary texts in differ- the word level, and the ability to identify and analyse how ent media (ACELA1566) language is used, and implement this understanding for different purposes and audiences. • Evaluate the impact on audiences of different choices in the representation of still and moving images In the Literature Strand, students will better understand (ACELA1572) literary texts and discuss and debate the elements that make a text culturally valuable. Students engage in exten- Film study is a common element of the English course at sive analysis of literary texts, in terms of contextual aspects this level, and Who Do You Think You Are? provides both a such as social impact, purpose and message. They also useful text to introduce students to cinematic techniques analyse literature texts for technical aspects such as lan- and to potentially provide an introduction to the style and guage, plot and character development. (Students compare elements of documentary filmmaking. past and present texts in relation to themes, purposes or language features, in order to discuss issues of form, According to the rubric of the National Curriculum, this content, and structure). Students compose texts that show documentary may provide students with a text ‘to compare informed appreciation of plot and character development, and evaluate a range of representations of individuals and effective language use, and representation and manipula- groups in different historical, social and cultural contexts’ tion of ideas. (ACELT1639). The Literacy Strand involves students producing a grow- • Students can use Who Do You Think You Are? to ana- ing range of creative expository, persuasive and other texts lyse and evaluate how people, cultures, places, events, under various circumstances with a variety of stimuli, and objects, and concepts are represented … through lan- demonstrate an ability to create written, spoken and multi- guage, structural and/or visual choices’ (ACELT1749). modal texts both individually and with peers.

• They are also able ‘to analyse and explain how text structures, language features and visual features of texts, and the context in which texts are experienced, YEAR 10 HISTORY: LINKS TO THE may influence audience response’ (ACELT1641). NATIONAL CURRICULUM • Using this documentary, students can address and ‘evaluate the social, moral and ethical positions repre- Description sented in texts’ (ACELT1812). The Modern World and Australia Finally, this series provides an example for students to ‘compare and evaluate a range of representations of indi- The Year 10 curriculum provides a study of the history of viduals and groups in different historical, social and cultural the modern world and Australia from 1918 to the present, SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 contexts’(ACELT1639). with an emphasis on Australia in its global context. The twentieth century became a critical period in Australia’s social, cultural, economic and political development. The transformation of the modern world during a time of political turmoil, global conflict and international cooperation provides a necessary context for understanding Australia’s development, its place within the Asia-Pacific region, and

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON its global standing. An overview of the causes and course of World War II (ACDSEH024) The content provides opportunities to develop historical understanding through key concepts, including evidence, An examination of significant events of World War II, in- continuity and change, cause and effect, perspectives, cluding the Holocaust and use of the atomic bomb (ACD- empathy, significance and contestability. These concepts SEH107) may be investigated within a particular historical context to facilitate an understanding of the past and to provide a 2. Rights and freedoms focus for historical inquiries. Students investigate struggles for human rights in depth. The history content at this year level involves two strands: This will include how rights and freedoms have been Historical Knowledge and Understanding and Historical ignored, demanded or achieved in Australia and in the Skills. These strands are interrelated and should be taught broader world context. in an integrated way, and in ways that are appropriate to specific local contexts. The order and detail in which they Rights and freedoms (1945 – the present) are taught are programming decisions. The origins and significance of the Universal Declaration A framework for developing students’ historical knowledge, of Human Rights, including Australia’s involvement in the understanding and skills is provided by inquiry questions development of the declaration (ACDSEH023) through the use and interpretation of sources. The key inquiry questions at this year level are: 3. The globalising world

Students investigate one major global influence that has Key inquiry questions shaped Australian society in depth, including the develop-

1. How did the nature of global conflict change during the twentieth century?

2. What were the consequences of World War Two? How did these consequences shape the modern world?

3. How was Australian society affected by other significant global events and changes in this period?

Depth studies

There are three depth studies for this historical period. For each depth study, there are up to three electives that focus on a particular society, event, movement or development. It is expected that ONE elective will be studied in detail. A depth study will constitute approximately 30 per cent of the total teaching time for the year. The content in each depth study elective is designed to allow detailed study of specific aspects of this historical period. As part of a teaching and learning program, depth study content can be integrated with overview content and/or integrated with other depth study electives.

1. World War II SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Students investigate wartime experiences through a study of World War II in depth. This includes a study of the causes, events, outcome and broader impact of the conflict as an episode in world history, and the nature of Australia’s involvement.

World War II (1939-45)

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON ment of the global influence during the twentieth century. The content and focus of the four Units of the VCE Media Students study ONE of these electives: Studies course mean that Who Do You Think You Are? presents as an excellent and highly relevant text for study Popular culture or The environment movement or Migration in Units 1, 3 and 4. experiences. Learning areas that apply particularly here are:

Continuity and change in beliefs and values that have influ- Unit 1 enced the Australian way of life (ACDSEH149) Area of Study 1: The contribution of migration to Australia’s changing identity as a nation and to its international relationships (ACD- Focus: an analysis of media representations and how such SEH147) representations depict, for example, events, people, places, organizations, ideas.

Area of Study 2: VCE MEDIA STUDIES UNITS 1, 3 & 4 Focus: technologies of representation; different media The Scope of Study for this subject states: forms and their features and practices.

‘The media is a diverse, dynamic and evolving collection Area of Study 3: of forms used to inform, communicate with and connect people. Media influence the way people spend their time, Focus: an analysis of Australian media organizations within help shape the way they perceive themselves and oth- a social, industrial and global framework. The laws, self- ers and play a crucial role in the creation and exchange of regulatory codes of conduct, industry pressures, practices personal, social, cultural, national and global identities. The of particular media organizations and global trends are all media entertain, educate, inform and provide channels of part of the focus of this Unit. communication. This takes place within the broader context of industrial organization; political and market structures; professional practices; creative processes; traditional, con- Unit 3 temporary and emerging technologies; regulation; and the need to attract and maintain audiences….’ Notions of audi- Area of Study 1: ence underlie the creation, distribution, consumption and reception of media texts….VCE Media Studies examines Focus: on the narrative construction of film, television or media products as the expression of creative ideas, specific drama texts; students learn that narrative is a fundamental symbolic languages and discourses of society and culture element of construction of meaning in media products. that shape meaning and reflect the society in which they were created. This Study explores a variety of media forms, including audio, audio-visual media, print-based media, Unit 4 digital and interactive media technologies and convergent media processes. Students examine and analyze the rela- Area of Study 2: tionships between audiences and the media…’ Focus: media texts and society’s values. Students under- Who Do You Think You Are? Is a non-print text which, as take the study of an identified significant idea, social -at the Study Design requires, ‘provides students with the titude or discourse… to critically analyze its representation opportunity to analyze media products and concepts in in the media. an informed and critical way.’ An analysis of structure and features is also a Area of Study 3:

VCE Media Studies: Focus: media influence. Students explore the complexity of the relationship between the media, its audiences and

Unit 1: Representation and technologies of representation wider community in terms of the nature and extent of the SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 media’s influence. Unit 2: Media production and the media industry

Unit 3: Narrative and media production design VCE ENGLISH/EAL – UNITS 1 &2 : Unit 4: Media: process, influence and society’s values CONTEXTS These Contexts often foreshadow or utilize those pro- 19

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON scribed for Year 12. For example, Units 1&2 Contexts such In different situations, we may alter our identity accordingly as ‘Who are you?’, ‘Personal Journeys’ and ‘Australian to the environment and the people we encounter. This is Identity’ have a strong connection to the ‘Identity and Be- usually due to our innate desire to belong, sacrificing or longing’ Context in Units 3&4. Who Do You Think You Are? amending our identity to do so, or making a decision, as applies to these Contexts in the following ways: many of us do, to deliberately abandon the traditions and customs we were born with. We can see this clearly in the • The participants in each of these episodes delve into Episode One, in which Andrew Denton’s father, and indeed a number of resources – family and extended family a few of his ancestors on his father’s side, made life- members, archives, the internet genealogy sites, his- changing decisions to leave both their homeland and their tory, both local and international, in order to find out religion behind in the quest for a better life and in doing so, more about what makes them the individuals they are: exhibited an evolved, different identity – yet were always conscious of the family ties that bound them back to their • These people also undertake a series of physical family. journeys to the homelands of their ancestors to try and absorb some of the ethos that surrounded these now Belonging, the other half of this Context, means to feel a deceased family; sense of welcome and acceptance to someone or something. As suggested by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (a • The conclusions they reach and the discoveries they psychological theory centered on humans’ innate desire make about their family connections is a vital learn- for fulfillment), belonging is a need that we naturally seek ing tool for them to understand much about their own in order to feel loved. In the same manner as our identities, lives, the paths they have taken, the interests they have there are many forms of belonging. Relationships – with developed, the careers they have chosen. family, friends, partners, associates, religious affliations and in the workplace – may give us a sense of belonging • These journeys, both historical, archival and physical that is vital or a sense of rejection that is painful. A social have at their core, a broader realization for us as view- milieu evokes for the individual a feeling of inclusion, and ers: they illustrate the broad and multi-faceted spec- we can see this exemplified in the stories of, for example, trum of the national identity. the Russian Jewish families of the Yizkor Book and Andrew Denton’s rabbinical family document, handed down to him over the generations.

VCE ENGLISH/EAL UNITS 3&4 If we fail to find a sense of belonging, isolation and depres- CONTEXTS sion often ensues as does, often, the desire and the need to move away from a constricting and unhappy environment. However, there are those who do not belong but are Identity and Belonging in fact liberated by their independence. This may be due to their desire to rebel against family tradition, friends’ expec- Study guides for this Context will tell us that our identity is tations or work commitment and thus are pleased to be set a construction of our interests, relationships, past and pre- apart. What influences identity and belonging? sent, social activity and much more. Our sense of identity and belonging is impacted upon by various factors, includ- Everything and everyone can influence a person’s identity ing our family dynamic, our experiences, relationships, and belonging. While some influences can be major, such culture and our environment. The journey to find identity as a move from one country and culture to another, or re- and belonging can often be a struggle, since we ask our- lationship with one’s family, other influences may be minor, selves ‘who am I?’ versus ‘who do others want me to be?’ for example an incident with a friend many years ago. Who and ‘where do I belong? Where do I fit in?’ This search is Do You Think You Are? suggests that for many of its sub- completely subjective, meaning that it is our personal view jects, the painful events of past history have influenced the that influences our decisions. But as Who Do You Think expression of their current lives in a variety of ways. You Are? informs us, how we see ourselves is, for many of us, inextricably linked to our past, to a sense of unique While many of our experiences as part of the human family connection, psychologically, spiritually and emotionally to overlap, the reason why we are all unique is because we family, wherever and whoever they are. This is indeed a ultimately choose what does or does not impact us in a SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 personal view, but it is also, without doubt, a communal crucial or unimportant way. It is the myriad parts of our lives one for Australians, as expressed in the national philosophy that come together that create our identity. We can see, by of multiculturalism. the documentary’s end, the sum of the many experiences and influences in the lives of our subjects – good or bad, It is important for English students studying any of these happy or sad – that have made them who they are. Contexts to compile a file of appropriate texts to employ in creating and presenting their own written pieces. Is there ever struggle with identity and belonging?

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON Everyone has struggled with their identity and belonging during a chapter of their life. There comes a time when our opinions and beliefs begin to differentiate from those around us. During this time, some people may discover where they belong, whereas many others do not. It is not solely at one stage of our lives when we are confronted with an identity crisis; it is a continuous challenge throughout our lives as we encounter new experiences that will alter our thoughts, emotions and perspective on ourselves.

Context: Whose reality?

The question mark in the Context’s title is deliberate: it recognizes the existence and validity of multiple perspectives regarding what is considered “real”. The wording of the title also clearly suggests that we should be prepared to accept the existence of alternative versions of reality to our own, whether we share these perceptions or not. Reality is defined as the state or fact of being real, but as humans we have the capacity to perceive and interpret our own realities in many different ways. This Context, therefore, is chiefly concerned with the subjectivity of human experience and emotion, and how differences in individuals and in their personal circumstances lead to alternative perceptions of what reality is. Furthermore, understanding other perceptions of reality can help clarify our own version of what is real, in addition to enlightening us about our understanding of our place in the world and thereby further enriching our experience of life. . Psychology – where reality is viewed in relation to theory and research. Who or what shapes our sense of reality? The notion of one, single and definitive version of “reality” is extremely hard to justify in the face of so many subjective and variable perspectives. The notion of “reality” is inextricably linked to the subjectivity of individual human existence. As such, “reality” is What are the broader ideas and arguments that emerge viewed differently by each individual, through the filter of from this Context? his/her personal circumstances, values and emotions. In addition to this, “reality” is determined through a combina- One answer to this question must surely be the interpretation of other factors and perspectives. tion of reality through research into the past lives of particular forefathers, investigating their perceptions of the world Our sense of reality is shaped from a multitude of sources. around them, their response to the environment and society The media is one entity that plays a significant role in shap- of their time and this is where Who Do You Think You Are? ing reality. How? Other realms include: can be a useful supplementary text. Broadly speaking, all subjects featured in this series interpret the world around . Science – where reality is perceived according to what them in a variety of ways: is factual or demonstrable • • By re-evaluating their family history from a contempo-

rary perspective, as opposed to the ‘text-book’ histori- SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 . Religion – where reality is considered according to cal perspective; “dogma” (doctrine) • By re-connecting with family members who have in the past, been overlooked or rejected by the family unit for . History – where reality is considered according to a variety of reasons: human development - this also applies on a personal level in terms of an individual’s history • By ‘re-creating’ for themselves past realities in re-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON sponse to the historical interpretations of the past; when conceptualising a particular space. While we may not notice it, when we look at a picture or painting of the ocean, • By learning of past traditions and culture to inform our mind absorbs more information than what we simply themselves and their families of the reality of a past see. We subconsciously imagine the warmth of the sun, the which may be celebrated or commemorated in the breeze of the ocean and the salty smell of the sea lingering present. around us. Thus, it is our 5 senses that help us understand and appreciate different landscapes. As Who Do You Think You Are? demonstrates, there are varied ways that experience can be recorded and inter- All our senses are important in shaping a landscape. When preted. The set texts, and supplementary texts, provide we think of home, we may associate it with lots of noise, opportunities for to analyse the ways that different people smells of Italian cooking, or the warmth of the fireplace. perceive and respond to the world. However, it is not just these senses that help us connect with our home landscape, but also our emotions and experiences. Context: The Imaginative Landscape What is an imagined landscape? When studying Imaginative Landscape, there are some key questions that we need to ask ourselves in order to under- An imagined landscape is the meaning we add to a physi- stand the concept. cal landscape. Our perspective of landscape is not as simple as it may first appear. Since it is through our view What is a landscape? that we see a landscape, the natural world around us is not viewed through an objective lens – rather, it is subjective as

Landscape is the physical environment we see around us our thoughts and feelings influence what we see. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 everyday and everywhere we go. All landscapes are unique, from the quiet countryside to the hustle and bustle of the Many personal factors influence our subjective view of city. This individuality stems from their geographical loca- landscape. These include: tion to their scenic backdrop – some consisting of buildings, vegetation, rivers and more. It is through our perspec- • Culture tive of the landscape that allows us to appreciate what is before us. However, our other senses also come into play • Tradition

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON they are perceived differently for each individual.

And here is where Who Do You Think You Are? functions as an exemplary text for this Context. The Imaginative Land- scape Context illustrates clearly the relationship the subject of each episode has with the world around him or her, interpreting it in a variety of ways, investigating the past with a view to better understanding of the present, placing themselves in the context of lineage and contemporary family.

Interestingly, one of the set texts for this Context is Alice Munro’s autobiography, The View from Castle Rock, a vivid re-imagining of her family’s history, from the earliest-known of her Scottish forebears, the Laidlaws, who emigrated from Scotland to Nova Scotia to her present day reflections on how this connection has impacted upon her. Despite the fact that each of that long-deceased family left behind some written documentation and the author has done much archival research, she has had to imagine the life of her ancestors, trying to see the world as they did, within the confines of their poverty, their devotion to faith and family, their dedication to creating a new life for themselves n a fairly inhospitable new country. The subjects of Who Do You Think You Are? spend much time facing the camera and reflecting/imagining the lives of their ancestors, trying to piece together their feelings, needs, views on the world they lived in, according to the research they have carried out. As the Alice Munro says:

Some of the characters gave themselves to me in their own words, others rose out of their situations. Their words and • Values my words, a curious recreation of lives, in a given setting that was as truthful as our nation of the past can be... • Morals This is the foundation of the ‘detective work’ of all our sub- • Beliefs jects in Who Do You Think You Are?

• Religion

• Emotions LEARNING ACTIVITIES

• Attitude Civics and Citizenship Learning • Experiences Activities – Year 10.

• Choices A detailed learning program for this subject complete with a variety of teaching and learning resources may be found • Career at: http://www.civicsandcitizenship.edu.au/cce/ed_for_ teacher_additional_resources,30184.html • Lifestyle SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Whose landscape? Activities for Year 10 Media and Film Studies Every person sees landscape differently. This is mainly due to the human factors discussed above. However, another factor that influences the way we perceive landscape is 1. Group/Partner Work: other people around us. Through our family, friends, and associates’ experiences and beliefs, we come to view a Working in pairs, find answers to the following questions: landscape in different ways. While landscapes are static, 23

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON • What is the intention of the on-screen portrait of each Project: subject as the opening credits roll? 1. Make a simple family tree showing parents, grandpar- • How effective is the structure of this series in show- ents and siblings. ing us the world of the past? You will need to mention cinematic techniques such as establishing shots, close- 2. Interview a family member and write up questions and ups, symbols and the use of music. answers relating to their recollections of older family members. • What are close-ups used for in this series? 3. Write a brief biography of a parent or grandparent. 2. Written activity: 4. Write your own autobiography including your acquired Write a critical review of Episode One: Andrew Denton. family history.

Remember to assess the film on the following criteria: Year 10 English Activity 1. Production values (setting, cinematic techniques, narra- tion) 1. Personal/reflective writing

2. The ways in which this text examines social and cultural Write your own self assessment from another person’s point values of the past; of view.

3. Your considered response as an audience member. Imagine you are ‘standing outside yourself’ and observing you. Describe this person – his/her physical attributes, talents, strengths and weaknesses, aspirations. Don’t forget to include his/her family history; see if you can draw some YEAR 9 ENGLISH ACTIVITY comparisons between you and your family, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, if possible.

Family tree project: 2. Texts in context study/creative writing

Prior to embarking on this project, you will need to construct Who Do You Think You Are? is a non-print text which identi- a series of questions to ask your family members. Here is a fies and observes socio-cultural values, attitudes and beliefs suggested selection: that belong to the past, for example, the portrayal of an orthodox Russian Jewish community pre–World War Two, • Where was/were your father/mother/siblings born? and the passing on of certain traditions and expectations to future generations, or the portrayal of attitudes to unwed • How many children were there in (parents/grandparents) mothers in the past both in Australia and abroad or past at- family? titudes to ideas about slavery, race, or religion.

• Were any members of the family born overseas? After viewing a selection of episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? write a creative piece in which you portray yourself • Do any members of the family live there now? Where? as an individual out of the past of ONE of the subjects in Why? ONE episode.

• What languages other than English do members of the Put yourself in this individual’s position: what emotions family speak? would they have experienced? Describe their lifestyle, their aspirations and goals. • What significant memories do they have of past events?

• Draw on a family story about one or more of the mem-

bers of the family. This can be a funny story, one that VCE ENGLISH/EAL UNITS 1-4 CONTEXT: SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 shows courage, one that shows a famous family connection to an important individual, one that is sad. PROMPTS

• Do members of the family have traditions or beliefs in ‘Identity & Belonging’: common? • It is difficult to possess a sense of belonging when we are unsure of our own identity.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON • Our identity determines where we belong. is what we experience that matters.

• Only upon reflection can we establish our identity. 7. Our imagination is limiting. It draws us into a world of delusion. • Mistakes help shape our identity.

• Everyone needs to feel a sense of belonging. People

1. Our understanding of the world is explained by our fears The Imaginative Landscape and desires.

1. We can never understand another’s perception of a 2. We can be emotionally attached to a landscape we landscape until we experience it ourselves. have never encountered.

2. Two people can never experience a landscape in ex- 3. We take comfort in familiar landscapes. actly the same way. 4. What separates truth from fiction is our perspective. 3. We can only be truly objective when viewing landscape a distance. 5. The geographical location of a landscape has little meaning; it is what we associate with a landscape that 4. To understand someone is to understand where they matters. come from. 6. The first impression of a landscape significantly influ- 5. Our perception of the landscape is constantly changing. ences our consequential behaviour and actions.

7. The more landscapes we encounter, the more we un- Memories derstand the world and ourselves.

1. Our memories help us make connections with new 8. Our behaviour is influenced by the changing landscape landscapes. around us.

2. Our memories of a landscape can be liberating or sti- 9. Our landscape can influence our understanding of an- fling. other landscape.

3. The memories of a landscape remain with us forever. 10. The more landscapes we encounter, the less we need to imagine. 4. We can latch onto past landscapes and refuse those in the present day.

5. It is our memories that help us connect to the natural ACTIVITY FOR VCE MEDIA: world. Who Do You Think You Are? is an excellent non-print text with which to study and prepare for the structured end-of- Imagination year examination paper for two of the three Sections: (A) Narrative, (B) Media Texts and Society’s Values. Here is a set 1. The physical elements of landscape provide a founda- of tasks that will be reflected on the Examination paper: tion for our imagination. Section A: NARRATIVE: 2. Our unfamiliarity with a landscape is what powers our imagination. Tasks: Identify production elements.

3. Landscapes change over time but our imagination does - How are they used to communicate ideas? SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 not. Story elements: 4. All landscapes are the same. It is the power of our imagination that gives them meaning. - Cause and effect;

5. Our imaginations can be shattered by the harsh reality - setting; of a landscape. - point of view of the director/producer/characters. 6. Whether a landscape is real or imagined is irrelevant. It 25

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON - editing techniques and they contribute to how audi- 5. Enough Rope (accessed 26th June, 2014)

- Relationships between characters/multiple storylines/ 6. The Goon Show

Section B: MEDIA TEXTS & SOCIETY’S VALUES: 7. Fascism: - Explain the effect of these values on the production. 8. Jewish Practices and Rituals: example of media. 9. Suchowola Yizkor Book: text? 10. Treblinka: (accessed June 26th, 2014)

YEAR 10 HISTORY ACTIVITY 11. King David: (Accessed June 27th 2014) In Year 10 History, the origins and outcomes of the Second World War are studied with a view to understanding the 12. Synagogue: issues and impact surrounding this. The Holocaust is one (accessed June 27th 2014) such outcome of the policies of Nazi Germany and Epi- sode One of Who Do You Think You Are? focuses on the 13. Yiddish language: Jewish population of German-occupied Europe. 14. Judaism: The Written Law – Torah:

• Students undertake research into the history of the 15. Chani Benjaminson, What is Shabat? • Research into the history of the Jewish people in Aus- tralia. 16. The Holocaust (Shoah): Prepare an oral presentation on this to be presented to the class OR a written research project. 17. Civics and Citizenship:

1. LP Hartley, The Go-between, Publisher: Penguin 18. Year 10 Media Studies: 2. Production Info, Artemis International, Who Do You Think You Are? Series 6: au/Documents/vce/english/English-ESL-SD-2007.pdf>

3. Who Do You Think You Are? (Australian TV series) at 20. Alice Munro: The View from Castle Rock, Foreword, Wikipedia:

Think_You_Are%3F_%28Australian_TV_series%29> SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 (accessed 26th June 2014) 21. Australian History: 4. Jeremy Palmer, Climbing your family tree (transcript of talk as part of Shake Your Family Tree Day at the 22. The Imaginative Landscape prompts: collection/publications/papers-and-podcasts/family -history/palmer-transcript.aspx> 26

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON EPISODE TWO

Rebecca Gibney finds the gift of new family, reconciliation and closure.

o you know the location or the name of the magnificent mountain scenery which forms the backdrop Dfor the opening shot in this Episode? In this program, we’re going to learn a great deal about another country, one not very far from us, but one many of you may not know much about. A mere few hours across the Tasman Sea from Australia, or ‘across the pond’ as the locals say, lies ‘The Land of the Long White Cloud’, so called by its indigenous people, the Maori. We call it New Zealand after its European colonizers. We’ll be visiting this beautiful country with the subject of this Episode, Rebecca Gibney, whose family history is inextricably bound up with this extraordinary nation.

We’re also going to learn a great deal about another world - the world of the nineteenth century. Not so distant in time from us, you might say. Chronologically, yes; but the nineteenth century imposed particular restrictions, demands and attitudes - social, moral, racial, philosophical - upon those who lived in it and these impacted heavily upon the generations who came after.

And so to Rebecca Gibney, one of Australia’s most beloved and respected actresses. Born in Levin, New Zealand,

(Australians love to claim successful New Zealanders as SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 their own!) Rebecca moved to Australia when she was nineteen and has, in her expansive career, portrayed some of the most interesting women on Australian television, including her compelling portrayal of Guinea in Come in Spinner,which won her an AFI Award for Best Actress in a Mini-Series and a Silver Logie for Most Outstanding Actress.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY One of her most prominent and critically acclaimed roles was as Dr Jane Halifax in Halifax f.p. The character was created especially for Rebecca and her performance saw her nominated for numerous Logie and AFI Awards. The multi award winning series ran for twenty-one feature length episodes from 1994 to 2002.Rebecca’s performance as Julie Rafter on Packed to the Raftersis one which continues to reinforce her popularity.

Family comes first

The first thing we are going to hear from Rebecca is the importance of family to her:

My family means everything to me...I’d give up everything, clearly, just for them. Certainly my background has made The camera never lies; or does it? me very aware of raising(my son)Zac in a strong family unit, and that he feels safe... We have all heard this old saying, but how accurate is it? The stable, secure life Rebecca shares with husband Rich- Printed photographs began to be available to the general ard is a far cry from the world she knew growing up. Raised public around the mid 19th century. in a dysfunctional family, with an alcoholic, violent father and a mother who had ‘issues’ with her own father, it’s When this phrase was coined, which appears to be just understandable that Rebecca has sought a protective and a few years later, the view that a photograph was a faith- steady life for her own child. This aspect of her family’s past ful representation of a scene, in a way that a subjective has, until recently been ‘too painful to go there’, but she is painting could never be, was a reasonable one. After all, now determined to explore the past and to face the truth. the image that falls on the photographic plate is precisely ‘You can’t sweep things under the carpet,’ she declares; if what the camera is pointing at. Phrases like ‘photographic you do, ‘you can never move forward.’ memory’ supported the view of photographs as precise and infallible records.

By the middle of the 19th century, photography was em- braced and utilised by the general public. This phrase was coined around the same time and was meant to be taken literally - a photograph was an objective representation of a scene. Contrast this to a painting, which is a subjective image. Expressions such as ‘photographic memory’ highlight the understanding that photographs are true records.

Nevertheless, it may well be that the phrase was used ironically from the start. Whether or not people believed the notion of photographic veracity then, they certainly don’t now. We know that the ubiquitous photographic images that fill our visual world are constructs rather than absolute truth.

It is possible that the phrase was initially used ironically. It is unknown whether or not people back then believed photographs were infallible. What is certain is that now people understand that photographs can be posed or constructed

and may not represent objective truths. In Rebecca’s col- SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 lection of family photographs, the parents and children all look cheerful, at ease, and happy. Yet the trauma that the family was consistently going through at this time cannot be grasped from these smiling, jovial images. The dark side of the family’s history is not visible in these ‘happy snaps.’

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY My mother is just the most generous human being on the Nelson, here I come... (Rebecca) planet... (Rebecca) New Zealand has this pristine, magical quality...it does Rebecca was the youngest of six children born to Austin make me feel like I’m coming home... to hopefully find some Gibney and Shirley Way. Her father’s heritage was Irish, but answers to questions we’ve had in our family for so long... she has to date not explored her mother’s family lineage, having ‘shunned that side of the family’. So reflects Rebecca as she takes her first step in tracing the ancestry of her father’s family. Heather Thomas of the Rebecca’s mother Shirley Way was sexually abused from Nelson Historical Society has found the very first record of the age of two and a half by her own father - a terrible fact one of Rebecca’ s ancestors: a passenger list from the ship that saw Rebecca needing therapy to come to terms with. that brought James Way Senior, his wife Emma, sons John Rebecca’s maternal grandfather Newton Way cast his dark and Edmund out to New Zealand, landing in 1855.This was shadow upon his family and even when he was dying and quite an early arrival as Nelson’s first immigrants had only Shirley declared she forgave him, he never acknowledged just arrived in 1842. his abuse, a memory that still causes Shirley to shed tears, ‘He didn’t know what I was talking about...’ And what do you know of the early history of this country?

Rebecca is now willing to ‘go there’ and try to discover We know about Australia’s first settlers, British colonisers, why this man acted as he did. In spite of Shirley’s terrible who came on The First Fleet in 1788. These ships brought experiences as a child, she always brought up her children convicts, a detachment of soldiers to guard them, and Gov- to ‘be incredibly compassionate’. ernor Arthur Phillip. New Zealand is a completely different story. It had no convicts. All settlers came willingly. Interac- Shirley then found herself trapped, ‘from the frying pan into tions between the colonisers and the indigenous peoples of the fire’, in a violent marriage as husband Austin Gibney de- Australia and New Zealand were also different. scended into alcoholism. Again we are shown deceptively happy wedding pictures, again we are told that Austin’s struggles with alcohol wreaked havoc on Shirley and the The New Zealand Company and children. Shirley has tried to find an explanation as to why clever marketing this occurred, saying Austin may have been a very frustrat- ed man, he was very clever but forced to deny his talents as his mother made him leave school at fourteen years old The New Zealand Company originated in London in 1837 and work in a dry-cleaning business. Shirley reflects on with the aim of promoting the systematic colonisation of how other people’s suffering has made them bitter ‘and New Zealand andintended to follow the colonising prin- you can’t live like that... you have to forgive and look for the ciples of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who envisaged the best in people....’ creation of a new-model English society - a utopia - in the southern hemisphere. The New Zealand Company later es- These abuse issues may raise concern for some young tablished settlements at Wellington, Nelson, Wanganui and people. If you need to speak to someone confidentially, Dunedin and also became involved in the settling of New here are some contacts: Plymouth and Christchurch; today all are big townships. It reached the peak of efficiency about 1841, encountered 1. Kids Helpline, 1800 55 1800, – Kids Helpline is Australia’s only free, private ered, and wound up in 1858.The company became notable and confidential telephone and online counselling for elaborate and grandiose advertising and for its vigorous service specifically for young people aged between five attacks on those it perceived as its opponents. and twenty-five. Migrants were lured by the Wakefields’ promises of em- 2. ReachOut.com, – ployment. In reality, the new country was nothing like the ReachOut.com helps under-25s with everyday ques- picture that was painted of it. Eventually, a publication tions through to tough times. appeared which stipulated the kind of people who should emigrate:

Is there some dark pattern in the Gibney family history SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 that has been passed down over the generations? Or will Men of speculative tendencies, good business habits and Rebecca find a more positive story? sufficient money to get them started in some business.... tradesmen of all types the hard working class... Her grandfather’s marriage certificate provides the first lead: ...and the kind who should not emigrate: NEWTON RAYMOND WAY born in Nelson, New Zealand well-to-do ladies, those not prepared to ’rough it and

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY gentlemen from high class families...this class of person is derisively as ‘having an extraordinary liking for the inside of utterly useless...and will suffer great hardships.... others not Her Majesty’s jail.’ Even worse, on his instructions, his chil- suited are those who are sympathetic, imaginative, poetic dren had started stealing. His son James would have been and refined in their tastes...these are the ones who will pine just eight years old at the time. Later, James Snr was fined for home... five pounds for ‘keeping a disorderly house’ or ‘house of ill fame’ - in other words, James Snr was running a brothel. In the early years of the colony there was very little in- Later, after a two-month jail sentence, he was charged with frastructure. Open sewerage ran down the main street, assault with an axe. It looked as though James Snr had, poverty was rife, andmany settlers only avoided starvation in Rebecca’s words, ‘fallen to pieces.’ His new ‘land of from food given to them from the Maori. In the midst of this promise’ had been the scene of all of his misfortune and the Way family was growing.The Nelson Register of Births subsequent turn to crime. shows that after two sons, James Way became father to a daughter, Emma, in 1856, and then to another son, James Author and social historian Stephen Eldred-Grigg adds jnr., in 1859. Now the family numbered six. more of the gritty details to James Snr’s declining fate.

Prostitution was a big business in James Snr’s day. It is Tragedy strikes and a downward estimated that approximately one out of ten women was a spiral follows prostitute at the time. The New Zealand Gold Rush in the 1860s led to a large A series of newspaper notices show that this family’s life imbalance of men to women and a ‘boom time’ for broth- was about to change forever. In 1860, in the space of ten els. While prostitution was legal, running a brothel was days, James’ wife Charlotte and two of their sons died. not. The higher class establishments were tolerated by the This is a terrible story of illness, accident, and inconsolable police because they could afford to pay them off, but for sorrow. Charlotte was described as having ‘succumbed to James Snr, this was not an option. By now, at the lowest severe grief’ before dying at age thirty-three. level of the social order, James probably ran his brothel from his own house, the home of his children. He exposed Would James Way Senior, Rebecca’s three-times great- his children to a sordid, dangerous life. His own life out of grandfather, ever rebuild his life after such a tragedy? And control, James was on a downward spiral, heading towards what would the future hold for his surviving children?Where an inevitable end. The newspaper story reports he ’died in did he go from there? peculiar circumstances’ – a less confronting way of de-

scribing possible suicide. Rebecca reflects that she feels ‘a SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Ancestors Attic- a genealogy resource centre in the heart sense of relief for him in a way,’ of Nelson allows for Rebecca to take an online search through old newspapers that could provide some answers Every family has some sort of tragedy and while James Way to these questions. Sadly, the news is not good. It appears Snr’s tragedy was extreme and very shocking, it doesn’t that James Way Snr. had a series of encounters with the mean that you should take the road to ruin. If you don’t deal law, and had become a familiar figure in the press of the with dysfunction it’s going to get passed down and passed day – for all the wrong reasons. A newspaper describes him down and I can see where it’s heading towards my grand-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY father. If you don’t deal with it, it’s going to come back to haunt you...

What path had the next generation taken? Had James Jnrbroken free of the violence and crime that had ruled his upbringing? What kind of man did Rebecca’s great-great- grandfather grow up to become?

Rebecca meets Mavis and Sylvia

Ancestors Attic has found some more ancestors for Re- walkabout’, meaning he possibly never settled to one occu- becca - more than one hundred and fifty years after their pation for long. The circumstances of his childhood, brought arrival in New Zealand, the Way family still has a presence up in brothels, was always denied by their mother who, in Nelson. given the social attitudes of the time, no doubt sought to hide this part of the family history. James moved on from his Mavis and Sylvia are sisters and Rebecca’s distant cous- sad childhood and with his wife Charlotte went on to have ins. They are James Way Jnr’s grand-daughters and now sixteen children and establish a good life for his family. Rebecca will come face to face with another seemingly innocuous photograph which yet again masks a terrible chapter in the family’s - and New Zealand’s - history. The Maoris appear in the family story What was James Way Junior like as a person?

‘A bit of a rough diamond’, says Mavis, and who ‘used to go Rebecca learns that after James’ mother’s death at 33, the Maori community stepped in and helped to raise him.

Who are the Maori?

We know that the Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, but did you know that:

• The ancestors of the Maori were a Polynesian people originating from south-east Asia

• It is believed that prior to the arrival of the Maori, New Zealand was uninhabited.

• The exact date of Polynesian settlement of the islands of New Zealand is also unknown. Although previously thought to have been between 950 -1130 AD, scholars now debate both the time and circumstances.

• In Polynesian mythology there is a navigator named Kupe who, according to legend, arrived in New Zea- land in the year 925.

• The Great Fleet, considered to be the first mass arrival SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 of Polynesian settlers, was estimated to have arrived in 1350. Modern scholars are now questioning not only the exactitude of the above dates, but also the Great Fleet theory itself. The debate continues today.

• The Great Fleet forms part of the Maori canoe tradition, handed down orally from generation to generation. Ac-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY James Way, militia man

In the photograph Rebecca is shown of James Jnr there is a framed document posed on a chair.This, we are informed, is a citation for his service as a militiaman in the Taranaki Wars.

According to Maori legends, Taranaki was a ‘mountain being’ that lived on the North Island peacefully for many years. Mount Taranaki is actually an inactive volcano, but according to the legends it is simply asleep and could potentially wake up once more. Captain Cook originally named Mt. Taranaki ‘Mount Egmont’, but its original name was restored.

James served in the Nelson Volunteer Artillery, a militia. Essentially, they were the country’s army. New Zealand was a fledgling colony at the time and financially struggled for most of the nineteenth century. So, it could not afford cording to this tradition, the canoes of the Great Fleet a full-time professional army.The island relied on volunteer arrived from the mythical homeland of Hawaiiki, known servicemen. In time the Volunteer Corps became more of as the ancestral homeland, and generally considered a social club than a hardened military outfit.Their weekly as being somewhere in Eastern Polynesia. parades, showing off their majestic uniforms, became a public spectacle. James is registered on the army lists as • The Maori cultivated a type of sweet potato; a ‘bombardier.’ He struggled with learning army skills; his marksmanship is shown on archival assessment records as • Traditional Maori greetings are given by pressing one’s ‘very poor’. nose and forehead (at the same time) to another person at an encounter. This custom is used at traditional What was James’ involvement in the conflict known as the meetings among Maori people and on major ceremo- Taranaki Wars – a conflict between European settlers and nies and serves a similar purpose to a formal hand- the community of Maori which had helped him as a child? shake in modern western culture, and indeed is often Looking into James’ military past Rebecca will confront one used in conjunction with one. of New Zealand’s most shocking episodes and the anguish that surrounds it still. • The name ‘Maori’ originally meant “the local people”, or ‘the original people’, as opposed to the new arrivals – white European settlers, the ‘pakeha’. With the arrival From Waiouru to Mt. Taranaki of European settlers, the word Maori gradually became an adjective for the Maori people; Rebecca travels to the town of Waiouru,on the North Island, hoping to learn more about herancestor’s military career. • During Captain Cook’s earlier visits, he had recom- At the National Army Museum she consults with military mended New Zealand as ideal for settlement by Euro- historian Damien Fenton. peans; The New Zealand Wars lasted from the 1840s to the 1870s. • The Maori had a series of inter-tribal wars and later had It was a conflict between Europeans and the Maori. The their nation diminished by the Europeans who intro- Taranaki Wars occurred during this time of ongoing vio- duced diseases and alcohol. To keep the peace and at- lence. tempt a harmonious relationship the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 by both Maori chiefs and British authorities. However, conflict over interpretation of the

terms of the Treaty still festered and a succession of SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Maori wars continued.

And here is where James Way Jnr’s story continues...

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY These wars were fought mainly over the confiscation of were also a guest. The marae is welcoming the living and Maori land by European settlers. The Treaty of Waitangi those who have passed. had supposedly guaranteed Maori possession of their land and all the rights of British citizens, but the government had a different interpretation. According to them, Maori were So what did happen at Parihaka? giving up their sovereignty and giving the Government the right to buy and sell their land. By 1877, when James Way A gentle Maori spokesman and civic elder tells the story Jnr joined the Volunteer Corps, the wars were thought to be to Rebecca, assuring her it is ‘as a history, not from any over. ill-feeling.’

For the Nelson Volunteer Artillery a significant and notorious The general in charge of the militias decided that the only confrontation was about to take place. In 1881, they were way to put an end to this resistance was to put an end to sent for active service to the North Island, to Parihaka. Parihaka. A call-out was issued to volunteer units from around the country to assemble; the Nelson Volunteer Artil- lery was one of these among them was Rebecca’s great- Passive resistance meets brutality great-grandfather, James Way Jnr.

The village of Parihaka, in the shadow of Mt. Taranaki, was At dawn on the 5th of November, 1881, fifteen hundred where many Maori, dislocated from their traditional lands, troops prepared for an attack. As the troops marched into sought refuge from the European land-grabbing. In time, the town they were not met by fierce Maori warriors but this community became the largest, most prosperous Maori young girls singing and skipping. They marched through community in the country and a centre of ongoing but their spectacle to the marae where more than two thousand peaceful resistance to the European settlers. This was an Maori were waiting quietly and peacefully. extraordinary campaign of defiance; non-violent but disrup- tive, pulling down the fences that settlers had put up, and The soldiers arrested the leaders, TeWhiti and Tohi, herded ploughing the fields where their crops were. Their idea was the women and children to the hillside, and drove the men to ‘upset the settlers’, prompting them to leave. Advocating away. They looted peoples’ homes and destroyed their non-violence and passive resistance, the revered leaders, crops. Some of them women and girls were raped. Tohu and TeWhiti, insisted upon no retaliation when Maori were arrested by the police. Those taken to jail were simply The destruction and occupation of Parihaka had enduring replaced by new resistors the next day. effects. Generations believed that there was no future in being Maori as their suffering was not recognised. For an excellent and brief history of this township, see Parihaka- aPhotographic Surveyon YouTube: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=pQGbE1aj0V0 Forgiveness, reconciliation and amazing grace The government feared that the Taranaki community was about to become ‘non-peaceful’ and the outcome of this, says Damien Fenton, ‘was not the Volunteer Corps’ finest Despite this tragic story, Rebecca is assured that she hour.’Rebecca reflects that given that James had been is welcome as the great-great-granddaughter of James partly raised by the Maori he must have felt conflicted Way; he, too, despite the legacy of his involvement in the about taking sides against them. destruction of Parihaka, is now accepted and welcomed. Speaking on behalf of her great-great-grandfather, admit- The story of what happened at Parihaka is regarded today ting her lack of any knowledge of the history of this inci- as a national shame for New Zealand. Historians see it as dent, she offers her sincerest apologies for the suffering the scene of one of the worst human rights infringements her ancestor caused.Perhaps, she suggests, ‘this can be a to ever happen in that country. And Rebecca, completely pathway for people learning about this...a reconciliation...to unaware of this aspect of her birthplace’s past,now hears acknowledge it and find a way forward...” about what happened. It’s a Maori custom that speeches conclude with a song

She is invited to attend a special Maori meetingand to and Rebecca chooses to sing the famous hymn, Amazing SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 bring a photo of her ancestor, James Jnr. The event begins Grace. with a welcome in traditional language, singing her in to the meeting house / marae, the sacred ceremonial space Their amazing grace to me,was extraordinary.... and I was within the community. She is the first descendant from one blind, because I didn’t know what had happened...On the of the Parihaka troops to be formally invited to the marae. one hand there’s a sense of deep shame for what my an- The traditional greeting of touching noses is an emotional cestor has done but on the other hand I hope to go a small one for her and her host. James’ photo is displayed as if he step towards righting that wrong...

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY Interestingly, Rebecca’s chosen song, Amazing Grace, has research indicates she was actually nineteen years old. a special relevance. It waswritten by John Newton and Further, the certificate declares she was born in Fishguard, published in 1779. Newton was a former slave ship captain London, when she was in fact born in Ireland. Why these who realised that he was ‘blind’ to the suffering he was a lies? part of. He became a prominent supporter of the abolition of slavery. He lived to see Britain abolish the African slave trade in 1807. A grim 19th century moral view

For more information on the history of Parihaka and the Madge had been sent away from home because she was Taranaki wars, see: http://parihaka.com/ and: http://history pregnant and unmarried.Madge travelled to Wellington, -nz.org/parihaka.html New Zealand by ship in 1913, aged nineteen, according to the passenger list. She was pregnant and alone, almost about to give birth. Turning the light onto another secret … Madge O’Halloran makes her It was considered shameful to be an unmarried mother in those days.An ‘illegitimate child’ meant ostracism from the entrance community and a ruined reputation for the mother.Madge had been sent to the other side of the world to escape Rebecca is now about to uncover the hushed secret that this shame, or possibly so that her parents could escape left part of her family shunned and forgotten. This is the it.There were very few options for a nineteen-year- old mystery surrounding her grandmother - her father’s mother young single mother like Madge O’Halloran. - before she married. The family is aware that she was Irish, and it is said she may have travelled out to New Zealand when she was pregnant. Is this true? The penalties for illegitimacy

For the first time, Rebecca meets her cousin, Rodney In today’s society it is difficult to comprehend the social Spence- yet another newly discovered family member.He consequences of being an unmarried mother, or an illegiti- remembers Margaret ‘Madge’ O’ Halloran from his child- mate child, one hundred and twelve years ago. hood, she was his grandmother. Before the 20th century it was illegal for illegitimate children We are shown two photographs of this mystery relative - to inherit, so among more prosperous families a trust was the older, married Mrs. Gibney – ‘a very controlling woman’ often set up to care for his or her welfare. Most were not so reflects Rodney, and the younger, new arrival to New Zea- fortunate. land, a smiling Irish girl from Tralee in Country Kerry. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Irish society was deeply intolerant of unmarried mothers But there are certainly some oddities in Madge’s back- and their ‘bastard’ children. Such women were denigrated ground. She left a trail of secrets and lies that suggest she as ‘fallen into sin and immorality’. Many Irish families re- was covering up her past. What was she hiding? acted angrily to the news that an unmarried female relative was pregnant. Such women usually gave birth unattended Her marriage certificate contains a number of falsehoods. and many found themselves homeless towards the end She said she was twenty-one when she married, but of the pregnancy; a small number were forced to deliver

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY unassisted in unsanitary conditions outdoors. A considerable number of single women seem to have come under sustained pressure from their relatives to kill their illegitimate infants and to conceal all evidence of their existence from the wider community. Some were turned out of the family home, only being allowed to return if they came back without the baby.

Catholic priests often refused to baptise illegitimate children. There were no social welfare benefits available to unmarried mothers. In fact, the single parent pension was a feature of Australian and New Zealand life only from the 1970s. It was also very difficult, even in the twentieth century, to apply for a passport if you were classified as illegitimate. In most societies illegitimacy has at some point, or still does, incur a social stigma.

For more on this history, see this entry at the Encyclopedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/ Kathleen O’Halloran’s history topic/282885/illegitimacy Kathleen’s daughter is Patricia Duff and Rebecca is anxious to meet her cousin for the first time. How did Madge cope? Did Madge ever acknowledge daughter Kathleen? Or was Madge was housed at The Alexandra Home for Unmarried she always shunned? What does Patricia know about her Mothers in Wellington upon her arrival. She was classified mother’s upbringing? as ‘first fall’ – a category for women who had only one baby out of wedlock. This was considered an error which could Kathleen was brought up happily in foster care, says be overlooked. If she had two illegitimate childrenshe would Patricia. She loved her foster sisters and photographs and have been considered immoral and degenerate. anecdotes, this time, appear to correspond, portraying a happy group. However, Kathleen was also anxious to Madge gave birth to a daughter Kathleen May at the make contact with her mother, and had been searching for Alexandra Home three weeks after her arrival in Wellington. her from her early teens. Family history says she used to The birth certificate contains no name for the child’s father. wander around Wellington, looking for someone who had a Documents indicate that a mere five months later Madge face like hers,which might mean she would see her mother. was declared indigent – financially unstable – and her baby It wasn’t until she was thirty-three years old that she finally was sent to an ‘industrial school.’ This meant that Kathleen found a clue to Madge’s whereabouts. was removed from her mother’s care. Armed with an address Kathleen took a train to Wellington But did Madge give up Kathleen solely because of her poor and turned up unannounced at her mother’s house. circumstances? Or were other factors at play? Madge, now a wife and mother to other children, told Kath- Records show that in 1915 Madge married Patrick Gibney, leen she must be her daughter ‘because you’re the living Rebecca’s grandfather. Did Patrick know she had had a image of your father.’ She was invited into the house but child? The mystery continues. was told that her children did not know about Kathleen’s existence. Baby Kathleen grew up, got married, and had her own daughter, Patricia. Rebecca finds a letter from the New Rebecca then learns that baby Kathleen had in fact briefly Zealand Department of Social Welfare written by Patricia, spent time with her mother Madge. Madge had convinced now an older woman, hoping to find out more about her her new husband Patrick to help raise her illegitimate baby. mother and her grandmother’s history. But after a period of time Patrick insisted that Kathleen SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 be returned to the foster home “and was not to be talked The New Zealand Department of Social Welfare has about again”. tracked down the father of Madge’s child: Patrick Moroney of Tralee, County Kerry, Ireland. So this aspect of the big After their first meeting in 1947, Kathleen and Madge con- Gibney mystery is solved. tinued to correspond. They wrote to each other but Madge had to be very secretive. It was only after Madge died in 1954 that the rest of the children discovered that Kathleen

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY was their sister. Kathleen received a letter from one of them • Maps; saying that she could be ‘a source of embarrassment’ and that they had had a family meeting and that she was not to • History; be included in the family. • A list of commonly used Maori words; A melancholy end to this tale was copy of a letter found by Patricia in her mother’s drawer after she died, pleading with • Customs and traditions her sisters to be allowed to know and love them all. She never sent the letter, fearing her heartfelt pleas would be • Myths and legends rejected. • Arts and crafts; Finally, after all the years of rejection and social stigma, Rebecca is able to welcome Kathleen’s daughter into her • Contemporary New Zealand and the Maori family. Here are some useful online sites:

Reflections on a journey of healing Maori People: This has been an extraordinary journey of righting wrongs committed in another time and by an intolerant society. ‘So Maori Culture: and the family’s history, and meeting new family members. It’s been healing... The Main Maori site on the net:

B. Poetry Exercise. YEAR 10 ENGLISH ACTIVITIES FOR EPISODE TWO The following are poems by New Zealand poets. 1. PARIHAKA A. A selection of Projects: We never knew 1. Design a travel brochure, inspiring tourists to visit New about Parihaka Zealand. You will need to consider including the fol- it was never lowing: taught anywhere except maybe • Maps around the fires of Parihaka • Some brief history itself at night when stories • Places of interest, such as Bay of Islands, Franz Jo- are told seph Glacier, Mt. Cook, Queenstown. of the soldiers who came • Local arts/crafts/ wildlife with guns to haul us up • Recommended tours by the roots like trees To assist you to construct this, see (this is a site which provides called peace peace SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 templates for travel brochures). it was never taught at school 2. Design a booklet: Get to know the Maori for travellers it was all hushed up to New Zealand. how we listened to the prophets You will need to consider including: Tohu, TeWhiti who called

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY Peace’ Rirerire Are wriggling for the coming night, Paimarire Rabbits stretch and move to grazing but the only Anxious for the closing light. peace the soldiers knew spoke through The chill night air descends as dew the barrels The picnickers depart the scene, of their guns Starlings flock to perch and roost threatening Whilst velvet silence hangs serene our women children it was never Vaulting high above the foothills taught or spoken Crowned with purple alpenglow how we Taranaki’s snow-clad grandeur were shackled Last to see the day light go. led away to the caves and imprisoned Contemplation be my friend for ploughing our land. For deep within contentment’s breast The joy of living sings its song – Apirana Taylor And sooths my happy soul to rest.

Questions: – Marshall Gebbie

1. Apirana Taylor’s powerful poem sets down the tragedy Questions: of Parihaka. Why do you think the story was, as the poet says, ‘never taught anywhere? 1. Clearly, the atmosphere in this poem is very different from ‘Parihaka’. Compare and contrast the two moods. 2. The poet speaks of ‘our land’. Find two references to the close bond shown to the land in this poem. 2. What is an ‘evensong?’

3. How would you describe the poet’s emotions in this 3. What is the poet saying about the impact of the sur- poem? roundings upon him?

4. What is the poet suggesting when he writes of even- 2. TARANAKI EVENSONG ing’s ‘slippered feet?’ Evening in her slippered feet Approaches from the heat of day 5. What suggestion is being made about ‘the molten Shadows in the molten light light?’ Lengthen as they have their way 6. Locate two images that suggest solitude. Silence in the hovered moment Stillness in the mote of time, The glow within a sunbeam’s ray C. A FUN ACTIVITY! Ensnares the warmth of joy as mine. Rebecca Gibney notes in her reading of archival documents, Drifting insects float on by the euphemisms ‘disorderly house’ and ‘house of ill-fame’. Suspended in the evening light Euphemisms are used for objects and ideas we don’t like to Against the lace of silver birch speak of directly. Look at the following exercise: With gnarled trunk of speckled white. Match the euphemisms with their meanings In the dark blue, far azure Agosshawk glides on high, aloft

A predator surveying late Euphemisms are used in the SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 For living things in farmer’s croft. following ways: A waterfall of children’s laughter Cascades through a field of green, TO SOFTEN AN EXPRESSION: Overtones of golden shadow Some euphemisms are used in order to make a blunt or un- Fills the air with love unseen. pleasant truth seem less harsh. Match up the euphemism in Column A with the truth in Column B: Earthworms in their darkened tombs 37

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY A B Passed away homeless

Correctional facility euthanise

No longer with us firing someone from a job

Differently-abled deferred success

Fell off the back of a truck accidental death in conflict

Negative patient outcome stolen

Collateral damage died

Letting someone go disabled

Put to sleep prison

Failure died

death

TO BE POLITE Other euphemisms are used to take the place of words or phrases you might not want to say in polite company.

See if you can match up the euphemism with its meaning in the following list:

A B The New Zealand Company: Adult entertainment go to the bathroom/toilet Tangata Whenua: Adult beverages maid, cleaner Euphemism activity taken from

Chronologically challenged pornography Hongi:

Use the restroom beer, alcoholic drinks John Newton: Economical with the truth garbage man Parihaka:

Between jobs solid, big-boned Parihaka: a Photographic Survey: Domestic engineer unemployed Selected poems at

Vertically challenged procreation Constructing a brochure:

‘The camera cannot lie’: maori/page-1>, and

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 REBECCA GIBNEY EPISODE THREE

Jacki Weaver discovers a dark secret, a musical inheritance, and a gentle war hero.

ar veterans, criminal law historians, country-town historians, medical historians and military histori- Wans – all of these specialists will be on duty in this episode as Jacki Weaver sets out on a journey of discovery because, as she declares, ‘I think it is always good to be enlightened about the truth about history.’

And so we arrive at Episode Three, which opens with actress Jacki Weaver posed against the backdrop of the Aus- tralian War Memorial in Canberra. What connection does this edifice have to her and her family history? Complex research will find this out.

Well known in her home country, Jacki is one of the nation’s best-loved actresses. Her fifty-year career is continuing on a successful trajectory; she was nominated for an Academy Award in 2010 for Best Supporting Actress in Australian director David Michôd’s film Animal Kingdom (2010). Most recently she received an Academy Award nomination, again for Best Supporting Actress, in David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook (2012). Aside from her ongoing work in Hollywood, Jacki has an Australian film, stage, and television career going back to 1971 when she debuted in the iconic comedy Stork (Tim Burstall, 1971), for which

she won her first AFI Award. Appearances in Alvin Purple SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 (Tim Burstall, 1973), Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975) – regarded by many as one of Australia’s greatest films – and Caddie (Donald Crombie, 1976), saw her gain more accolades. Her television experience includes two situation comedy series written especially for her, and she has starred in more than one hundred plays in Australian theatre.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER These days Jacki is also an enthusiastic grandmother and loves this role; this is what has spurred her on to finding out The search begins what she can about her own grandmother, whom she never knew. ‘It’s very special to be a grandparent, as a million Jacki begins her journey in her hometown of Sydney with grandparents around Australia will tell you,’ she reflects in a visit to her younger brother, Rod Weaver. Rod has their a voiceover as she plays happily with two of her grandchil- dad’s birth certificate. They already know that Grace, dren. Arthur’s mother, came from the country town of Goulburn in New South Wales. Rod points out that Arthur was born at Hopeleigh, then a hospital in the Sydney suburb of Mar- Illegitimacy creates secrets rickville, astonishingly, a short walk from his home. Keen to investigate, Jacki goes to Hopeleigh. As we saw in Episode Two with Rebecca Gibney’s uncovering of her family secret – that one of her forebears had an ‘illegitimate’ child – Jacki will discover when she embarks The Salvation Army Homes: Jacki on her investigation that this issue impacted upon her fam- uncovers a ‘personality’ ily history as well.

Illegitimacy, as we now know, was once considered shame- Hopeleigh Maternity Home was opened in Marrickville in ful and immoral, and was often concealed by a family to 1911 by the Salvation Army. It was a rescue home, a child- avoid the ‘stain’ of scandal; it is only in the last half-century, rens’ home, a hospital, and lying-in home for both married when more compassionate and enlightened thinking has and unmarried pregnant women. These homes solved two evolved, that when discoveries like this are made new societal problems: children were often given up, ensuring family members are revealed as a happy consequence. children were available for infertile couples, and the ‘fallen Jacki discovered this family secret in 1970, when she was women’ were exiled and punished for deviating from social twenty-two years old, pregnant with her son Dylan – and norms. not married to his father. Her father Arthur felt moved to tell her then that he too was illegitimate. His very religious Jacki meets historian Shurlee Swain, who has found Grace foster family had made him feel ashamed of his origins and Weaver’s admission record. It declares that Grace was he had no contact with his biological mother. So, who were twenty-two years old, her father and mother were both SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 her father’s family? Except for her name – Grace Weaver deceased, and she had no siblings. A Mrs Marsh of Goul- – Jacki knows nothing about her paternal grandmother or burn is listed as a ‘contact’. Shurlee explains that it is likely why she had to give up her child. Grace lived with Mrs Marsh prior to arriving at Hopeleigh.

The document also reveals that Grace ‘can read a little, and write a little’. Jacki calculates that Grace arrived six weeks before her father was born. This is most unusual – women

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER Arthur’s father discovered, the family myth proven and ‘two little accidents’

In the state ward documentation, Arthur Weaver’s father is recorded in the ’particulars of parents’ as William Onions. The Weaver family myth is proven true – and he has the same surname as Grace’s employer.

Going back into Grace’s past, Jacki searches for the earliest record of her grandmother – her birth certificate – which states that Grace was born in 1897 to Adeline Weaver. There is no record of Grace’s father. So Grace was the child of an unmarried mother and then became one herself. ‘Two little accidents’, reflects Jacki, who also wonders if, like Arthur, Grace – also illegitimate – also ended up as a ward of the state.

The answer to this question is yes. At the State Records Office, historian Victoria Haskins has the 1904 Dependent usually arrived around the time they could no longer con- Children’s Register, which reveals that Grace was made a ceal their pregnancy and, being unmarried, sought to hide ward of the state in July of that year when she was seven this fact from the world. years old. One month later, she was ‘boarded out’– placed in foster care – with the Marsh family, residents of Goul- ‘She’s suddenly got a personality for me; she hasn’t ever burn. Grace was living with Mrs Marsh when she became had one for me before,’ declares Jacki. We have a country pregnant with Arthur. girl, an orphan, newly arrived in the city, with potentially a friendly ally back at home, with some literacy skills, who Again, researching the ‘particulars of parents’, the records chose not to name the father of her child on the birth list Adeline as an ‘imbecile’, noted as an explanation for certificate. But there is an unexpected clue in the name of why the young mother could not care for her child. Grace’s employer – a Mrs Onions. The distinctive surname reminds Jacki of a family myth: ‘A pejorative, hideous word’– Jacki

‘My mother said she heard a rumour – I don’t know the Dr Haskins explains that ‘imbecile’ was once a generalised source of it – that my dad’s father’s name might have been psychiatric medical classification to cruelly describe an Onions. They used to tease my dad when he was little and individual who may be foolish or unwise; ‘such a pejora- they called him Mickey Onions – because the name Mickey tive hideous word’, observes Jacki. She asks herself, ‘I just was a nickname for a ‘bastard’.’ wonder what that meant then. To what degree was she incapable of looking after a child?’A medical historian may Jacki wants to know who this man was that made Grace provide the answer. pregnant and why he didn’t look after her. Did he love her? Did they merely have a casual relationship? Dr Ross Jones at the University of Sydney is quizzed for some answers. He confirms that ‘imbecile’ was a legal, medical definition that appeared in the nineteenth century, Being a ‘ward of the state’ or maybe the late eighteenth century. It was an attempt by psychiatrists to try and classify people who did not quite The next stop is the Department of Family and Community fit into social norms. In those times, there was no under- Services, which holds the records for wards of the state. standing of conditions such as autism or syndromes such In law, a ward is someone placed under the protection of as Tourette’s or Asperger’s, so people with various kinds a legal guardian. A court may take responsibility for the of intellectual disabilities tended to be grouped together. legal protection of an individual – usually either a child or There were surveys in the very early twentieth century that SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 incapacitated person – in which case the ward is known as set the proportion of ‘imbeciles’ in the population as low as a ‘ward of the court’ or a ‘ward of the state’. The state acts three per cent but some as high as ten per cent. a guardian to the child, which generally entails assuming all lawful authority to make medical and legal decisions on the The term ‘imbecile’ quickly passed from a medical term person’s behalf. In Grace’s day, illegitimate children were into vernacular usage as a derogatory term and fell out often handed over to this authority, since the mother was of professional use in the twentieth century in favour of usually destitute. ‘mental retardation’. We will hear this term used later in the

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER episode to describe Grace’s disabilities, but on this occasion it’s not meant unkindly.

Nowadays, the phrases ‘mental retardation’, ‘mentally retarded’ and ‘retarded’are regarded as offensive and insensitive. In the twenty-first century, the broad-spectrum term for conditions such as Adeline’s would be ‘intellectu- ally disabled’.

Next stop: Goulburn, NSW

So, Adeline was not considered capable of caring for Grace. Now that Jacki knows why Grace was placed into foster care, she wants to know what life was like for her as a ward of the state. She travels to Goulburn, where Grace And who was Mrs Maher? lived with her foster family. Many large country towns have their own local historical society and here is where Jacki, ‘desperate to find out about Grace; how long she lived, An online search for this name brings up a 1950 engage- how she felt,’ will find a number of answers. ment notice in the local paper for Miss Edna Maher, daughter of Amy Maher – then, wonderfully, Jacki finds Edna still In 1904, the Southern Tableland city of Goulburn was a living in the township. A telephone call secures an over- prosperous country centre and one of the most popular whelming discovery; Edna indeed knew her grandmother: places in New South Wales to send foster children; by 1906, Grace Weaver was one of one-hundred-and-seventy- ‘She said ‘we loved Gracie’. She kept calling her ‘Gracie’. five such children living in the town. Local historian Monica And she died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage at the Croak shows Jacki a newspaper from 1908 that records front door. And she was very loved – that’s what she told Grace receiving an award for writing in the Infants Depart- me, three times. So the wretched life I had imagined for her ment of Goulburn District School. The only other glimpse of wasn’t true; she was loved.’ Jacki’s grandmother is the record of her death, in Novem- ber 1942, when Grace was forty-five: And so Jacki meets Edna, Elaine and June – the daughters of Amy Maher, Grace’s foster parent and protector. These The death occurred suddenly at the home of Mrs Maher, lively, good-humoured women have fond memories of Sloane Street, where she was living. The deceased had no Gracie, whom they speak of very warmly; reassuring Jacki living relatives … that Grace was a happy, much-loved girl. Amy’s mother, Charlotte Marsh, was Grace’s original foster mother, and … except, of course, the son Grace had given birth to and took her in when she was seven years old. Before she died, given up – Arthur, Jacki’s father, who at the time of his Charlotte asked her daughter Amy if she would look after mother’s death was in England, fighting in World War II as Gracie, and so the family continued their care of her. an Air Force pilot. Edna was only two years old when Gracie came to live In Sloane Street, Goulburn, Jacki visits the house her them and it was only after her death that she learned Grace grandmother once lived in. This is now an old-style once had a baby. ‘Did Grace miss her little boy?’ asks residence, clearly built in the early twentieth century, and Jacki, but Elaine explains that Gracie ‘didn’t understand, showing the signs of ageing – but to Jacki, standing in the because she was a little bit retarded’. So it would appear street and looking at the property that Grace Weaver once that Adeline and her daughter suffered the same intellectual resided in, this is an emotional moment of connection: disability, which meant –Edna recalls – that Gracie couldn’t show affection, and couldn’t respond when she was shown ‘I feel very much closer now; she was just a name, Grace affection. But ‘she was one of us,’ says Edna, ‘and greatly

Weaver. But now she’s not only a very real person to me, loved’. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 I’ve got evidence of her existence. And it is a strange feeling; I never had a grandma, and now I’ve got one.’ It’s naturally a difficult discovery; Grace was afflicted in the same way as Adeline, her mother. But there are positives Jacki is left with an ominous sense that perhaps Grace – – after learning about Grace’s ‘sweet nature’ and love of dying at so young an age – may have taken her own life, music, Jacki feels her dad may have inherited these quali- since it seems she had such a wretched existence. Or did ties from her; her father, she recalls, was a gentle man and she? ‘very musical’.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER Tracing down the elusive William Phillipa tells Jacki that her father William was born in 1902, and about two years later his father – grandfather William – Onions: a sleazy rotter? Well, not abandoned them, leaving a family of five destitute. So, Wil- a ‘role model’ … liam would not have known his father either. In 1950, Phyllis sought a divorce from the elder William on the grounds of ‘He is awfully good looking. He might have got away with ‘wilful desertion.’ So, what happened to this man who was things that he shouldn’t have got away with’. – Jacki ostracised from the family? And why was he banished?

… ‘The thing to remember is the sins of our forefathers Jacki meets historian Linda Emery at the Mitchell Library aren’t our sins’. –Judge Greg Woods in Sydney. Emery produces records to show that in 1915 William Onions Sr was awarded a scholarship to go to high What about William Onions, the man who fathered Grace’s school, at a time when just five per cent of students went baby? He has a grand-daughter, Phillipa Capel, and Jacki to high school – this was undoubtedly a feather in his cap. now travels to the NSW south coast to meet her. This is the William was also musical – he played the bugle and the first time Jacki will meet a relative from the Onions side of clarinet. Emery also shows a 1919 newspaper article about the family. She reflects, ‘I’ve been feeling really resentful Corporal W.J. Onions of the 5th Battalion Band blowing The that this person must have been some kind of sleazy rotter Last Post in honour of the World War I fallen. William also and resenting him for leaving my grandmother in this way appears in a rare photograph as a member of the Goulburn …’ Symphony Orchestra. Jacki observes that ‘he must have been good; it’s hard to play The Last Post. I know that Phillipa and Jacki, of course, share the same grandfather, much because my dad was a brass band player all his life.’ but until now Jacki has never seen a picture of him; now she is introduced to this man in photographs. ‘Oh my gosh, So is music carried in the Weaver family genes? After all, he’s a handsome devil!’ is her response. Neither Phillipa nor Grace was ‘musical’, William was apparently a talented Jacki ever met their grandfather, in Phillipa’s case because musician, and Arthur Weaver was a bandsman. he had been ‘banished from the family’ when her father was about eighteen years old. As for the reasons why this happened, the subject was taboo; Phillipa recalls that A criminal in the family? her grandmother, Phyllis Onions, ‘did not remember him fondly’. A 1928 newspaper reports less favourable news. Twenty- five year old William Onions, a young married man, was Jacki learns that William married Phillipa’s grandmother charged with ‘indecently assaulting a 15 year old girl.’ Is Phyllis in 1925 – four years after Arthur was born illegiti- this the reason why he was ‘kicked out of home’? mately to Grace. He then had a son – also called William – Phillipa’s father. Jacki realises that grandfather William was Further historians are engaged in this search and Jacki vis- only nineteen at the time of Arthur’s conception – approxi- its Sydney’s Long Bay Gaol to meet with criminal law histo- mately five years younger than Grace. Grace’s employer, rian Judge Greg Woods, who has studied the case against Mrs Onions, was not William’s wife but his mother. William Onions. The court reporter noted in the record of his trial that William had returned home early from the cinema after taking his wife out for the evening; a babysit- ter was looking after their child. Some sexual contact took place and the young girl returned to her home ‘upset’. As a result, her mother made a complaint to the police. At trial, the Goulburn jury decided that William was not guilty.

William’s defence lawyer argued that the girl was infatuated with him. The girl’s mother had admitted that she had heard her daughter mentioning ‘Billy Onions’ in her sleep. The jury must have thought that whatever happened occurred ‘consensually’, meaning that William and the young woman

were mutually prepared to have a sexual encounter. William SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 was never convicted of any sexual assault ever in his life, but the similarities between this case and Grace Weaver’s situation are not lost on Jacki. Was he indeed innocent of this charge?

In the early twentieth century, domestic servants like Grace were highly vulnerable to sexual advances from the men of

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER the household. Grace’s possible seduction and abandon- ment would not have been unusual. Working hours were long, work was labour-intensive, and a harsh master or mistress would have meant a difficult life.

While William Onions may have been cleared of indecent assault, that wasn’t his last encounter with the law. In 1954 he defrauded a disabled widow of a large sum of money. At the trial, the judge described Onions act as a ‘mean and despicable fraud’. At this stage, William was gambling and may have thought he would pay the money back ‘when the horse came in.’ Ultimately he served eighteen months in Long Bay Gaol. Ten years later – up to his old tricks and under the alias of William Osborne – he was jailed for six And soto Arthur Weaver and months in Melbourne’s Pentridge Prison for defrauding several people. Jacki studies William’s mug shot: ‘He’s cer- Operation Dresden tainly lost his looks; he was quite a handsome man. He was alive well into my life; I was an adult while he was in gaol.’ Having solved the mystery of her father’s biological parents, Jacki now wants to investigate Arthur’s involvement in World War II. Her father never talked about the war, but her The concluding chapter mother told her how bad it was for all of them. What were the events that appeared to cause Arthur such anguish? So what became of William Onions? Did he put his crimi- Jacki sets off for Canberra and a search through the Aus- nal past behind him and make peace with his family? The tralian Defence Force Archives. Coroner’s Report of his death does not make for happy reading: Military historian Dr Karl James has Arthur’s service records, which detail his enlistment in the Royal Australian Air William Osborne-Onions, age 74, heart attack. Osborne- Force, and his posting to Britain’s Royal Air Force in 1943, Onions was a pensioner who lived alone in an upstairs room where he joined Bomber Command. Arthur was an air at 52 Morris Street, Parkville; he was a musician and still bomber, and Bomber Command was tasked with destroy- taught the clarinet. He was found dead by a pupil at 5.30pm ing the enemy’s military and industrial resources. Opera- on the 1st October 1974 when she went to his room for a tions involved flying over a target to drop bombs, and at clarinet lesson. that key moment everything hung on the bomber, situated vulnerably in the nose of the plane. Survival rates were slim. Jacki has been vacillating between detesting her grandfa- It must have been a heavy burden, reflects daughter Jacki. ther and feeling sorry for him; his lonely demise is certainly ‘What that generation went through was horrendous, and affecting. Despite his daughter’s intellectual disabilities, she they were so young …’ reflects, ‘I think Grace was probably happier than William’. Almost half of the 125,000 men in Bomber Command died during service. There were 10,000 Australians in this arm of the Defence Force, and 4000 of them were killed. Fortu- nately Arthur survived thirty-two bombing missions and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. His citation reads:

This officer has completed numerous operations against the enemy in the course of which he has displayed the utmost courage, fortitude and devotion to duty.

In the closing months of the war, Arthur flew in one of the

most notorious missions of World War II– the Bombing of SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Dresden. Jacki reflects, ‘My dad never mentioned Dresden except that he thought it should never have happened. He was having terrible nightmares and being unable to cope, because he was a gentle soul.’

The Bombing of Dresden in February 1945 has remained one of the more controversial aspects of World War II.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER APPENDIX 1

The Salvation Army: The Salvation Army was founded in London in 1865 by Catherine and William Booth. It was originally known as the East London Christian Mission. In 1878 William Booth reorganised the mission into a military structure and became its first General. It is a Christian denominational church and international charitable organisation structured in a quasi-military fashion. The organisation reports worldwide membership of over 1.5 million, consisting of ‘soldiers’, ‘officers’ and adherents known as Salvationists. Its founders, Catherine and William Booth, sought to bring salvation to the poor, destitute and hungry by meeting both their ‘physical and spiritual needs’. It has a Dresden, a city unaffected by bombing up to that point in presence in 126 countries – running charity shops, operat- the war, lost many thousands of civilians in the firestorm ing shelters for the homeless, providing disaster relief, and that was created by the Allies. As the Russians advanced to humanitarian aid to developing countries. Berlin from the east and the Allies from the west, why was Dresden bombed when it did appear that the war would be The Army’s doctrine follows mainstream Christian beliefs over in the near future? There are a number of possible an- and its articles of faith emphasise God’s ‘saving purposes’. swers to this question; for a fuller account, see Appendix 1. Its objects are ‘the advancement of the Christian religion… of education, the relief of poverty, and other charitable Jacki meets veteran Doug Arrowsmith in front of the Aus- objects beneficial to society or the community of mankind tralian War Memorial’s Lancaster heavy bomber. Arrow- as a whole’. smith was a Bomber Command pilot who also flew at Dres- den. Reading Arthur’s logbook of his airborne missions, he The current world leader of The Salvation Army is General lists ten hours of flying for Operation Dresden. It was his André Cox, who was elected by the High Council of The twenty-eighth raid as an air bomber. As the Lancaster plane Salvation Army on the 3rd of August 2013.‘The Salvos’, as neared the target, Arthur would have been lying in the nose they are called colloquially, are a consistent presence in of the plane. He guided the pilot to the precise coordinates Australia, with shelters for the homeless, ‘op shops’ and before releasing the bombs. care homes for the aged in the community.

After the war, Bomber Command was not well regarded – • The Last Post: the Last Post is a bugle call used in mainly because of Dresden. But recently the British Prime military tradition. It is used to signify the end of the Minister, David Cameron, awarded a clasp – a military day’s activities. It is also sounded at military funerals decoration – to the airmen of Bomber Command. Doug has and at commemorative services such as Anzac Day Arthur’s clasp, which he presents to Jacki. It is a moving and Remembrance Day. moment of connection to her late father. The Last Post is one of several bugle calls in the military ‘My mother told me my dad was a war hero, and coming that mark the stages of the day. While Reveille signals the here today and talking to Doug, it made me really feel for ‘beginning’, the Last Post signals the ‘end’. It can be played what he and thousands of young Australians went through, to symbolise that the duty of the fallen is over and they can fighting that war …’ rest in peace.

As the Last Post is played – on the bugle, of course – Jacki The Bombing of Dresden: Dresden is the capital of the reflects on her father and his father, William Onions, and German state of Saxony. Historically it has beennorthern how he played the Last Post after World War I. This musi- Germany’s cultural centre – a city filled with museums and cal heritage is a legacy that ultimately links the family back historic, world-famous buildings. From 1939 to the end of to Grace and her love of music and a sense, now, of a past 1944, the city had been spared the bombing raids that the that is known. As we see Jacki enjoying a family get-to- Allies had launched on Nazi Germany. By February 1945, gether, she reflects on the closure this journey has brought the city was filled with refugees – people moving from east her and, paradoxically, the success story it has revealed: to west in an attempt to escape the advancing Red Army. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 The Nazi propaganda machine had filled the minds of the ‘… It’s not just my history; it’s my brother’s history, my Germans with horror stories of what to expect if the Red son’s history. Little Grace Weaver, with her affliction and Army invaded Germany. Thousands fled from the Russians her naivety and simplicity, has twelve descendants who are as they relentlessly advanced to Berlin. No-one knows how pretty okay, some of them fantastically okay – especially the many people were in Dresden when the city was bombed. grandchildren. It’s a very positive testament about how life Officially, the city’s population was 350,000, but with the can be wonderful, even if it doesn’t start out so well …’ number of refugees there, it would have been a lot higher.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER Between the 13th and 14th of February 1945, approximate- ACTIVITIES: YEAR 9 ENGLISH ly 35,000 to 135,000 people were killed by Allied bombing in Dresden. Historians still debate over the number of deaths., There were so many refugees in the city at the time Activity 1 that the real figure will almost certainly never be known. Challenging: Emotionally stressful and taxing, shocking, dif- So, why was Dresden chosen as a target? Arthur Harris, ficult to come to terms with. These definitions apply here. head of Bomber Command, had always held the view that any city that had anything to do with the Nazi war effort Having thus far viewed three episodes of Who Do You Think was a target. A number of theories do exist as to why Dres- You Are?, how accurate do you think the following state- den was chosen: ment is?

1) The city was in Nazi Germany and for this reason was ‘Discovering one’s identity is a challenging journey.’ a legitimate target for attack as the Allies were at war with them. In a short, 300-word piece of writing, explain how the differ- ing discoveries that Andrew Denton, Rebecca Gibney and 2) The city was not simply a cultural centre – there were Jacki Weaver make are challenging. What do they find out factories there producing weapons and equipment for about past social attitudes and beliefs? the Nazi war effort. Therefore, the city was a legitimate target. It was also a rail base to send troops to the Eastern Front. Activity 2

For further information on this, visit the History Learning Fill in the diagram below, setting out the connections be- Site: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/bombing_of_ tween the people in Episode Three: dresden.htm

Ancestor’s Name Relation to Jacki Dates Location Significant fact

Adeline Weaver Goulburn, NSW

Grace Weaver Goulburn, NSW

William Onions (Senior)

William Onions (Junior)

Charlotte Marsh SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014

Phillipa Capel

Arthur Weaver

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER ACTIVITY:YEAR 10 ENGLISH I woke to black flak* and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Air Force War Poetry *flak: anti-aircraft fire, especially as experienced by the crews of combat airplanes at which the fire is directed. Here are two famous poems about World War Two air force fighter pilots: 2. High Flight, John Gillespie Magee This famous poem holds a special place in the hearts 1. The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, Randall Jarrell of pilots the world over. An American, Magee joined the The speaker in this 1945 poem is a ball turret gunner Canadian Air Force before the US entered World War who has died. We know almost nothing about him. The Two and was killed in flight over Lincolnshire, England. gunner is speaking to us – mostly in a flat tone but oc- He was nineteen years old. He wrote this poem in the casionally with terse lyricism – about his death. Since cockpit while flying at 30,000 feet and mailed it to his he is dead, the speech is disembodied. It is, evidently, parents upon landing. the gunner’s voice as imagined by the poet. High Flight Its American author attached this note to the poem when it was published in 1945: Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; A ball turret was a Plexiglas sphere set into the belly of a Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth B-17 or B-24, and inhabited by two .50 calibre machine- Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things guns and one man, a short, small man. When this gunner You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung tracked with his machine guns a fighter attacking his bomb- High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, er from below, he revolved with the turret, hunched upside- I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung down in his little sphere. The fighter planes which attacked My eager craft through footless halls of air. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 him were armed with cannon, firing explosive shells. Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace The Death of The Ball Turret Gunner Where never lark, or even eagle flew. And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, The high un-trespassed sanctity of space, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER • Who they now consider ‘belongs’ to them;

• Why the revelations they have encountered been challenging;

• If they feel that any wrongs have been righted in their search.

ENDNOTES:

‘History and Heritage’, The Salvation Army, http://www.sal- vationarmy.org.au/who-we-are/history-and-heritage/, 2013,

(accessed July 11, 2014)

Ward of the state definition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Questions. Ward_%28law%29 - This page only refers to US/ Canadian law, not Australian law. 1. Consider the contrasting atmosphere created by these two poems. How does each pilot feel about the experi- ‘Imbecile’, The Free Dictionary, http://medical-dictionary. ence of flying? thefreedictionary.com/imbecile, 2012, accessed 11/07/2014

2. In The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner, the poet sets ‘The Last Post’, Australian War Memorial, https://www. out to convey a sense of outrage to his audience. What awm.gov.au/commemoration/customs/last-post/, accessed is he outraged about? 11/07/2014

3. What does Magee mean by ‘the surly bonds of earth’? ‘The Bombing of Dresden’, History Learning Site.http:// www.historylearningsite.co.uk/bombing_of_dresden.htm, 4. Magee moves from the joy and excitement of flight to 2011, accessed 11/07/2014 its spiritual quality. Why would he regard flying as a spiritual experience? ‘War Poetry: 50 Poems about War’, Writer Fox, http:// writerfox.hubpages.com/hub/WarPoems, 2014, accessed 5. It seems that Magee is climbing, in his plane, through 11/07/2014 noise to silence. Look at the imagery in the poem to show how this occurs. ACTIVITY: YEAR 11&12 ENGLISH CONTEXT: IDENTITY & BELONGING

Compiling an Identity & Belonging file:

This is a suggested method to enrich your body of information for later essay writing in either expository, creative, persuasive or ‘hybrid’ style.

Write a short biography of each of the three individuals who are the focus of the first three episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? Include:

• The reasons each gives for embarking on their journey

of discovery; SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014

• Their reflections on how their discoveries have affected their own sense of who they are;

• What heightened sense of belonging their research has provided them with – where they now think they belong;

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 JACKI WEAVER EPISODE FOUR

Actor Richard Roxburgh uncovers an archetypal capitalist, a hero in the battle against slavery and some inspirational news to pass on to his sons.

Synopsis

You spend your whole life dealing with the matter of character, digging into a character and researching the world they operate within … this is what I love most about the work I do … – Richard Roxburgh

ward-winning actor Richard Roxburgh’s stage and screen career has taken him around the world. AHis screen credits include Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001), Van Helsing (Stephen Sommers, 2004), Doing Time for Patsy Cline (Chris Kennedy, 1997), Mission Impossible II (John Woo, 2000) and a host of other film successes. Among many television triumphs is the ABC hit series Rake, which he co-created and produced. His brilliant performance as eccentric barrister Cleaver Greene earned him a TV Week Silver Logie for Most Outstanding Actor and the 2012 AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Televi- sion Series. The series generated international attention and screened to US audiences on Direct TV. His work in the title role of Prime Minister Bob Hawke in Network Ten’s telemovie Hawke earned Roxburgh critical acclaim along with his award-winning electrifying portrayal of the notorious Roger Rogerson in the ABC’s controversial miniseries

Blue Murder. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014

Richard has made his name playing a great number of complicated characters, but what of the players in his own past? Setting out on his particular journey of discovery, he observes: ‘I’d like to find out that [my] people lived rich and good lives and contributed something and that was the story of your ancestors,’ he tells us. Adding a touch of

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH their time.

Richard studies Jane’s death certificate and is surprised to discover that she was born in Jamaica, in the West Indies – not in Scotland! Adam, her husband, who would survive Jane by forty years – was also born in the West Indies, in Trinidad. So everything Richard had assumed about his great-grandparents’ origins has been turned on its head.

‘Befuddled’ – and off to Trinidad ‘gallows humour,’ he reflects: ‘I really hope they don’t turn out to be a bunch of thugs and losers… or that I come from Professing himself ‘befuddled by this element’, Richard a long line of torturers…’ determines to find out what Adam and Jane’s families were doing in the Caribbean. Just as Jacki Weaver and Rebecca Gibney in earlier episodes spoke lovingly of their children and the important place they hold in their lives, so Richard considers as a Where are the West Indies? Who father, that being ‘a strong presence in their lives’ is central lives there? to his role. My contemplation in the matter of being a father is, “what do you have to pass on to your sons?”.’ The British collective name for their colonies in the Carib- bean Sea was the ‘West Indies’. In this region, the country An intriguing and unexpected of Trinidad and Tobago, located off the coast of South revelation America, and Jamaica, located south of Cuba, are the places Richard will visit to investigate his ancestors. The West Indies is, in fact, a much larger group of islands, taking in And what does Richard know of his family’s ancestry? As Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada and many more tiny settle- far as he’s aware, ‘there’s the pretty standard mixture of ments, all with a fascinating and colourful history. Richard Scottish and Irish’, pretty much the Anglo-Saxon heritage will be saying, as he looks up old records, how much he of Australia’s early colonial settlers. As a boy he remembers enjoys this ‘whole line of spice in my family.’ The West In- reading some beautiful old letters that his great-grandfather dies does indeed grow spices, but the principal industry on Adam Roxburgh wrote to his wife Jane. Richard believes nearly all the islands is sugarcane; other cash crops include Adam came out to Australia from Scotland. He is about to bananas, cacao, citrus fruits, coffee, sisal, and tobacco. be very surprised … Today, the ‘West Indies’ refers to a group of mainly Eng- The first stop is his sister Liz, to reacquaint himself with lish-speaking dependencies, territories and independent those letters. Great-grandparents Adam Roxburgh and Jane Caribbean countries, many of which are members of the Watson were married in 1851 and their courtship is docu- Commonwealth, like Australia. Clearly, this region has an mented in a series of passionate love letters, which were extensive history of European colonisation. Most West quite racy for their time. Liz tells Richard that this couple Indian people have a complex ancestry including African were the first of their family to come to Australia and that slaves, Indian indentured workers and the region’s colonis- they went to Ballarat in 1856. But how did Adam and Jane’s ers from Britain, France, Spain and the Netherlands. story unfold once they were married and living in Australia? From the seventeenth through to the nineteenth century, Cousin Peter Richardson, who is the family historian, tells the European colonial territories of the West Indies were the Richard that their great love story, so passionately por- called the British West Indies, the Danish West Indies, the trayed in those letters, did not last. Tragically Jane, who Netherlands Antilles (Dutch West Indies), the French West had produced seven children, passed away in 1866, three Indies, and the Spanish West Indies. By extension, some SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 hours after the birth of Richard’s grandfather Gilbert. Death formerly Danish and Spanish islands are now collectively in childbirth was a common occurrence among women of known as the American West Indies. the nineteenth century. Nearly every parent lost a young child and many men lost their wives. One chronicler of the A West Indian is therefore a native or inhabitant of the West times concluded around the end of the eighteenth century, Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). For more that only seventy-eight out of one thousand people would than one hundred years the demonym West Indian specifi- die of natural causes or old age. The rest would die before cally described natives of the West Indies, but by 1661 Eu-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH Richard goes to the National Archives of Trinidad and searches a register of nineteenth century slave owners. To his obvious disappointment he finds that Virtue did own three domestic slaves: Mary Brandon, her four-month-old son, and Rosalie Constantine. We need to also remember that the owner of slaves could sell them to other buyers, even separating mothers from their young children. The information is unsettling; Richard reflects:

“I don’t feel morally responsible but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t disappointing to find out that a member of your family was desensitised in a way that I would find abhorrent”

Another revelation: women owned one-fifth of all the slaves ropeans had begun to use it also to describe the descend- in Trinidad, sometimes receiving them as gifts for their ants of European colonists who stayed in the West Indies. dowry. But was it at all possible to be a slave-owner and a good person? The question is disturbing. So is the answer Richard travels to the island of Trinidad and the country’s … capital, Port of Spain. At the Church of England Cathedral he is shown his great-grandfather’s birth entry from 1825. It shows Adam was the son of Thomas and Virtue Gillaird and ‘The plantocracy’ that his father was a merchant. To try and find out more about the life of his forebears in the To know your roots is a wonderful thing time of slavery, Richard meets Caribbean historian, Mi- – Canon Drakes, Port of Spain Cathedral chael Anthony. Michael has a document that he thinks will interest Richard. It is another slave register. This one shows Caribbean author Gerard Besson tells Richard that when Gray, Roxburgh and Company’s ledger for a sugar planta- Thomas Roxburgh, a so-called ‘canny Scot’, arrived from tion called ‘Friendship’; Thomas had progressed to become Scotland in 1818 Trinidad was a thriving British colony, its its owner. economy based on highly productive sugar plantations that would generate riches to fund the industrial boom back in While most households owned domestic slaves, the major- Britain. Thomas was the agent for merchants in Scotland ity of slaves laboured on the sugar plantations, working up who would have supplied their goods for sale. Richard is to eighteen hours a day. Slaves were brutally punished for shown an advertisement in an old copy of the Port of Spain insubordination or failure to work hard enough; their life Gazette for Gray, Roxburgh and Co. – a business partner- expectancy was usually less than ten years. Thomas’s part- ship – and sees his great-great-grandfather is importing nership owned one hundred and nine slaves in total. From disposable merchandise, such as hats and umbrellas. But humble beginnings in ‘the rag trade’, Thomas Roxburgh Trinidad was a long way from home for a Scottish merchant; why were Thomas and Virtue living here?

In the same newspaper, another listing catches Richard’s eye, printed above the Gray, Roxburgh advertisement; this highlights another ‘disposable’ commodity that was common to the West Indies’ world. Richard reads a notice offering a $6 reward for a runaway slave, a ‘Sambo’ – a person Gerard Besson defines as being a mixture of Amer- indian and Negro descent. The slave had ‘absconded’ from his place of work. Gerard explains that most of the people who lived in Port of Spain in those times would have had domestic slaves. Would this include Thomas and Virtue?

What would Thomas’s position have been on the subject SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 of slavery? Gerard reassures Richard that a young Thomas Roxburgh would have ‘been appalled’ at the brutality of the system under which thousands of slaves lived on these islands. Richard hopes so; did his forebears manage to transcend the terrible cruelties that were visited upon the slave class?

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH had risen to become part of the ‘plantocracy’: the class of wealthy and politically powerful plantation owners.

This register is dated 1834, which was a particulary good time to buy. In 1833 slavery was supposed to be abolished throughout the entire British Empire; all slaves were to be freed – ‘emancipated.’ However, because of objections from the white establishment in the West Indies over the loss of their property, it was decreed that the 600,000 slaves in the West Indies would serve a further six years of unpaid labour before their emancipation. Many plantation owners saw the writing on the wall and sold up, but others, like Thomas, saw that plantations became available cheaply and were attracted by six years of slave labour.

On top of the six additional years of slavery, plantation owners demanded financial compensation for their loss of labour and were paid it by the British government. Twenty million pounds were paid out – an astounding sum for the era. Thomas Roxburgh profited wonderfully. ‘It was like they were really trying to just squeeze the last drops that they could out of this time when slavery was allowed,’ says Richard.

Well done family, Well done Roxburghs – Richard Roxburgh

Richard’s bitter reflection of Thomas, the archetypal capitalist, is:

‘He really doesn’t ‘give a rats’ about the moral repercus- in store for him. The Gleaner, an 1879 newspaper, shows sions of what he’s doing at all. It’s just about getting cashed an advertisement for a store named ‘Roxburgh House, up as best as you possibly can. Even if it’s on the backs of established 36 years’. Thomas had bounced back from servitude, impoverishment and brutality. … He was a cog in his failed sugar enterprise and re-established himself as a the corporate machine that presided over one of the ugliest successful merchant, this time with his two oldest sons, periods in human history’ Richard’s great-grandfather, Adam, and Thomas junior working alongside him. By now there were eleven children Abolitionists kept their pressure on the British government in the family. So Thomas had returned to the ‘rag trade’ of and succeeded in getting slavery totally abolished in 1838. his earlier days, selling goods in the new ‘wage economy’ Without slave labour the sugar economy collapsed. Many to all who could buy, including former slaves who were now plantation owners went bankrupt. Despite receiving his able to earn money. compensation money, the end of slavery had ultimately sent Thomas Roxburgh broke. But it didn’t stop him trying In the north of Jamaica, Richard visits the Roxburgh his luck in greener pastures. property called ‘Annandale,’ a magnificent old mansion bought in 1870, and remained in the family for one hundred and twenty years. Nowadays ‘Annandale’ is a magnificent To Jamaica – to Roxburgh House private home and hotel. There are still family mementos and beautiful ‘Annandale’ here including a portrait of Thomas Roxburgh, former slave and plantation owner and reconstituted merchant, and Richard sizes him up. He doesn’t look like a cruel overseer,

Richard goes online to see what became of his great-great- and when he reads a letter that Thomas sent back to his SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 grandfather after emancipation. He finds a notice stating family from a trip, it reveals a gentler side – a caring and that the firm of Gray, Roxburgh and Co. had gone bust in concerned family man, with a ‘domestic tenderness’ clearly 1847 … in Jamaica. It seems Thomas had packed up his shown in his words. This is the paradox of this man: the family and headed to Jamaica, where his business had also tender, doting husband and father and keeper of enslaved failed. Richard travels to Jamaica, on the trail of Thomas men and women. Richard wonders if the young wide-eyed and his sliding fortunes. At the Institute of Jamaica he innocent who first came out from Scotland remained inside meets Dr Jonathan Greenland, who has another surprise the Thomas who owned slaves.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH If you’d like to take a virtual tour of Annandale House, see: .

And what of the other side of the family?

By the time Thomas Roxburgh died in 1867, his son Adam – Richard’s great-grandfather – had been living in Australia for over a decade, and had already lost his beloved wife, Jane. Richard sees a tribute to Jane that Adam created. It is in the form of a family tree which Adam sent back to his siblings in Jamaica. It provides clues to Jane’s lineage. Born in the tiny town of Lucea, Jane’s father was the Rev- erend James Watson and he later presided over Adam and Missionaries needed to stay on the right side of politics to Jane’s wedding. Richard is keen to know more about this maintain a presence on the islands; any open denuncia- side of the family. Was he different from Thomas Roxburgh? tions of slavery, and the status quo, would have seen them forced to leave. Lucea is the main town of the Jamaican parish of Hanover, which was founded in 1723. From the middle of the eighteenth century, the people of Lucea provided the rest of Ja- The rebellion of 1832 maica with most of its produce, and exported bananas until the 1960s. Lucea is the home of the ‘Lucea yam’, which Evangeline shows Richard a map of western Jamaica that was exported to feed Jamaicans working abroad. Richard’s displays all the sugar cane plantations destroyed during the first stop is the Lucea United Church. He proudly discov- rebellion of 1832. It was called the Sam Sharpe Rebellion ers that James Watson was the founder of this church, and and it was the largest in Jamaican history. Over Christmas his name is set in stone in the church wall. It’s a moving 1831, false rumours circulated amongst slaves that the moment for our traveller, to find that the church his great- British King had granted their freedom, but their masters great-grandfather built is still here, and still used. were withholding it. Baptist-educated slave Sam Sharpe led a peaceful protest, but the reprisals from plantation owners were harsh and led the slaves to rebel, setting fire to A compassionate – and many estates. A proclamation issued on behalf of the King revolutionary – thinker warned the slaves of their fate if they continued the rebellion. James Watson found himself forced, for the sake of peace, to ride out to some of the plantations to read this to Reverend Devon Dick takes Richard out into the country- the illiterate slaves and to try and calm them down. side surrounding Lucea, the very lands that James Watson rode as he travelled around the plantation estates spread- ‘I feel incredibly proud … he seems like a man of sub- ing the gospel. Richard learns that he preached to the stance, tough and determined and special…’ enslaved, regarding them not as sub-human, but having a soul that needed to be saved – quite a revolutionary idea – Richard for his time. In his writings, Richard hears the voice of a man with great compassion for the slaves, ‘saying loudly Richard goes to one of these plantations – Great Valley Es- and clearly these are human beings with souls’. tate. All that remains of the property today are the ruins of the slave barracks. In his journal James recorded what he Richard notes how James Watson’s view of slavery was in witnessed that night – the estate house looted and slaves direct contrast to his other great-great-grandfather, Thomas armed with clubs and cutlasses. The plantation was in the Roxburgh. James writes of seeing ‘hundreds of sons and hands of the rebels. daughters of Ethiopia, whose ancestors were stolen from their homes’. At the same time Thomas was exploiting his The uprising lasted ten days, involving as many as 60,000 SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 slaves, James was reaching out to help them. of Jamaica’s 300,000 enslaved population. To quash the rebellion every able-bodied white man was called to arms Local historian Evangeline Clare tells him James went – including James Watson, who was forced to assist in beyond preaching from the pulpit. He wanted to educate rounding up rebels and bringing them to prison. Retribu- the slaves, ‘giving them respect’, help them to read and tion was savage: over five hundred slaves were executed write, even though such attitudes went against the grain of and many more were jailed. Richard recognises that James the establishment. This was about to land James in trouble. must have been very torn at these events, working along-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH side the plantation owners and charged with arresting It’s in the papers! people from his own congregation. Richard’s Jamaican travels have created something of a ‘The past year …being by far the most trying, the most splash in the local news: the local paper, Jamaica Observer, difficult, the most sorrowful of my missionary life.’ featured an article on his research: – Reverend James Watson . tors of the Great Valley rebellion. Richard meets historian Dr Daive Dunkley at Fort Charlotte where the trial took place. Despite James’s empathy for the slaves, as a man of God, ‘Redemption Song’ and reflections the truth was his only option. The accused was found guilty and condemned to death. In downtown Kingston, Richard heads to St Andrew’s Scots Church for a service in tribute to one of the found- For all his work in trying to educate the slaves, had James ers of the Presbyterian Church in Jamaica – The Reverend been culpable in helping send one to the gallows? Daive James Watson. The presiding minister celebrates James as tells Richard it is important to keep in mind ‘the big pic- a ‘missionary, prophet, priest, crusader, and emancipator’. ture’. The missionaries were in a very precarious position; Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ is played at the end of plantation owners blamed them for sowing the seeds of the the sermon and Richard reflects that there ‘seemed to be a uprising by giving slaves an education. Just as slaves had belief there in that ministry, that James Watson had helped. burned their crops, plantation owners set about burning And so he was a white guy who it was worth singing the churches around Jamaica. Richard reads an account of this ‘Redemption Song’ about.’ reprisal, showing that James was under direct threat in a conspiracy to burn down his church and to harm his family. Richard has a complicated family legacy in the opportun- Richard feels for James as man who cared deeply but suf- ism of Thomas Roxburgh, and the spiritual life of James fered great inner conflicts that ‘must have really shaken his Watson. In the end, through good men and their endeavour, belief system to the core’. freedom prevailed. ‘So much of the journey’s been about a contemplation on freedom, and what it means,’ Richard ob- But the terror campaign did not deter him from his mission: serves. ‘James Watson spent so much of his time obsess- James Watson lived to see the abolition of slavery in 1838. ing with that and so determined that the enslaved people be allowed their freedom … I would love to think I have the resilience of James Watson. Mercifully, it hasn’t been put to the test … yet …’

APPENDIX ONE.

Vocabulary:

‘Gallows humour’: The Oxford Dictionary defines this as ‘grim and ironical humour in a desperate or hopeless situation’.

‘The canny Scots’: this is an expression, probably ste- reotypical, of a particular quality of people from Scotland; ‘canny’ means clever, shrewd, careful, restrained.

‘The rag trade’: the clothing or fashion industry. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Archetypal: standard, conventional, classic, model, exemplary, quintessential.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH APPENDIX TWO: • Dowry: Money, good or estate that a woman brings to her marriage. This is no longer in use in Western culture • West Indian culture: The Jamaican national motto is: but still exists in some parts of the world to varying ‘Out of many, one people’ – This perfectly summates degrees. the diversity of cultures that have come together over the centuries to make up West Indian culture.

For centuries the islands were an integral part of YEAR 10 ENGLISH ACTIVITIES the trade route between the Americas and Europe. Trade brought people from all over the world – white Europeans, Malay Chinese, Indians and Africans. Over Activity One time this milieu produced a rich, vibrant, resilient and Class discussion creative culture. Many people today refer to West Indians as ‘Afro-Caribbean’. Here are the lyrics to ‘Redemption Song’:

For further information on this unique corner of the Old pirates, yes, they rob I world, see Your Life: West Indian Culture at http:// Sold I to the merchant ships, www.onespace.org.uk/your-roots/west-indian- Minutes after they took I culture From the bottomless pit But my hand was made strong Did you know that due to our ethnic diversity, Aus- By the ‘and of the Almighty tralia has a West Indian community? Check this out We forward in this generation at: http://museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmu- Triumphantly

seum/whatson/past-exhibitions/callaloo/who-are- Won’t you help to sing SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 west-indians/ These songs of freedom? - ‘Cause all I ever have • Amerindians: Before the Americas (including the West Redemption songs Indies) were ‘claimed’ by Europeans, there was an In- Redemption songs digenous population. The Europeans referred to these people as ‘Amerindians’ – ‘American Indians’. Emancipate yourselves from mental slaver; None but ourselves can free our minds

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH Have no fear for atomic energy They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks, ‘Cause none of them can stop the time They held him by the hand! – How long shall they kill our prophets A tear burst from the sleeper’s lids While we stand aside and look? Ooh! And fell into the sand. Some say it’s just a part of it And then at furious speed he rode We’ve got to fulfil de book Along the Niger’s bank; Won’t you help to sing His bridle-reins were golden chains, These songs of freedom? - And with a martial clank, ‘Cause all I ever have At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel Redemption songs Smiting his stallion’s flank. Redemption songs Before him, like a blood-red flag, Redemption songs The bright flamingos flew; From morn till night he followed their flight, If you are unfamiliar with the dialect of ‘Caribbean English’, O’er plains where the tamarind grew, you may not realise that in the case of this song, the word Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts, ‘I’ in the first few lines actually translates as ‘me’. And the ocean rose to view. At night he heard the lion roar, Now, working in pairs, followed by class discussion, answer And the hyena scream, the following questions: And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds Beside some hidden stream; 1. This is a song about slavery and freedom. How was the And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums, singer enslaved? Through the triumph of his dream. The forest, with their myriad tongues, 2. What do you think ‘the bottomless pit’ is referring to? Shouted of liberty, And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud, 3. The singer insists his freedom came from ‘the Al- With a voice so wild and free, mighty’. What does he mean? That he started in his sleep and smiled At their tempestuous glee. 4. Freedom from slavery and redemption seem to be He did not feel the driver’s whip, inter-linked in these lyrics. In what way are they linked? Nor the burning heat of day; For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep, 5. What do you think is ‘mental slavery?’ Can you think of And his lifeless body lay any examples of this? A worn-out fetter, that the soul Had broken and thrown away! 6. What is a prophet? What do you think the singer is suggesting when he asks us ‘how long shall they kill Questions: our prophets?’ 1. Clearly, this is a poem which condemns slavery. What Activity Two evidence in the poem points to this? Poetry analysis – written exercise 2. Throughout the poem the poet uses graphic images — visual, auditory and tactile, describing the slave’s The Slave’s Dream by Henry Longfellow picturesque ‘native land’ and creating an atmosphere of pathos which is full of impact. Locate at least two Beside the ungathered rice he lay, each of these. His sickle in his hand; His breast was bare, his matted hair 3. What are your feelings at the end of the poem? Could it Was buried in the sand. be said that the slave has finally found a ‘freedom’? Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, He saw his Native Land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 The lordly Niger flowed; YEAR 10 CIVICS & CITIZENSHIP Beneath the palm-trees on the plain ACTIVITY Once more a king he strode; And heard the tinkling caravans Slavery in the modern world. Descending the mountain road. He saw once more his dark-eyed queen While slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire Among her children stand; in 1833 and in America in 1865, you may be shocked to

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH know that in contemporary times slavery, in various forms, As part of your Civics and Citizenship studies, you should still exists. research this current world issue at: http://www.antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/what_is_modern_slavery. aspx What is modern slavery? Australia, despite being a democratic nation that upholds When we think about slavery what comes to mind is the the rule of law, is not free from the international scourge of Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade - captured Africans, transported slavery. You may find the following information disturbing to the West Indies and North America to work on the sugar reading: and cotton plantations. Although its modern forms are different, when we talk about slavery it is not a metaphor. Anti-slavery Australia,: http://www.antislavery.org.au/, accessed 15/07/2014 According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) almost twenty-one million men, women and children around ‘Women slaves in Australia silent and isolated, according the world are in slavery. In the twenty-first century people to Australian Institute of Criminology study’, ABC, http:// are still sold as objects, forced to work for little or no pay www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-04/study-finds-women- and at the complete mercy of their ‘employers’. slaves-silent-and-isolated/5237530, 5 February 2014, There are many different characteristics that distinguish accessed 15/07/2014 slavery from other human rights violations, however only one needs to be present for slavery to exist. Someone is in Stanger, Jenny, ‘Modern Slavery in Australia’, Immigration slavery if they are: and Rights Centre Inc., http://www.iarc.asn.au/_blog/Im- migration_News/post/Modern_slavery_in_Australia/, 7 • forced to work – through mental or physical threat; February 2013, accessed 15/07/2014

• owned or controlled by an ‘employer’, usually through ENDNOTES mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse;

1. Who Do You Think You Are? Press Kit: Artemis SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 • dehumanised, treated as a commodity, or bought and International & Serendipity Productions: Production sold as ‘property’; Office – Suite 6, 226 Carr Place, Leederville WA 6007

• physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/ 2. Gallows Humour: Oxford Dictionary: (Accessed 5 August 2014) Contemporary slavery takes various forms and affects people of all ages, gender and races. 3. ‘Who are West Indians’, Museum Victoria

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/ Poetry Lovers Page, , 2013, indians/> (Accessed 5 August 2014) accessed 15/07/2014

4. ‘West Indian Culture’, Onespace, , antislavery.org/english/slavery_today/what_is_ accessed 15/07/2014 modern_slavery.aspx>, accessed 15/07/2014

5. ‘Canny’, Merriam-Webster, , 2014, accessed , accessed 15/07/2014

6. ‘American Indian’, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2014: 15. ‘Women slaves in Australia silent and isolated, ABC, 5 February 2014: , accessed 15 July 2014 britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/170540/dowry> (Accessed 5 August 2014) 16. Stanger, Jenny, ‘Modern Slavery in Australia’: Immigration and Rights Centre Inc., 7 February 2013: 8. ‘Jamaica Great House – Annandale’, Youtube, , 28 post/Modern_slavery_in_Australia/>, accessed 15 October 2010, accessed 15/07/2014 July 2014

9. Lewis, Anthony, ‘Roots! An Aussie actor’s Jamaican Heritage’, Jamaica Observer, , 27 June 2013, accessed 15/07/2014

10. ‘Lucea’, Jamaica Travel and Culture, 2009:

www.jamaicatravelandculture.com/destinations/ SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 hanover/lucea.htm> (Accessed 5 August, 2014)

11. ’Redemption Song’, A-Z Lyrics, , 2014, accessed 15/07/2014

12. ‘Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - The Slave’s Dream’,

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH EPISODE FIVE

Amanda Keller unravels the ‘thousand small unions that have to happen in the universe for us to be here,’ and discovers a legacy of tenacity and resourcefulness.

Synopsis

ournalist, radio presenter, comedienne and favourite media personality Amanda Keller has been well- Jknown to us since 1984, when she began to regularly appear in Ray Martin’s Midday television show, but her involvement in the media stretches back to her university days. In 1994, she joined her college friend Andrew Denton as a regular guest on his show Denton, where she com- bined her scientific knowledge with her love of popular culture and kitsch – subsequently publishing a book, Aman- da’s Handy Home Hints. When the series finished in 1995, she joined Denton at Sydney radio station Triple M where they co-presented the breakfast show. At the same time, she hosted her own contemporary culture show on pay-TV called The Hub and her pop culture-centric program Mondo Thingo in 2004. She has made a great many guest appearances in a variety of TV programmes and is extensively involved in children’s charities – a hectic and busy life; and, on top of that, she has two young children!

For a long time Amanda and her husband Harley thought they couldn’t have children. With parenthood just a dream, and thus without anyone to pass on the family history to, she had little desire for tracing it. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 I remember thinking: What happens to my line? All the history, the confluences, does it end here? I was looking down the barrel of childlessness … – Amanda Keller

It wasn’t until she and her husband turned to IVF treatment that sons Liam and Jack were eventually born. She is grateful she can tell her family history to them.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER Amanda’s mother is deceased; a relative has traced this The Port Arthur Historic Site is Australia’s most notorious line of family history, but Amanda doesn’t know much penal settlement. It was built on Mason Cove and was sur- about her dad’s line at all, so it’s his ancestry she will rounded by dense forest. The nearby Coal Mines Historic explore. Her father, Arthur, visits her Sydney home to help Site was Tasmania’s first mine and was operated by over her get started; both want to see how far back into their 500 convicts. There are still ruins of this mining era that can history they can explore. They do know that the family be explored in the surrounding bushland. name should not actually be ‘Keller’. Arthur’s grandfather, John Henry Jenkins, died young and the family took on the In Hobart, the Cascades Female Factory is an example of ‘Keller’ name from his wife’s second husband. the stories of the female convicts transported to Tasmania. On Maria Island, Darlington Probation Station consists John Henry Jenkins’ death certificate shows his parents of buildings dating back to the 1820s. In the north, the were Maria Edwards and William Henry Jenkins. Amanda Brickendon and Woolmers Estates are extraordinary testa- and Arthur search online to find Maria Jenkins’ death ments to the hard work of convicts assigned to private certificate, which reveals she was born in Hobart, the island landowners. state’s capital, in 1843, to John Edwards and Charlotte Woolf. What were John and Charlotte doing in Tasmania in Other convict highlights around the state include Sarah Is- 1843? Well, what was going on in Hobart in the 1840s? land, the convict-built bridge in Richmond and the Memorial Convict Trail in Campbell Town. A visit to just about any early Are we talking convicts in Tassie? I love the idea of a town will reveal stories of the lives of Tasmania’s convicts. convict history … – Amanda For more detailed information on life in Van Diemens’ Land Tasmania’s convict past is a tale of crime and punishment for convicts, see: The Companion to Tasmanian History: in some of the most harsh yet beautiful places on Earth. Convicts, by Hamish Maxwell-Stewart at .

Land (Tasmania) in the nineteenth century; there are many SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 ruins of that time still standing today. Amanda checks the Transportation The reminders of this episode in Australia’s history are Registers. everywhere in Tasmania. UNESCO recognises five convict- related World Heritage sites in Tasmania, out of eleven for the whole country. The British Convict Transportation Register – available online – records convicts transported to Australia between

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER 1787–1867. It provides an invaluable resource for anyone basin containing a quantity of silver [coins] and run away researching an ancestor who was convicted of a crime in with it. William Webb, witness, pursued the prisoner and the United Kingdom and transported to Australia as pun- after running about fifty yards, he secured him and took him ishment. Information available includes name of convict, back to his master’s house …’ known aliases, place convicted, port of departure, date of departure, port of arrival, and the source of the data. If It is important to note that by the 1770s there were over you’re interested in tracing a convict ancestor, see ‘Convict 200 crimes in the United Kingdom that carried the death Records of Australia’ from the State Library of Queensland penalty, almost all of which were crimes against property. at . These included such offences as the stealing of goods worth over five shillings, the cutting down of a tree and the Amanda uses the Index to Tasmanian Convicts to search theft of an animal. Eight out of every ten prisoners were in for her ancestors. Her three-times great grandmother prison for theft. Lawmakers increasingly applied transporta- Charlotte Woolf is not listed, but there are forty-four match- tion as an alternative to the death penalty. They believed es for ‘John Edwards’. Amanda needs to go to Tasmania to that sentences should be punitive, but with a degree of find out if one of these men is her ancestor. compassion for life.

Transportation: a ‘recap’ A convict at the Gates of Hell – the ‘sharp end of the British The United Kingdom had used transportation as a punishment since the seventeenth century. Before they began transportation system’ sending convicts to Australia, North America was their primary destination. After the American Revolutionary War, the John’s convict conduct record shows he was not the ideal British had to look elsewhere. After James Cook claimed prisoner, having been charged with two offences after his the east coast of Australia for the British Empire, he recom- arrival in Hobart in 1824: ‘insolence and neglect of duty’ mended Botany Bay as a place for a settlement. The First and ‘having stolen property’. His punishment: ‘three days Fleet arrived in 1788 carrying convicts and their guards. solitary confinement and twenty-five lashes’. Next to the By 1840 approximately 150,000 convicts had been sent record of these offences and punishments are the letters to Australia. Transportation ceased in the mid-nineteenth ‘MH’: ‘Macquarie Harbour’, a location on the west coast of century. Tasmania. At that time, the whole west coast was separated from the settlements in the centre of the island by dif- Transportation to Van Diemen’s Land was particularly harsh. ficult and unexplored terrain. Alison suggests Amanda goes From 1833 to 1853 it was the destination for the hardest there to follow up her ancestor’s story. Amanda reflects: of convicted criminals and recidivist offenders. Rebellious personalities from other convict stations were also sent There seemed to be some portent in the words ‘Macquarie there – a hellish punishment. Harbour’, the way Alison asked me if I knew about it, there was something about her demeanour … I think I’m going to At the Tasmanian Archives, convict historian Dr Alison learn something big there. But I don’t think that it’s going to Alexander has found a vital clue: Amanda’s three-times be good … great-grandfather. He was christened in St. Philips, Bristol, in England, in 1802. The muster roll from the ship Albion At Macquarie Harbour, Amanda meets historian Associate reveals that the John Edwards who arrived on the 21st of Professor Dr Hamish Maxwell-Stewart. She learns that the October 1823 was born in St. Philips, Bristol, and is the Macquarie Harbour Penal Station was, firstly, located at correct age. This confirms which of the list of forty-four ‘John Edwards’ was Amanda’s ancestor. She learns John Edwards was sentenced to seven years transportation for theft in October 1822, for theft. He was ‘twenty-two years old, with dark brown eyes and hair.’ And so a portrait of this man begins to emerge. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 What was John Edwards’ crime?

The witnesses at his trial describe an incident at The Bell Inn, Swindon, 1822:

On suspicion of felony … Mary Stone, witness, saw the prisoner put his hand in at the bar window and take out a

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER one of the most remote places in the British Empire, and secondly, it was the most notoriously brutal prison of its day. It is very rare to have an ancestor from this prison as only 1,152 prisoners ever served time there.

In the middle of Macquarie Harbour, surrounded by impen- etrable terrain and considered impossible to escape from, was Sarah Island. This was the place to send the most violent and unrepentant criminals. They lived and worked in such awful conditions that malnutrition, dysentery and scurvy were common. Food would not grow and there were no animals to hunt; the only drinkable water was from the incessant rain. Most attempts at escape ended with the convicts drowning, dying of starvation in the bush, or even turning cannibal. Professor Maxwell-Stewart has a convict muster roll, which places John Edwards there from November 1823.

Why straight to Macquarie Harbour?

This penal colony had been established in 1820 to ex- ploit the valuable Huon Pine timber growing there; only in Alexander Pearce. This man escaped twice from Sarah this corner of the world does this wood flourish, valued Island. Both times he inflicted murder and cannibalism on for furniture making and shipbuilding. Convicts slaved in fugitives when they became lost in the wilderness, trying to brick-making and timber-milling; daily chain gangs rowed reach Hobart. During his second escape in 1823, Pearce to the mainland to cut down the trees, returning exhausted killed fellow convict Thomas Cox and when captured, to their barracks each night. The fact that John Edwards was found with pieces of Cox’s flesh in his pocket. John was sent straight from the Albion to Macquarie Harbour Edwards would have known both killer and his victim. The suggests something serious must have happened on board following article from The Age contains fascinating and ship; is ‘insolence’ a way of implying that perhaps he struck gruesome detail of the life and times of this man: another officer? Perhaps he stole someone’s property on board? Whatever his crime, it warranted – according to the authorities – the toughest punishment the colony could A journey through hell’s gate provide. October 29, 2002 You want to flog them but not kill them; what a fine line. – Amanda Alexander Pearce fled one of Tasmania’s worst penal hellholes, only to find himself living another nightmare, Researchers into Tasmanian convict history are frequently writes Paul Collins. appalled when re-visiting the brutality of the convict regime at Macquarie Harbour. The brick solitary confinement cells The man standing in the dock of the Supreme Court of Van were made as small as possible, and the convict served Diemens [sic.] Land did not look like someone who was, as his time locked in total darkness, often in freezing cold, the Hobart Town Gazette put it on June 25, 1824, “laden with nothing to eat but bread and water. The sadism of with the weight of human blood, and believed to have ban- flogging is demonstrated, with Professor Maxwell-Stewart queted on human flesh”. In fact, he looked perfectly normal. demonstrating how a whip was used ‘on bare skin’, with He was 1.6 metres tall, slightly under medium height for the ‘a surgeon present to stop the punishment before it kills’. early 19th century, and his frame was wiry and strong. He The gruesome details reveal that ‘when the convict walked was 34, but looked older. away, his back was like a bullock’s liver and his shoes were soaked in blood.’ While Amanda and Hamish walk round There was nothing to distinguish the Irish-born Alexan- SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 the ruins of the settlement, she learns that it was here that der Pearce from the procession of convicts who traipsed John Edwards’ punishments took place. through the Hobart Town courts. Except for one thing - he was the first self-confessed cannibal to have appeared The world John lived in was full of desperate men, will- there. ing to do anything to survive. He resided alongside some of Australia’s most renowned convicts and he would Twenty months earlier, Pearce and seven other convicts had have looked right in the eye of one of the most famous: escaped from the prison settlement of Sarah Island, in Mac-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER quarie Harbour on the west coast of Tasmania, the most planned to escape. remote penal hellhole in the British Empire. In the jargon of the time, this was a place of secondary punishment, where They intended to commandeer a whaleboat, sail north out recalcitrant convicts were sent when they repeatedly fell of Macquarie Harbour, heading to freedom on a Pacific is- foul of the law while serving their original sentences. Pearce land, or even China. They easily overpowered their overseer, was the sole survivor of their nine-week escape through but they bungled the getaway. So they plunged impulsively some of the world’s most difficult wilderness terrain. into the rainforests and mountains surrounding the harbour. They headed east but they were utterly ill-equipped for During their journey, five of his companions had been killed what lay ahead on their 225-kilometre journey. and eaten by their fellows. Two others died from exhaustion. Because cannibalism was unheard of among Europeans, Nowadays this region is regarded as some of the toughest Pearce’s trial for murder created a sensation in Hobart country in the world, visited only by experienced bushwalk- Town, London, and even the United States.... ers with good equipment. Eight days into their hellish journey and by now starving, the men realised that their only Pearce originally had been sentenced at the County Armagh hope for survival was cannibalism. Almost impulsively, they Lent assizes of 1819 to transportation for seven years. His killed and ate Alexander Dalton because, Pearce says, he crime was stealing six pairs of shoes, probably not his first had volunteered to be a flogger and such men were hated. offence. Only a professional thief would steal six pairs. Next day, fearing that they might be the next victims, Brown Pearce quickly distinguished himself as a troublesome mal- and Kennerly decided to return to Sarah Island. Anything content. Between his arrival in Tasmania in February, 1821, would be better than being killed and eaten by their fellows and early August, 1822, when he was sent to Macquarie in the wilderness. They made it back to the coast of Mac- Harbour, he had absconded twice, received four floggings, quarie Harbour, but died from exhaustion soon after. one of 50 lashes for embezzling two turkeys and three ducks, one of 25 and another of 50 for being drunk and The other five men continued, led by Greenhill, who had disorderly, and another 50 and six months working in chains been a sailor. It was his navigational skills, using the sun and for stealing a wheelbarrow. the stars, that enabled the party to travel for 42 days almost due-east towards the settled areas. It was an extraordinary In March, 1822, Pearce absconded again. After three feat. months he was recaptured. By now the none-too-merciful magistrates of Hobart Town had had enough of him and As the journey continued, one by one, the weakest man he was sent to Macquarie Harbour for the remainder of was killed with an axe and butchered to provide food for the his original sentence. He was there about six weeks when others. After five weeks of endless walking, only three men he bolted into the bush with seven others, beginning the were left: Greenhill, Pearce and Travers. Most of the killing extraordinary journey that has become famous in the history had been done by Greenhill, but Pearce and Travers had of penal Australia... also participated. At first they cooked the flesh and innards, but eventually they just ate them raw. By this stage they had Both guards and prisoners found Macquarie Harbour dreary reached less rugged country, but with no knowledge of the and the weather appalling. The prisoners’ main work was bush they were unable to live off it. cutting and transporting the Huon pine logs and other fine timber, which grew abundantly in the area and were excel- Driven by extreme hunger, Greenhill finally faced the pros- lent for boat-building. pect of having to kill his injured friend Travers, who had been bitten on the foot by a venomous tiger snake. With Today the area around Macquarie Harbour is valued pre- Travers’ foot now gangrenous, Greenhill and Pearce half- cisely because of its isolation and is protected as one of the dragged and carried their injured companion for five days most spectacular wildernesses on Earth. This is a land of until Travers begged them to kill him. The only weapon left cool, temperate rainforests, the most extensive remnant of was the axe. They killed him in his sleep, and ate his flesh. the extraordinary vegetation of the great southern super- continent Gondwana. These forests are of myrtle beech, But the problem with human flesh is that, while rich in pro- celery-top and King Billy pine, and the most ancient of all tein, it never really satisfies hunger because of the lack of conifers, Huon pine, which lives for up to 3000 years, and is carbohydrates, which provide energy. That is why the men SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 found only in Tasmania. had to kill so regularly. No matter how much they ate of their companions, it was not enough for the energy needed on On September 20, 1822, the convicts Alexander Pearce, their stamina-sapping journey. Alexander Dalton, Thomas Bodenham, William Kennerly, Matthew Travers, Edward Brown, Robert Greenhill and John Pearce and Greenhill struggled on for eight days, playing Mather were cutting Huon pine logs on the eastern side of cat and mouse with each other, desperate to stay awake, Macquarie Harbour. Fed up with the rigid discipline, they fearing that the other would attack him if he closed his eyes

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER and nodded off. It was Pearce who kept awake long enough At Pearce’s trial, witnesses said he had given himself up to grab the axe and kill the sleeping Greenhill with a blow to because he had no hope of ultimately escaping, and that he the head. was horror-struck at his own inhuman conduct. This sounds like a sanitised account, but we know that he showed signs The Irishman eventually made it to the settled districts, of repentance at the time of his execution. was befriended by a convict shepherd, and lived rough for several months, robbing farms and stealing sheep, before It was very cold - there was heavy snow on Mount Welling- he was recaptured. ton - in the court room on that winter day, June 20, 1824, when the cannibal stood trial for murder. The chief justice, Incredibly, when Pearce gave an account to the authori- John Lewes Pedder, presided at the trial for the murder of ties of the nightmare journey and the cannibalism involved, Thomas Cox. Pedder was a scrupulous judge, but he often the examining magistrate and local parson, the Reverend hectored the condemned from the bench, telling them that Robert Knopwood, did not believe him, thinking that Pearce they should not complain about harshness when penalties concocted the story to cover for his mates who were were well known to everyone. believed to be still at large. Pearce was returned in chains to Sarah Island, where his fellow convicts treated him as a The prosecutor was the attorney-general, Joseph Tice hero. Gellibrand. Ironically, Gellibrand was to become lost in the bush near Melbourne in 1837, and was almost certainly Several months later he bolted again from a work party, killed by Aborigines. this time heading north along the east coast of Macquarie Harbour with a young man named Thomas Cox, who had Pearce had no defence counsel and there is no record that pestered Pearce to accompany him on an escape attempt. he said anything on his own behalf. The trial was brief and the inevitable verdict was handed down. The chief justice When Pearce surrendered 11 days later near the mouth of pronounced the death sentence and ordered that the body the King River, just south of present-day Strahan, he had be delivered to the surgeons for dissection. human flesh in his pocket.Why he felt the need for cannibalism again is a mystery, since the guards found that he had Thirty days later, after receiving the sacraments from the other food with him. Pearce, who was clearly a psychopath, Catholic chaplain, Father Philip Conolly, Pearce was hanged SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 said that human flesh was by far preferable to ordinary food. in the yard of the Hobart Town jail at 9am on July 19, 1824. Obviously he had acquired a taste for it, and for killing. Handing over the body for dissection was an uncommon Pearce later admitted that he had murdered Cox in a rage, addendum to the death sentence, but in the logic of 19th- because he suddenly realised that the young man could not century criminal justice it made eminent sense: the corpse swim, and was going to be a continuing hindrance to him. of the cannibal was to be cannibalised for science. Thus ended one of the great Gothic horror stories of Australia’s

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER rich convict history. The men when admitted first of all go into the reception room, and are conducted to the lavatory, where there are Paul Collins is the author of Hells Gates: The Terrible Jour- a number of good sized troughs used as baths. They have ney of Alexander Pearce, Van Diemen’s Land Cannibal. a good-sized yard to themselves, and from here is entered all the different buildings connected with this part of the establishment. There is a large kitchen in which cooking for John Edwards keeps offending! the men is done by some of the inmates themselves, and further on a dining room, a structure with glass sides. There Amanda learns that after John Edwards returned to Hobart, is also what is called a day room for the old men, in which he committed a string of other offences. He was jailed for they are allowed to sit and smoke when they have nothing stealing fifteen kangaroo skins and sentenced to a further else to do…. A good many of the inmates are blind, and seven years. In December 1826 he violently assaulted a consequently they require a good deal of attention. The guard whilst attempting to escape from prison. This meant poor old fellows have very little to amuse them… he was sent back to Sarah Island. John was one of very few to do two stints in the colony’s worst hellhole; further, Another visitor in November 1873 further highlighted the he was sentenced to one hundred lashes! From his con- melancholy nature of the facility: duct record, Amanda sees he would at last be a free man in January, 1833. What kind of life was there after Sarah ‘… the male invalids at the Cascades are confined all the lsland? And when did her great-great-great-grandmother year round in a small yard surrounded by high buildings and Charlotte Woolf come into the picture? a high wall, shutting out the sun and fresh air with the single privilege of going out in turn once a month. The most able bodies amongst them are employed on week days on the The ‘bride ship’ farm or about the premises. The rest sit or saunter about the yard all day long as if in a prison and sick and infirm Back in Hobart, historian Dr Trudy Crowley has the ship- have still less space, air or sun for recreation and all alike ping list from the Princess Royal that arrived in September, are shut in on Sundays …’ 1832. Amanda finds Charlotte on that list and notes that all the passengers are women. The Princess Royal was a Amanda walks through Cornelian Bay Cemetery in New bride ship. In Van Diemen’s Land in the 1830s there were Town to locate John’s final resting place. She is saddened three times as many men as there were woman, so the to find he has an unmarked grave. But the significance of government decided to sponsor single women to come this man in Amanda’s ancestry is profound: from Britain to be wives and servants. Just eight months after gaining his freedom, John Edwards married Charlotte If not for him, I wouldn’t be here, my children wouldn’t be Woolf, ‘spinster’. Trudy wonders why Charlotte chose an here. That was a monumental feeling, to be honest. There’s unemployed man with a criminal history. a thousand small unions that have to happen in the universe for us to be here. And most people on Sarah Island didn’t One obvious motivation for their marriage would be the get that. The things I’ll take from John Edwards are his birth of their first child, Amelia, just three months after strength of character and never giving up … their wedding. They would go on to have ten children over twenty years, but a Ballarat newspaper from 1864 records the sad ending to this marriage. The Edwards family moved And now for an ancestor to Victoria in search of a better life, but that wasn’t in store immortalised as an Outback legend! for them; John Edwards was charged with threatening to take the life of his wife after he had been ‘turned out of the house in a drunken condition’ and ‘would not work for his Amanda’s father has told her there was a Cobb and Co family’. coach driver somewhere on his mother’s side of the family – the Bruce clan. Is this a myth? Amanda discovers her great-grandfather, Henry Bruce (known as Harry) in a list of A final twist Cobb and Co. drivers found online.

By the late 1880s, Tasmania was struggling to deal with a SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 growing population of paupers, the sick and the elderly – Cobb and Co. – An Australian most of them ex-convicts. It is in this social climate that the Transport Icon John Edwards story concludes. He returned to Hobart and ended up in The Brickfields Invalid Depot – an aged care home for the poor. A brief description of the routine of this For seventy years, from the 1850s to the 1920s, Cobb place speaks of a bleak ending for this veteran of Sarah & Co. coaches were a principle means of transport in Island: Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Everyone used

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER Brisbane, Amanda meets curator Jeff Powell. He tells her that Harry Bruce was a coach driver who worked for the company from at least 1886 to 1903. To their mutual pleasure, both Amanda and Jeff realise that they are actually cousins-by-marriage with a mutual family link to Harry Bruce!

Jeff says he was known as ‘Flash Harry’ and he was a pioneer driver in remote north Queensland. Harry pioneered the journey from Port Douglas to Normanton in 1886, a trip Cobb & Co. coaches to travel long distance – new immi- of more than 320 kilometres that took nine days. grants looking for gold, settlers and their families, etc. It was the most efficient method of travel. Coach drivers needed to be tough men, and being a passenger was quite an adventure as well. Amanda is Most people relied on Cobb & Co.’s mail delivery services. guided to a restored Cobb & Co. coach waiting to take her Coaches brought supplies, news from other towns, and a for a ride along a bush track. Also waiting is author Sam sense of connection to the country as a whole. Cobb & Co. Everingham. routes were a lifeline for isolated communities and a means of spreading settlement. Sam Everingham is a sixth-generation Australian and an amateur historian. Sam’s fascination with Cobb & Co. In 1853, two Americans – Freeman Cobb and George began when he found the cracked leather upholstery of Mowton – arrived in Melbourne to establish an international once-grand carriages and buggies, old travelling trunks and freight service, however they found demand for an internal hundreds of company ledgers stamped indelibly with the transport system was greater, especially the goldfield route words ‘Cobb & Co’. between Melbourne and Ballarat. Sam started researching the history of Cobb & Co. and Despite the obstacles presented by the environment and spent five years accumulating an astonishing archive of the lack of roads, Freeman Cobb saw the possibilities. personal letters, journals, legal files, contemporary peri- Every day, thousands of people poured through Melbourne odicals, and obscure government and medical records. He on the way to the goldfields. Together with some partners, also travelled across three states, taking in the old Cobb & Cobb established a business focused on passenger coach Co routes across Victoria, New South Wales and Queens- services. land. His book Wild Ride is a hisstory of how Cobb & Co. was transformed from a humble company into the Qantas For more information on this fascinating element of of its day. They were pioneers, carving a path through pre- Australian history, see ‘Cobb & Co. – an Australian viously impassable terrain, settling unsettled land, endur- transport icon’ at (accessed 4 August 2014). fortunes.

The Cobb & Co. service even merited its own television Sam paints the picture of life for a coach driver for show, Whiplash, filmed in 1959–1960. The series stands Amanda. Passenger comfort came second to getting the out from other TV Westerns of its era in that the cast was mail through. Passengers would also have to help push a composed of actors available in Australia, so no typical bogged coach, or swim across a river if the load was too American Western actors – aside from American actor Peter heavy. Amanda reads of Harry Bruce saving his passen- Graves as the founder of Cobb & Co – appear at all. Whilst gers’ lives after a coach accident; this entailed lifting up the show is romanticised and melodramatic, it was one of the coach to free a trapped passenger, which Harry ac- the first TV programs to feature and portray the Australian complished, despite having severely injured his own ankle. locale to international audiences. Going beyond the call of duty is what turned drivers like

Harry Bruce into legends. Apart from conveying his pas- SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 If you want to see a full episode of Whiplash, go to . provided entertainment for the long journeys. A poem from the 1890s pays tribute to these great drivers:

Meet ‘Flash Harry’ – ‘a bit of a hero’ On the Track – by Bill Bowyang

At the Cobb & Co. Museum in Toowoomba, west of … Harry Bruce and big Jack Warner

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER Both were demons in the dark, William Clark, stonemason from They could drive their bloomin’ carriage Where a dingo couldn’t bark. Scotland They would never comb your whiskers With the branches overhead, Amanda returns to Sydney to see Scottish immigration And they’d break ‘er into gullies expert, Professor Malcolm Prentis. He says that William, as Like a hearse that bore the dead … a stonemason, would have been a literate, skilled worker – just the type of person the growing colony of New South So Harry has appeared in a bush ballad! Wales desperately needed.

Amanda has confirmed the family story and discovered Stonemasonry is one of the oldest skilled professions in quite a character, but what of his family? Jeff Powell has the world. It involves carving stone for building, decorative passed on the contact details of some other ‘Flash Harry’ work and even gravestones. Even today, this profession descendants, who may provide Amanda with a little more cannot be entirely superseded by mechanisation, although information. For the first time, she has contact with Bruce modern masons have adopted modern technology to family members Yvonne Burkett and Venda Towers – Flash enhance their work. Harry’s granddaughters. And for the first time Amanda can see a photo of her ancestor, Harry – ‘a handsome old fel- Scotland in the 1830s was experiencing dramatic socio- low.’ economic change. Rapid industrialisation in the Lowlands damaged the Highlands economy and many Highlanders The Bruce family tree reveals that Harry married Annie went south for work. This created severe overcrowding Pearson in 1895. They speculate about the ‘Flash’ nick- in the Lowlands. In New South Wales, the government name. They believe that Annie, a talented seamstress, prioritised Protestant Scots as immigrants to help curb SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 was responsible for his ‘flash’ wardrobe and hence his ‘moral contamination’ within the colony. So in March 1837, nickname. Looking further up the family tree, Amanda is the Clark family boarded the ship John Barry, bound for intrigued by some other names that she never heard before. Sydney. William Clark and Mary Mavor are the first of this line to come to Australia. Yvonne and Venda believe they came The voyage began and ended badly. The John Barry was a from Scotland but know nothing else. Amanda is keen to former convict transportation ship, and the free emigrants find out when they came to Australia and why. were forced to live in the same conditions as convicted

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER criminals. After 111 days the John Barry arrived with disease on board and about thirty deaths having occurred. It was immediately placed in quarantine on North Head, Sydney.

Did the Clarks survive the voyage?

Amanda is anxious to find out how her ancestors fared under these terrible circumstances and so she takes a water taxi to the Quarantine Station on North Head, Manly, to meet Dr Perry McIntyre, an expert in the history of the Station. A list of passengers who died on the John Barry while at sea shows, much to Amanda’s relief, that no one from the Clark family is on it. But a ‘Condition Report’ from immigration agents who later inspected the ship while it was in quarantine reveals that great-great-great-grandfather William Clark died of typhus fever on 15 August 1837, to Australia from Britain. Some Aboriginal children were having barely set foot on Australian soil. Mary and her four also admitted. children were left without their bread-winner. Amanda finds no records for the other three Clark children. The Quarantine Station is ‘a sad and desperate place’ Looking up the 1841 New South Wales Census, Amanda which was in use from 1873 until 1975. 40,000 people sees Mary Clark is living in the Hunter Valley, with her were buried on the grounds over the years. Only two youngest daughter, Emma. There’s yet another surprise: headstones remain of to those who perished on the John there’s a male infant in the household. Has Mary had an- Barry. Amanda is very moved to discover one of those is other child? She appears to be still single … dedicated to William Clark. What happened to the surviving members of the family? On an immigration record, it is written: ‘Two children to Orphan School’, and Mary has gone to Mary Clark’s new life at ‘the limits of work for ‘Mr Pagan, Hunter River’. It seems Mary had be- location’ come unable to provide for her children and had to accept work far away. For the family to have been fractured like this must have been devastating for her, reflects Amanda; In the Hunter Valley, north of Sydney, Amanda meets histo- ‘a dreadful way to start your new life.’ What became of the rian Mark Dunn at Dalswinton, the town where Mary Clark children? worked. Amanda learns that in 1837 this town was on the wild frontier of the colony. A line on the map marked the edge of so-called civilisation, the ‘limits of location’. It was The Female Orphan School full of dangers like bushrangers and absconding convicts, an intimidating place for a woman and young children. 75 At the State Records Office of New South Wales, archi- per cent of the people in the region were either convicts vist Suzanne Upton provides Amanda with the register for under sentence or ex-convicts. Amanda is shown the 1839 the Female Orphan School. It shows that eldest daugh- baptism certificate of Mary’s new child, Samuel. His father ter Isabella, who was seven years old, was admitted in is Samuel Dickenson. So, who is he? Well, firstly, he is October 1837 and remained there for three years. ten years younger than Mary, and secondly, he’s a convict. Amanda is shown an application by Samuel seeking The Female Orphan School operated between 1803 and permission to marry Mary. Convicts were required to do this 1850. The guiding mission of the institution was to train the because they were not free and thus needed to get permis- young girls as domesetic servants so they could have an sion from the governor. This is food for thought: honest profession later in life and escape poverty. Despite being called the Female ‘Orphan’ School, many of the There’s quite a contrast in the two men in her life. The girls did in fact have living parents. Most of the girls had man she came to Australia with, her husband William, was SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 one parent living – often a mother who was living in severe an educated man. He had a trade. Her new partner is a poverty. Girls were taken to the school for a range of rea- convict. Who’s to say who’s a better man or who’s a more sons – for example, one of their parents had died and the appropriate partner in this new world? But they are two remaining parent was ill, or unwilling or unable to financially quite different men. support them. Other girls came because one or both parents were convicts. In some cases, a girl would be admitted to the school after her parents died during the long voyage

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER What about Mary’s children?

Questions still linger. Did Mary Clark ever bring her family back together? Amanda knows Murrurundi, an hour’s drive from Dalswinton, is where Flash Harry was born – so his mother Emma, Mary’s youngest daughter, must have lived there at some point. In Murrurundi, historian Dr Tanya Evans has some news for Amanda. Mary did indeed move here, following her daughter Emma’s marriage at sixteen years of age to Edward Bruce, a local policeman. Amanda is shown two marriage certificates that show three of the Clark children living in this area. It’s proof that despite everything, Mary kept her family together. She was seventy-six years old when she died, ‘a life well-lived’. Mary’s strength and resilience, her determination to keep going, is inspira- Highlands are the northern part of Scotland, and the Low- tional: lands are located in the southern part. They are not official administrative regions but each has individual cultural and I love being connected to someone like Mary; she is the first historical identities. wave of the Australian line of my family and I could not think of a stronger character to have as figurehead … When you look at the near misses along the way; John Edwards, Mary and William, to have survived all that, to go on … To think ACTIVITIES that’s why I’m here, and that’s why my children are here, it’s extraordinary. Year 9 History: Research Activity

The Edwards – Clark legacy Do you know if you have a convict in your family? If you do, you probably come from good resilient stock. No longer So ends Amanda’s journey into her ancestors’ past, both something shameful, it’s a matter of pride to discover your lines of her father’s family, with its triumphs and failures, its convict ancestry. resourcefulness to ensure family security and a better life – ‘real tenacity to deal with whatever life throws at you and As family historians know, researching the convict in your that’s what I want to tell my children about...’ family can lead to some fascinating and surprising discoveries. As we hear today, it goes far beyond exploring colourful family history, tracing convicts and their descendants tells us much about modern Australia – about resilience, APPENDIX 1 family, who makes it in society and who doesn’t. It can even tell us about our population health today.

Vocabulary Aside from Indigenous Australians, Australia is a nation of immigrants. Check out the sites and prepare a project on 1. Spinster: As an occupation, a spinster is a woman one of the following topics: who spins thread. From the 1600s to the early 1900s, spinster was also an English legal term for any unmar- 1. Early immigration to Australia ried woman. In modern English, spinster is used only as a derogatory term for an older, unmarried woman. 2. Post-war immigration

2. Inn: An inn is an establishment where travellers can 3. Recent immigration seek lodging and, usually, food and drink. Inns are typically located in the country or along a main road. ‘Immigrant Stories and Timeline’, Museum Victoria:

museumvictoria.com.au/immigrationmuseum/whatson/ SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 current-exhibitions/immigrant-stories/>

APPENDIX TWO ‘Early Migration Waves’, Department of Immigration and Border Protection: cultural, historic and geographical regions of Scotland are known as the Highlands and the Lowlands. Roughly, the ‘1945–1965 – New Australia’, Migration Heritage Centre:

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER And then in time they turn their heads Back down the way they’ve been. Year 10 English: Poetry Task And every night they break the march The Long Paddock (The Ghosts of Cobb & Co.) To rest and set up camp, And every morning starts the same, The stockmen know a run of sorts with swags and blankets damp. they use when times are tough: a place where they go droving still Along the track they move the sheep, when rains don’t come enough. To keep them from the drought; And tales in camp on lonely nights They pack their swags and billys up, are often passed about. their dogs and horses tend; They move their flocks beside the road, The drovers all will tell the tale its lonely path they wend In tones so hushed and low Of how they’ve seen on darkest nights From Hay on up to Cobar the lights of Cobb & Co. across the black soil plains, The only time they hope like hell (Eden Valley July 2002) there isn’t any rain.

At night in camp they whisper Questions: of sights and sounds so strange; They’ve seen the ghosts of Cobb & Co. 1. What exactly is a drover?

Pass by across the range. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 2. What route does the poet suggest the drovers are tak- They’ve heard the whips a-cracking ing? Why might they be doing this? As the ghostly stage rolls on, They’ve heard the phantom horses neigh, 3. What kind of atmosphere is created in this poem? They’re here at once, then gone. Select a few lines to show this.

But then it’s Bourke and Queensland 4. Give an example of the life lead of the drovers. How

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER would you describe their routine? Select some lines to Environment, 2009: (accessed 5 August 2014) 5. Why might there be ‘ghosts’ of this stage-coach company on the road? 11. ‘Cobb & Co: an Australian Transport Icon’, Australian Government, 2009: (accessed 5 are ghosts of Cobb and Co. on the road? August 2014)

7. Creative Task: Travels in the Outback: 12. Biography of Sam Everingham at Penguin Books: skills to some writing: 13. ‘Wild Ride: The rise and fall of Cobb & Co. / Sam • Compose either a short (8–10 lines) poem about a Everingham’. Trove – National Library of Australia: traveller in the outback, OR • write a short paragraph 14. Glasby, Marc, ‘Bush Ballads and Bulldust’, Amazing Western Australia, 2009

1. Keller, Amanda, ‘What I’ve learnt: Amanda Keller’, 15. Scottish Highlands and Lowlands: com.au/articles/2004/01/29/1075340776817. html?from=storyrhs> (accessed 5 August 2014) (Accessed July 19, 2014)

2. Amanda Keller biography: Wikipedia at: wisegeek.com/what-is-a-stonemason.htm> (accessed 5 August 2014) 3. ‘Convict Records of Australia’, State Library of Queensland: 17. ‘The Female Orphan School, 1813–1850’, University (accessed 5 August 2014) of Western Sydney: (accessed 5 August 2014) discovertasmania.com.au/what-to-do/heritage-and- history/convict-history> (accessed 5 August 2014) 18. Year 9 Australian History project: ‘Immigration Stories and Timeline’, Museum Victoria: 5. Maxwell-Stewart, Hamish, ‘Convicts’, The Companion library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/C/Convicts. (accessed 5 August 2014) htm> (accessed 5 August 2014) ‘Fact Sheet 4 – More than 65 Years of Post-war Migration’, Department of Immigration and Border 6. Port Arthur, Tasmania: Wikipedia at: fact-sheets/04fifty.htm#a> (accessed 5 August 2014) (accessed on 19th July 2014) ‘1945–1965 – New Australia’, Migration Heritage Centre, 2010: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia> (Accessed (accessed 5 August 2014) on 19th July 2014) SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 8. Collins, Paul: A Journey Through Hell’s Gate: 29 October 2002, The Age:

9. Spinster: definition at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.< org/wiki/Spinster> (Accessed 19th July 2014)

10. ‘Cascades Female Factory Yard 4 North, Symes St, South Hobart, TAS, Australia’, Department of the 71

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 AMANDA KELLER EPISODE SIX

Adam Goodes, AFL champion and Australian of the Year, finds his way back to his Indigenous origins and is welcomed back into his culture.

SYNOPSIS

I’m fully assimilated; I was never brought up in an Abo- riginal culture … Something that I’ve always craved is to really reconnect to my culture, just knowledge that has never been passed down … (Adam Goodes)

orn in Wallaroo, South Australia, in 1980, Adam is the eldest of three boys. When Adam was five years Bold his parents separated and his mother became the chief carer. Adam joined the Sydney Swans AFL team when he was seventeen years old and the strong bond he has with his team and the world of AFL has been, for him, a ‘culture’ that he ‘lives and breathes’. This is in part because he has for much of his life not known the connection to his Indigenous past – ‘no language, no ceremonies’ – and his sense of belonging to a community has come from playing AFL. As an Aboriginal footballer, he continues to campaign against racism and the elimination of discrimination in society and was for four years a member of the National Indigenous Council (NIC), an advisory body to the Federal Government on Indigenous affairs. During a match in 2013, Adam was racially vilified by a member of the crowd. He managed to utilise the experience to spread a public message of zero tolerance for racism.

Now is the time for this Australian of the Year to finally SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 engage with the culture of his ancestors. His search is fuelled by a tragic family event. In 1967 Adam’s mother, Lisa Sansbury, and five of her siblings were taken into state care. Lisa was placed in a foster home and raised with no ties to Aboriginal culture or family. While she has managed to locate some old photographs of her father, Adam’s grandfather, Hurtle, and her mother, Adam’s ‘nana’,

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH Daphne, she grew up with no knowledge of her Aboriginal ancestry and has very little information to pass on to Adam. Lisa’s painful memories are palpable as she recalls the last time she saw her mother:

I was stripped down, scrubbed with a scrubbing brush … absolutely terrified … under the bed, screaming Mum, mum, mum …

Adam reassures his mother that hopefully they will find some good stories about ‘Nana and Pop’; it will be a journey they can go on together.

Beginning the Search

Lisa does have one intriguing clue about the origins of her family: there is a story that a particular family line is Adnyamathanha, a people whose home is the Flinders tain Hughes’ who appears in his family tree, and the son Ranges of South Australia. The word ‘Adnyamathanha’ he fathered – John Sansbury. To investigate further, Adam means ‘the rock people.’ Is Lisa correct? She’s pretty cer- meets historian Dr Paul Sendzuik, who will introduce him to tain; she even has the name tattooed on her forearm. the man in question– in the form of a statue in the centre of Adelaide. To find some answers about their ancestry, mother and son visit the South Australian Museum, a ‘treasure-trove’ of Captain Walter Watson Hughes and the grandiose build- Indigenous material, containing the findings of Australia’s ings that surround his statue were built with his wealth. ‘Of largest anthropological survey carried out in the 1930s sturdy Scottish stock,’ Hughes was a former opium dealer by the museum’s former director, Norman Tindale. The around South East Asia who eventually settled in Australia museum also has an Aboriginal Family History Officer, Ali in the 1840s as a pastoralist. The discovery of copper Abdullah-Highfold; he has unearthed some records about on his Yorke Peninsula sheep station made him one of the family line of Adam’s grandfather, Hurtle Sansbury. For the nineteenth century’s most wealthy South Australians. the first time, Lisa is shown a photograph of her paternal At one point in his history, about one-third of the Yorke grandmother Lily taken in 1939. Lily was Hurtle Sansbury’s Peninsula was under his control. As a mining magnate, mother. With the help of a family tree originally written in he became a pillar of the community and a philanthropist the 1930s Ali traces the Sansbury family line back through whose money helped establish the University of Adelaide. several generations. As his bank balance grew, so did his social standing, his rise to the top sealed when he was knighted in 1880. The line goes as far back as Adam’s four-times great- grandparents: a ‘Captain Hughes’ and an unnamed According to official accounts of his life, he was married to Aboriginal woman from Moonta in South Australia. Ali Sophia Richman, a daughter of a pastoralist, and he died explains that, as descendants of this woman, Adam and with no children. However, the records that Adam saw at Lisa are from the Narungga people of the Yorke Peninsula. the South Australia Museum showed that Hughes had a There is, at this point, no record of connection to the relationship with an Aboriginal woman and fathered a son Adnyamathanha people of the Flinders Ranges – but there named John Sansbury. John was never publicly acknowl- still could be. Lisa is quietly thrilled that her family’s back- edged or legitimised by Hughes. Relationships between ground has been so thoroughly documented; she can now European men and Aboriginal women often resulted in see her place in the family genealogy; her tears are ‘tears of children and those offspring were rarely accepted by white happiness.’ The family know the Yorke Peninsula well: society. Sad news for the quiet and gentle sportsman:

We’ve spent so much time there as well, living, growing up. I’m really a bit disappointed obviously that our women are

There’s a bit of a home country without us knowing that good enough to bed with, but not good enough to acknowl- SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 that’s where our ancestors come from. It’s good to know edge the children. People like Captain Hughes would come where you came from … and take advantage of our land, take advantage of our women and then leave … There’s a lot to be proud about, but on the flip-side you know there’s a lot of anger and Who was Captain Hughes? disappointment I feel. – Adam

Adam is also curious about the mysterious ancestor ‘Cap- ’Hughes, Sir Walter Watson (1803–1887), Australian Diction-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH ary of Biography, 2014 , accessed 04/08/2014 Meanwhile, Europeans like Walter Watson Hughes had taken over traditional Narungga land throughout the Yorke Peninsula. Enter ‘Tom the King’ – a visionary Narungga leader King Tommy hit upon a solution, a way for the Narungga People to survive in this new world. From his dealings with the settlers, he could see that education was a means of Adam decides to check whether there is any trace of forging ahead in the European world. He threw his support Watson’s son John, his three-times great-grandfather, in the behind a school for Narungga children. When the school official records. An online search turns up John Sansbury’s finally opened in 1866, King Tommy’s stepson, John, was marriage certificate at age twenty, to Elizabeth Angie, age one of the first pupils to attend. This was the start of a nineteen –but it lists a different man as his father: ‘Tom, unique upbringing: John Sansbury’s childhood would be the King of the Aborigines of Yorke’s Peninsula’. Confusing shared between a traditional life with his stepfather and a news indeed. European-style classroom. Newspaper articles from the era speak of a typical reaction to a special school visit by So, who is John Sansbury’s real father, Captain Hughes or John’s stepfather and mother, when his mother attempted ‘Tom, the King of Aborigines’? To find out, Adam meets up to kiss him, embarrassing the little boy at this show of with historian Skye Krichauff who has studied the history of affection (‘the Queen threw her arms around his neck and the Narungga people. She explains to Adam that although wanted to kiss him’), a situation Adam smilingly under- Walter Watson Hughes was John’s biological father, King stands, the little boy shy of such a personal yet public Tommy, the Narungga leader at the time, was the man encounter: ‘I’ve been there plenty of times before’. who actually brought him up as his own son. She has also found the name of John’s mother; the ‘un-named woman’ You can just see how much the European way of life is that in the Sansbury records was ‘Queen Mary’, Tommy’s wife. John has brought into. A man, an Aboriginal man living So it was Queen Mary who had a relationship with Walter between two worlds. – Adam Watson Hughes. This groundbreaking experience also saw John Sansbury The exact nature of the relationship between King Tommy, exposed to other influences, including Christianity preached Queen Mary, and Captain Hughes is unknown, but at its by his missionary teachers. When John married Elizabeth heart was a baby boy, John Sansbury, born in 1854. Two Angie in 1874, he went against the wishes of his stepfather, fathers from two different worlds now had a common bond. King Tommy, and rejected a traditional Narungga ceremony But why would King Tommy bring up a child who wasn’t his in favour of a Christian service, becoming one of the first own? Narungga men to marry in this way. The newspaper notices of the day announce: Aboriginal Royal Wedding. Skye explains to Adam that King Tommy and Hughes knew each other and Hughes even paid Tommy a pension until (NOTE: The newspaper article about John Sansbury’s wed- the end of his life. Officially, the pension was for helping ding day forms part of a VCE English/EAL Context task at Hughes find copper, but according to Narungga oral his- the end of this episode) tory, the money was actually for bringing up John Sansbury. The oral history also states that Hughes continued to have A rare family photograph shows a definite resemblance contact with his son until he went back to England. between John and his Scottish father; it includes his wife, Elizabeth, and their two sons, Walter and Edward. Adam Newspaper articles provide a portrait of the character of King Tommy, a man respected within and beyond his community:

The tribes of Yorke Peninsula … all submit to one chief, generally known as King Tom. He is a fine old man … he is intelligent and speaks English very tolerably … his word is never disputed. No black can engage to work for a white SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 man without his permission …

These events coincided with a time of crisis for King Tommy and the Narungga people. He witnessed European settlement firsthand and the terrible consequences for his people. Within a few decades, Narungga population numbers dropped from around five hundred to one hundred due

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH can now look at the ancestor –Edward Sansbury –from … and sees the landscape of his whom he is descended. ancestors defined: So did the Narungga culture come to an end with John Sansbury’s decision to embrace a European way of life? Quentin takes Adam to some of the sacred sites near Point To find the answer, Adam travels to Point Pearce where Pearce where King Tommy once held ceremonies and both King Tommy and John Sansbury lived for many told dreaming stories. For generations, Narungga people years. He’d always assumed that his ancestors had been have camped here and shared those tales. Finally, Quen- forced to move onto the Point Pearce Mission, but he now tin shares one of these stories with Adam: the story of knows that the Sansburys have called the Point Pearce Buthera’s rock, which is traditionally told in song. In ancient area home since the nineteenth century. For a history of lore, the spirits of the ancestors –‘the old people’ – of the Point Pearce Mission, see the Appendix at the end of whom Quentin sings, must be addressed to be honoured this episode. There Adam meets Quentin Agius, a local and respected and ‘to let them know we’re talking about community leader who, like him, is a direct descendant of them.’ And now the mythic hero Buthera, whose story John Sansbury. Quentin shows Adam some photographs resonates in the landscape of the seashore, the rocks, the of ‘Old King Tommy’ and explains that his tribal name was wind and the birds, is called upon in the ancient Narungga ‘Garadi’, which means ‘a man with a world of knowledge.’ language to the accompaniment of traditional clap sticks. King Tommy, says Quentin, passed his teachings down to his stepson John who kept them alive by sharing them with This is a moving and powerful moment for Adam, to know his sons. In this way, Tommy’s knowledge was eventually that Narungga culture has survived, that ‘stories have been passed down to Quentin. passed down’ despite the huge challenges his ancestors faced during King Tommy’s lifetime:

Adam reads King Tommy’s obituary… I’m forever grateful to John in that world and the knowledge SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 he passed on to his two sons: they passed that knowledge Old King Tommy, head man of the aboriginals on Yorke’s on to their young children, therefore two generations later, Peninsula, joined the great majority. He was loved by all the passing it on to Quentin... I feel like I’ve lost my culture and natives, both young and old. One son, a half-caste, with his my opportunity to learn language, to learn stories. Today two sons remain. But it is not likely they will ever wield the we’ve realised that I can connect straight back into that, my sceptre over the aboriginals on Yorke Peninsula. stories are still there, my songlines are still there, my language is still there. Yeah, it’s an unbelievable feeling to know

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH that my culture is still there for me to tap back into.

One last question

A new family name has arisen … – Adam

For Adam, connection to the Narungga people is a joy; however, one last question remains: is the family story that also connects him to the Adnyamathanha people true? A distant relative once told him that his family had a con- kilometres from Hookina. Jessie worked in one of the nection to the ‘rock people’ of the Flinders Ranges, but he few professions open to Aboriginal women at the time. It knows little else. involved long hours of physically demanding labour and extremely low pay. It was also a job that left young women He travels to Blinman, five hundred kilometres north of Ad- vulnerable. Perhaps one of the men in those families she elaide to meet historian Dr. Peggy Brock. She has found out was working for might have gotten her pregnant and then that he does have an Adnyamathanha ancestor, maternal made her move on. great-great-grandmother Jessie Johnson. Jessie was born in Blinman in 1877; she was one of seven children. By this Specialist in Aboriginal affairs, Dr. Rosalind Kidd, has time in the nineteenth century, European settlers had taken dedicated years of research into government and church over land, destroying traditional food sources and water- files and correspondence, and provided reports for various holes. Jessie, like many Adnyamathanha people, was part claimants in Native Title applications and continues to work of a community torn from its traditional way of life that then with key Aboriginal lobby groups. In her research she draws had to rely on white settlers to eke out an existence on gov- on the individual experiences of young Aboriginal women ernment rations or work on pastoral stations or as domestic who worked as domestic servants for white people: servants. But how is she connected to Adam’s mother? He reflects: “A woman reported to me that as a young woman she slept in a shed. Her day began before dawn when she Jessie Johnson is my great-great grandmother. But it commenced to prepare the employer’s family’s breakfast, still doesn’t feel real in a way, still unsure how that Adny- then attended to the invalid grandmother, had breakfast amathanha is connected to mum and therefore connected on enamel utensils specially set apart for her, cleaned up to me … the kitchen, did some house work then did ploughing or fencing with the farmer, returned at dusk to make the meals, cleaned up and put the grandmother and then herself to The Tragedy of Jessie Johnson bed. This woman had no other company, was not taken on or given outings and had no means to travel, had no To uncover more about his Adnyamathanha ancestor, holidays, was paid no money and chose no item of clothing Adam meets ‘Aunty’ Carolynanha Johnson, a descendant for herself until after she ran away when she was about 30 of Jessie, who has a treasure trove of information about years old.” her life contained in a series of letters written in 1900. Carolynanha takes Adam around the remnants of a town And here is another example: called Hookina, a once thriving settlement established to service the goods trains that ran through the district. By the “At the age of 10, transferred to the Salvation Army Home time Jessie called it home Hookina had suffered a series for Boys at Indoroopilly, that was a lesson I will never for- of punishing droughts that sent the place into terminal de- get. I scrubbed floors, helped in the kitchen, worked from cline. This deserted and melancholy ruin was once where a daylight till dawn, washing clothes in the laundry, which was heavily pregnant Jessie put pen to paper to ask the authori- slave labour.” ties for help in getting her to a nearby hospital in time for the birth of her baby. And further:

A letter from a local policeman shows that help was not “I used to start work on Tuesdays from 6 o’clock and work SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 forthcoming, and that instead, isolated and alone, Jessie through to 11 o’clock at night because I’d be looking after gave birth in an abandoned house in Hookina. Another of 6 children – the youngest would have been eight months. I Jessie’s letters reveals the tragic events of her childhood. was not even 14 at the time… it was like slave labour.” Born of an Aboriginal mother and a white father, she was taken from the Adnyamathanha community at five years Research by Dr. Kidd further shows that the government- old and raised in European society. Eventually she started inflicted treatment of Aboriginal people resulted in “starva- work as a domestic servant in the town of Hawker, twenty tion, under-payment or no payment of wages, sexual abuse

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH of workers, conditions tantamount to slavery, and abduc- record of the life of their ancestors, a cave painting site tion.” called Malki that is tens of thousands of years old. Sharing their heritage with Adam, Cliff tells him: Jessie had been shunned from the European world and had no Aboriginal community to turn back to. With her [These cave paintings are] like a book in that sense all an- two small children she was desperate to escape her dire cestors you know could read this painting. It’s for survival, circumstances. The authorities finally agreed to send her it tells you the tracks of the animals that we, our people five hundred kilometres south to the Point Pearce Mis- ate thousands of years ago ... It’s a place of message, you sion, where there would at least be rations for her and her know. children. Lastly, to truly welcome him into Adnyamathanha culture, Adam: She’s in desperate times at the moment, poor an- elder Terry Coulthard takes Adam to a traditional site, an cestor. It says here that she was taken away when she was ochre mine, where ceremonies have been performed for five years old and raised by whites. Doesn’t really sit very thousands of years. Terry paints Adam’s face with signifi- well with me, obviously, having a mother that was taken cant colours as a welcome home: white ochre represents away from her mum from a young age, so, yeah, she just spiritual contact and guidance; yellow represents the sun, a wants to get up to the mission station and have maybe a bit ‘new chapter’ in life; red ochre is the ‘blood of the land.’ of security of being around other blackfellas. And so ends – and indeed begins – Adam’s journey to Aunty Carolynanha: But things do start to get better for her return and engage with his Indigenous heritage. Sitting by … a fire at night, he reflects on the experience and the joy his quest has brought him, to know that ‘after 60,000 years, our culture is still strong, and that’s a lot to be proud of.’ Adnyamathanha and Narungga Come Together I have a place … kinship...bloodlines, a sense of who I am.

Sometime in 1900, Jessie Johnson walked out of Hookina with her two small children and made the arduous trek to APPENDIX the township of Port Augusta, over one hundred and twenty kilometres away. Carolynanha shows Adam a document The Adnyamathanha are an Indigenous Australian people that sheds light on the next chapter of Jessie’s life at Point from the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. Adnyamathanha Pearce Mission: a marriage certificate to John Sansbury’s is also the name of their language. son, Edward. Jessie’s move to Point Pearce saw her marry into a family where she would have a connection to Aborigi- The name Adnyamathanha means “rock people” and is a nal culture that she had never experienced before. The year after her marriage to Edward Sansbury, Jessie gave birth to Adam’s great-grandfather, Edward Junior –and hence, finally we can see Jessie, the Adnyamathanha woman, link with Edward Sansbury, Narungga man.

It’s pretty amazing actually how they’ve all come connected all back around to my family there. Yeah it’s, it’s very beautiful. – Adam

‘Welcome back to the family’ (Adnyamathanha elder Cliff Coulthard) SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Jessie never had the chance to know her own Adny- amathanha culture, something that Adam wants to experience for himself. To meet his people for the first time he travels to Iga Warta, a cultural centre in the northern Flin- ders Ranges, which is run by Jessie Johnson’s descendants, to welcome Adam back to the culture he’s never known, elder Cliff Coulthard takes Adam to see an ancient

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH term referring to the Lakes Culture societies living in that Since a songline can span the lands of several different area. They share a common identity, which they get from language groups, different parts of the song are said to be their ancestors, this common bond is their language and in those different languages. Languages are not a barrier culture which is known as Yura Muda. The origins of the because the melodic contour of the song describes the Adnyamathanha are told through creation stories, passed nature of the land over which the song passes. The rhythm down from generation to generation. is what is crucial to understanding the song. Listening to the song of the land is the same as walking on this songline In 1851 the first Europeans settled some of the Adny- and observing the land. amathanha land. This leadto many conflicts due to the aboriginal people being pushed off their land. In response In some cases, a songline has a particular direction, and to the settling, Aborigines stole sheep, which in turn led to walking the wrong way along a songline may be a sacrile- retaliatory killings. Aboriginal stockmen and housekeepers gious act (e.g. climbing up Uluru where the correct direction soon became a way of life for the early settlers. is down). Traditional Aboriginal people regard all land as sacred, and the songs must be continually sung to keep the ‘Songlines’: Within the animist belief system of Indigenous land “alive”. Australians, a songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) which • Norman Barnett Tindale (1900–1993) was an Austral- mark the route followed by localised ‘creator-beings’ during ian anthropologist, archaeologist, entomologist and the Dreaming. The paths of the songlines are recorded in ethnologist. Tindale is best remembered for his work traditional songs, stories, dance, and painting. mapping the various tribal groupings of Indigenous Australians. This interest began with a research trip A knowledgeable person is able to navigate across the land to Groote Eylandt where an Anindilyakwa man gave by repeating the words of the song, which describe the Tindale very detailed descriptions of which land was location of landmarks, waterholes, and other natural phe- his and which land was not. This led Tindale to ques- nomena. In some cases, the paths of the creator-beings are tion the official orthodoxy of the time which was that said to be evident from their marks, or petrosomatoglyphs, Aboriginal people were purely nomadic and had no on the land, such as large depressions in the land thatare said to be their footprints.

By singing the songs in the appropriate sequence, Indig- SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 enous people could navigate vast distances, often travelling through the deserts of Australia’s interior. The continent of Australia contains an extensive system of songlines, some of which are of a few kilometres, whilst others traverse hundreds of kilometres through lands of many different Indigenous peoples — peoples who may speak markedly different languages and have different cultural traditions.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH connection to any specific region. While Tindale’s Ancestor beings rose and roamed the initially barren methodology and his notion of the ‘dialectal tribe’ have land, fought and loved, and created the land’s features been superseded, this basic premise has been proved as we see them today. After creating the ‘sacred world’ correct. At the University of Adelaide he had a 50-year the spiritual beings “turned into rocks or trees or a part collaboration with Joseph Birdsell of Harvard University of the landscape. These became sacred places, to be and performed an anthropological survey in 1938–39 seen only by initiated men.”The spirits of the ancestor and 1952–54 on Aboriginal missions across Australia. beings are passed on to their descendants, e.g. shark, Quite a number of important record films were made by kangaroo, honey ant, snake and so on and hundreds Tindale. of others which have become totems within the diverse Indigenous groups across the continent. • Ethnography (from Greekethnos “folk, people, nation” and grapho”I write”) is the systematic study of people • Clapsticks or clappers are a type of drumstick, and cultures An ethnography is a means to repre- percussion mallet or claves that are used to serve the sent graphically and in writing the culture of a group. purpose of maintaining rhythm with Aboriginal voice The resulting field study or a case report reflects the chants. Unlike drumsticks, which are generally used to knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of strike a drum, clapsticks are intended for striking one a cultural group. The typical ethnography is a holistic stick on another.As an ancestral instrument that may study and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of traditionally accompany the didgeridoo, it is sometimes the terrain, the climate, and the habitat. referred to as music-stick or just Stick.

• Dreaming/Dreamtime:‘Dreamtime’ or ‘Dreaming’ has Point Pearce Mission: Before European settlement the never been a direct translation of an Aboriginal word. Yorke Peninsula was the home of Narungga people. The English language does not know an equivalent They lived on the land between Port Wakefield in the to express the complex Aboriginal spiritual concepts east to Port Broughton in the west and all the way to to white people. Aboriginal languages contain a lot of the tip of the Peninsula. words for spirituality and beliefs, such as tjurkurrpa, alcheringa, palaneri, to name a very few. Hence, if we After copper was discovered there in 1859 the popula- try to use an English word, we should avoid the term tion swelled, leading to the establishment of several ‘Dreamtime’ and use the word ‘Dreaming’ instead. It towns. Many Narungga settled close to these towns expresses better the timeless concept of moving from and were exposed to damaging influences such as ‘dream’ to reality, which in itself is an act of creation alcohol and disease. The townspeople petitioned their and the basis of many Aboriginal creation myths. None local government to establish a mission to care for, and of the hundreds of Aboriginal languages contain a word ‘civilise’, the Narungga. for ‘time’. The land selected was familiar to many of the Narungga • The Dreaming also explains the creation process. who would have often travelled though it. Known to them as Bookooyana, the area was a place where one could find an abundance of shellfish, game and fresh water soaks. Leaseholder Samuel Rogers, was concerned about the effect that such a settlement would have on his water supplies, and tried to fight the Government, but was eventually placated. And so in 1868 about six hundred acres, 35 miles south of Wallaroo, was given over for the establishment of the Yorke’s Peninsula Aboriginal Mission, later called Point Pearce.

About 70 Narungga came to live at the Mission. But conditions were hard, and after a spread of illness led to a number of deaths in 1872, by 1874 the population had dropped to only 28.

SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Those Narungga who had resisted living on the Mission were reluctant to pass on their cultural knowledge and language to Mission residents. In 1894 the Mission was thrown into chaos when the former residents of the closed Poonindie Mission were shifted to Point Pearce. This introduction of people from a variety of Aboriginal language groups, some who had been living long under colonial

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH influences, compounded the loss of the Narungga’s own cultural identity.

By the end of the 1910s many of the Mission residents had grown up on the Mission and considered it their home. But there was frustration that despite all of their toil, they were not able to claim any of the land for their own, and work for themselves.

In 1915, the Mission was taken over by the State Govern- ment and became known as the Point Pearce Aboriginal Station. Residents continued to fight for their rights to benefit from their labours, but only after World War II were Aboriginal farmers able to reap any such reward – even then only earning one in ten bags produced by the white farmers they worked along side of.

Throughout the 1930s and 1940s residents were taking The bridegroom-elect acted as coachman to their Majes- positions as domestics, or farmhands or joining the armed ties, who were accompanied by a favourite few. Having services and then in the 1950s many gained exemptions arrived at the Mission Station they reported themselves, under the Aborigines Protection Act and left Point Pearce and then passed the night in the open air. Early next morn- to try and make better lives for themselves under less strict ing our Kadina correspondent had a formal and cordial controls. introduction to the monarch and his consort3, and he has furnished the following report: – The Aboriginal people of Point Pearce were finally given control of the land in 1972, when 5,777 hectares was trans- “The King is advanced in years, and is rather grey. He was ferred to the ownership of the Point Pearce Community dressed in striped trousers which were rather too narrow for Council under the Aboriginal Lands Trust Act. him, but his coat was of excellent quality and admiral fit; it showed his fine proportions to great advantage. His shirt was scrupulously clean, boots he had none, and his royal big toe VCE/Year 12 English/EAL appeared to have seen much active service in the battle of Context: Exploring Issues of life. His brow bore no diadem4 or other insignia5 of regal descent, but had an ample crop of curly black hair that seemed identity and Belonging to testify of absolute liberty run wild. He is about five feet nine inches high, and a little over 12 stone in weight, with broad This episode, together with the following two texts, should square shoulders, light limbs, and broad flat feet. be excellent supplementary material for this Context. The sovereign’s eyes are full and clear, and he can look you TEXT 1: The following article appeared in the newspapers straight in the face. His organs of benevolence, veneration, as an account of the marriage of Adam’s ancestor John and firmness are fully developed, especially the last, while Sansbury: his combativeness is less than his acquisitiveness, and contrary to expectations, moral faculties are decidedly more AN ABORIGINAL ROYAL WEDDING. prominent than animal.

At Boorkooyanna, Point Pierce [sic], the Mission Station The Queen is a fine specimen of her race, considerably of the Yorke’s Peninsula Aborigines Friends’ Association, above the average size. Her cranium6 indicates natural abil- a marriage in “high life” has been celebrated with unusual ity and good temper; yet contrary to the common opinion surroundings. Prince “John”, the acknowledged heir of that all lubras7 are slaves to their husbands, she manifested “Tom”, the King, having led his coloured affiance to the the fact that she had a will of her own, for when the King or- hymeneal altar. dered her to go 300 yards on a message she absolutely re-

fused, then told him to go himself, and the autocrat obeyed. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 At 11 a.m. there were evident signs of the approaching An old misanthrope8 suggests that this is one of the surest event as the natives gathered wearing holiday dresses, signs of civilisation and refinement in female life. cheerfully smiling, and indulging in ringing laughter. The day before a conveyance1 had been sent for the King and The bride-elect is an honour to her tribe and a favourite at Queen, who were found some miles away at the royal the Station, where she has been for six or seven years. She wurley feasting on kangaroo, followed by a smoke of the is able to read and write well. The bridegroom is a noble “backie pipe2” as a favourite dessert. specimen of the genus homo9, and shares not more than

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH a moiety10 of the blood of the second son of Noah11. He is lated the Earth after the Great Flood. Ham’s descend- above average size, and his physique challenges the at- ents populated the northern part of Africa. In the 19th tention of even a moderately observant eye. An interesting century, this tradition was adopted as a part of pseu- occurrence took place at 9 o’clock in the morning, when doscientific racist theory. In Australia it was believed the King and Queen went to inspect the palace just finished that Aborigines were decedents of Ham. and designed for the permanent residence of the young couple. 12. culinary: to do with cooking

It is externally oblong, measuring by estimation 378 inches by 168 inches, with a corresponding height of walls, carry- Questions for note-taking and class ing well selected mallee rafters, to which is fastened with discussion ample cordage a well-set covering that has been gathered from the marshy portions of the neighbouring plain. The 1. What impression does the reporter have of the ‘King’ main entrance has a plain batten door with latch and string. and ‘Queen’? The first object that strikes attention in the interior is the dining-table. Turning towards the fireplace – which every 2. (a) How would the following language demonstrate Englishman does when he enters a room unless some spe- a view of the identity of the Indigenous people cial object attract – the mantle-shelf and its adornings meet represented? the eye, flanked on each side by two sets of shelves well furnished with culinary12 and kindred utensils. (b) How does the term ‘patronising’ apply to the language here? After gazing at these for some time and carefully examining some knives and forks, the King burst into a hearty laugh, (c) What evidence is there of a racist viewpoint? saying ‘All same as whitefellow.’ That the ignorant savage is here being raised into a state of intelligent civilisation is • boots he had none, and his royal big toe appeared to a statement at which the sceptic may shake his head; nev- have seen much active service in the battle of life. ertheless it is true, and the Boorkooyanna Mission Station not only gives promise of success, but success there has • an ample crop of curly black hair that seemed to testify already been achieved. of absolute liberty run wild.

• contrary to expectations, moral faculties are decidedly Vocabulary more prominent than animal.

1. conveyance: carriage/vehicle • The Queen is a fine specimen of her race

. backie pipe: pipe for tobacco • Her cranium indicates natural ability and good temper

3. consort: royal partner • The bride-elect is an honour to her tribe and a favourite at the Station 4. diadem: a type of crown

5. insignia: crest, badge, emblem

6. cranium: skull

7. lubras: (plural) now racially offensive term for female Aboriginal Australians.

8. misanthrope: someone that hates humans

10. moiety: kinship

11. ‘the second son of Noah’: The second son of Noah, according to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, was Ham. In this religious tradition the sons of Noah popu-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH in the mirror each morning and the reaction from others when they meet him, Scott has never been in any doubt that he is Aboriginal – so he was somewhat surprised when last year he was asked to prove it.

“I’ve never had a Certificate of Aboriginality – never needed one,” he says, “but when I moved from Brisbane back to Victoria last year, they said I would need one if I wanted to get Aboriginal housing.” He filled out the paperwork for the Dandenong & District Aborigines Co-operative, which hands out certificates in certain Victorian regions, and he went to the trouble of meeting some of the elders who sit on the board. He waited a few weeks and when he didn’t hear anything, he called to find out what was going on. “That’s when they told me – my claim to Aboriginality had been rejected.”

Scott’s initial reaction was shock: “Every time I walk out the door I’m Aboriginal, and suddenly I’m not?” He posted an update to his status on Facebook, “Dallas Scott … is apparently not Aboriginal after all”, and his friends, some of whom have known him since he was a schoolboy, reacted with surprise and concern, saying “But how can that be?” and “But you’re obviously Aboriginal!” • The bridegroom is a noble specimen of the genus homo, and shares not more than a moiety of the blood He turned to Google, in the process turning up “a bunch of of the second son of Noah. people calling themselves Aboriginal, people who maybe had one ancestor along the line” and he thought, “How can • the ignorant savage is here being raised into a state of they be [Aboriginal], when I’m not?” Scott began posting intelligent civilization on blogs – and indeed started one of his own – mocking so-called “white Aborigines” for “pretending to know what 3. A ‘wurley’ spoken of in the first part of this article is it means to be black” when he, an obviously black man, defined in the dictionary as: 1. an Aborigine’s shelter, couldn’t get a certificate to prove it. In the process, he made of branches and leaves. 2. a nest, especially a stepped straight into a hornet’s nest. rat’s nest. The issue of indigenous identity – who’s in, who’s out, and Given that the term was applied by white man to an Indig- who decides – has long been the subject of bitter debate in enous shelter, what is being implied by this expression? the indigenous community. Now, just as the Federal Gov- ernment considers a plan to formally recognise the sacred TEXT 2: NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE (Caroline Overington, links between Aboriginal people and their land in the Con- The Australian, March 24, 2012) stitution, and following last year’s controversial court finding against News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt, the question is DALLAS Scott is an Aboriginal man. His mother, Christine again being asked – not by white people, but by blackfel- Scott, was an Aboriginal woman and his father, Campbell las themselves: Who has the right to declare themselves Carter, is the eldest son of Aboriginal activist Charlie Carter, indigenous? who in 1971 strode up the steps at Victoria’s Parliament House to accept formal title to land at Lake Tyers, Gipps- DALLAS Scott finds it difficult to talk about his heritage. land, on behalf of his people.

Charlie Carter’s father was Albert “Popeye” Carter, an Abo- riginal man who is sometimes, wrongly, described as the SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 “last of the Victorian full-bloods”, and Albert’s wife – Dallas Scott’s great-grandmother – was Thelma Carter, an Aborigi- nal woman responsible for keeping many indigenous children out of state institutions in the 1960s by placing them in foster care with a white woman whom she trusted.

Given Scott’s family history, the face that stares back at him

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH “So many of my family are dead,” he says, meaning for both nal people. spiritual and cultural reasons he cannot speak openly about their lives. But the bare facts are these: he was born in the The Federal Government has long considered it neces- NSW town of Bega in 1973, and spent the first few weeks sary to apply criteria to establish who is (and who isn’t) an with his mother at the Wallaga Lake mission, near Bermagui Aboriginal person. Its definition, colloquially known as the on the NSW south coast, before his great-grandmother “three-part test”, says an Aboriginal person must be of Thelma arranged for him to be fostered with Irene Christof- Aboriginal descent; must identify as an Aboriginal person; fersen, the woman to whom she had entrusted many other and must be accepted by the Aboriginal community in Aboriginal children. “My mother wanted to make sure that which they live. A person’s physical appearance – including I got a good education,” says Scott, “and my foster Mum the colour of their skin – is irrelevant because the child of had been taking Aboriginal kids and putting them through mixed-race parents may indeed have pale skin. school for years.” Not everyone who identifies as Aboriginal has a certificate Scott says his foster mum was “brilliant” about keeping to prove it, but those who seek to qualify for some kind of him in touch with his culture, arranging for him to be sent assistance package are often told to get one from their local to Lake Tyers to spend time with kin, and into the bush for Land Council or Aboriginal Centre. Given that the system is weeks at a time “to learn the ways”, but he also completed arbitrary, and that fierce political battles are not uncommon year 12 and then got a job in the building trade, which took in some Aboriginal communities, abuse of the system can him around Australia. occur.

“That’s where I discovered that being black means not be- Legal director of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, Michael ing able to rent a room for the night if you’re travelling on Mansell, says cases like that outlined by Dallas Scott are not the road, and having nobody stop to help you when your uncommon. “I can tell you of a case where a woman had car breaks down,” says Scott, who is standing in a park been evicted from Aboriginal housing, and she was living opposite his Melbourne home with his rambunctious four- in a car with her four children,” says Mansell. “Nobody who year-old daughter lying flat, and happy, across his broad knew this woman would doubt that she was Aboriginal, but shoulders. when she applied for Aboriginal housing in another part of Tasmania, her application was refused.” On the other hand, when Scott applied for a job on the maintenance crew of a resort at Kings Canyon in the North- Mansell supports any system that allows Aboriginal people ern Territory in the 1990s they jumped at the chance to hire – not white bureaucrats – to decide who is Aboriginal, but him, “because those resorts want blackfellas – you’re the he also says that the number of Tasmanians who seek to token black man, riding around outside on the tractor for identify as Aboriginal “was getting to the point a few years tourists to see.” back where it was just ridiculous. We had a situation [in the ‘90s] where the numbers had jumped from 8000 to 16,000 Despite the sometimes negative reaction of others, Scott in five years. We had towns where I knew that maybe 20 never had any problem acknowledging his heritage, but it has Aboriginal people lived, but 400 wanted to get on board, not always been the case for Aboriginal people. Prior to the so either we were breeding like rabbits or somebody was 1967 referendum, in which 90 per cent of Australian people having a lend”. Mansell these days makes it his business voted to finally recognise Aborigines in the Census, it was not to stomp on what he calls fraudulent claims by restricting, uncommon for people with some Aboriginal heritage to try where possible, the claim to Aboriginal identity to those to hide it, and that made perfect sense given the restrictions people with “known Aboriginal names” (such as Mansell, and discriminatory practices that operated at the time. Now Brown, Smith and Maynard) or clear links to what used to the stigma has fallen away to be replaced by a certain fierce be called the “Half-Caste Reserve” for European sealers pride. The number of people identifying as indigenous in and their Aboriginal families on Cape Barren Island, off the the Census has increased dramatically in recent years, from northeast coast. 386,000 in 1996 to more than 512,000 in 2006, an explosion in numbers the Census bureau puts down to “willingness of Mansell estimates that he’s rejected thousands of people the large and increasing number of people with mixed origins over the years, and he’s been accused of corrupting the to record their indigenous status”. system, approving only people likely to bolster his power

base, but he’s unapologetic. “It’s a wonderful story, that SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 A person’s decision to identify as indigenous can be a Michael Mansell makes it hard for Tasmanian people to say personal and emotional one, especially if their family was for they are Aboriginal,” he says, “but it’s a story being told by years forced to deny the existence of Aboriginal blood. At white people who have been rejected for being white.” the same time, the decision by any individual to identify as Aboriginal is of public interest, too, since Aboriginal people When Mansell rejects a candidate “for being white” he is qualify for a range of financial benefits, such as Abstudy, not talking about the colour of their skin (Mansell himself is and prizes or scholarships that aren’t open to non-Aborigi- pale-skinned, with blue eyes). “Skin colour has nothing to

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH do with it. The first generation of white people who bred challenging the stereotyped expectations and that makes into the Aboriginal community had children who had lighter people feel a bit threatened … The man who stood up and skin … over time, the shape or the look of people becomes called me white, he’s somebody who is dark-skinned, and irrelevant,” he says. “What it’s about is ancestry: can you to him, I suppose, Aboriginality is something very differ- prove it in your family tree?” ent. But the truth is, there is just as much cultural diversity [in Aboriginal Australia] as there is in any group. Aboriginal TASMANIAN academic Greg Lehman, 51, believes he can people have the same breadth of ethnic diversity as white prove a link to an Aboriginal ancestor – his paternal grand- Australians … I have English, and Irish, and German ances- mother, Molly Kennedy – which in turn gives him the right to try, as well as indigenous identity, and when people ask me, identify as Aboriginal. We meet at the offices of the Austral- ‘Well then, why do you say you’re Aboriginal?’ I simply say ian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies that the line that makes sense to me, the line that explains in Canberra, where Lehman is doing research on the depic- why I was born in Tasmania, is the line that I can draw back tion of Aboriginal people in 19th century artwork. There are to my Aboriginal ancestors.” wild grasses outside, and an Aboriginal flag near the door. Lehman is first to raise the fact that he does not “fit the Another who “challenges the stereotype” of what it means stereotype”, as he puts it, of what an Aboriginal person “is to be Aboriginal is Luke Pearson, 31, a teacher from New- supposed to look like, and I can see how that’s challenging castle who runs the highly political AboriginalOz blog, which for people”. The reason, he says, is that he was raised in includes photos of Pearson marching for land rights and a normal suburban house by factory-worker parents who wearing body paint alongside other men wrapped only in would never have described themselves as indigenous and, kangaroo skin. Pearson’s skin is pale, and his eyes are blue, as such, he was “separated by many generations from my and yet his father was an Aboriginal man born in Walgett, tribal roots”. NSW. (His mother was white.) “I have had it happen heaps of times – I’ll tell someone I’m Aboriginal, and they’ll say, “I think my story may be typical of people who had to ‘No you’re not.’ Or I might be at a pub and somebody will unravel their Aboriginal ancestry for themselves,” Lehman make a joke about Aboriginal people – that happens less says. “I did not know that there was Aboriginal blood in often to me these days, by the way – and I’ll have to say, the family tree until I was about 10 years old, because my ‘Excuse me, but I’m Aboriginal.’” Others will challenge his grandmother would not discuss it. But you need to under- determination to identify as Aboriginal when he could just stand why: she was born in 1899, so she was probably the say he’s Australian, “but to me, it’s like saying, why don’t last of the generation for whom it was natural and probably you call yourself John? Because I’m not John, I’m Luke. necessary to hide that part of their identity. The 1920s, Why would I say I’m not Aboriginal? I am Aboriginal.” when she began having children, was a period of intense assimilation … I imagine that her view was, ‘We shouldn’t Then, too, there is Melbourne artist Bindi Cole, 37, who talk about this sort of stuff; we’ve got to disappear.’?” describes herself as “Aboriginal but white”. She took the argument directly to the people in 2008, in an exhibition she It was Lehman himself who discovered that his grandmoth- titled Not Really Aboriginal, which featured photos of Cole er was related to Dalrymple (Dolly) Briggs, whose grandfa- and others with their faces painted black. In notes accom- ther, Mannalargenna, was a Tasmanian chieftain. Lehman panying the artwork, Cole said: “I’m not black. I’m not from started telling people that he was “1/64th Aboriginal” mainly a remote community. Does that mean I’m not really Aborigi- as “a way of trying to make sense of something that was nal, or do Aboriginal people come in all shapes, sizes and made an issue by others”, but that’s a formulation he now colours and live in all areas of Australia, remote and urban?” regrets. “It doesn’t capture what I meant. I used to say that back when my understanding wasn’t as sophisticated as it is today, and people have taken that and used it out of context.”

Lehman says he has been mocked “for taking one strand of my identity, and adopting it, and ignoring the rest. [White people] want to know, ‘What’s wrong with just being white?’” He has been challenged by blackfellas too. In

1996, for example, during a heated debate on indigenous SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 identity at the Hobart Writers’ Festival, Cape Barren Island man Doug Maynard stood up, pointed a finger at Lehman and said: “As for you Lehman, you’re not an Aborigine at all. You’re a f..king white man.”

Lehman smiles. “Yes, I remember. And this gets into the business of what you look like, which is a huge issue. I’m

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH Dillon found himself agreeing with much of what the News Ltd columnist Andrew Bolt said in pieces headlined “It’s So Hip to Be Black” and “White Fellas in the Black”, published in the Herald Sun in 2009. “If you strip out the errors – and there were some pretty serious errors – what Bolt was saying is what everyone knows, that there’s a benefit to some people in calling themselves Aboriginal.”

Bolt did indeed make mistakes in those articles: he described the mother of Sydney academic and writer Anita Heiss, for example, as “part-Aboriginal” when in fact Heiss’s mother, Elsie, was born to two Aboriginal parents at Eram- bie Aboriginal Station near Cowra, NSW. (Anita’s father was born in Austria.) There is no doubt that Elsie is an Aboriginal woman – and that her children are therefore Aboriginal, too. Heiss sued, as did eight others, Bindi Cole included, and on September 28, 2011, the Federal Court of Australia declared that both Bolt and The Herald & Weekly Times Pty Ltd (a division of News Ltd, publisher of The Australian) had contravened the Racial Discrimination Act with articles that were “reasonably likely” to have offended, insulted, humili- There are, in fact, some Aborigines in the Northern Ter- ated or intimidated some fair-skinned Aboriginal people. ritory who would say that only those who speak the language, dance the dance, and live on their own land are truly Heiss refused to speak to this magazine, but has written a Aboriginal; and that those who do not live with knowledge book to be published at the end of this month called Am of “the ways” are simply wearing the label, often for self- I Black Enough for You? in which she argues that Bolt fell aggrandisement. And there is Sydney University academic into a trap of assuming that all Aboriginal people look like Anthony Dillon, 45, who is adamant that people can be both “boomerang-throwing Crocodile Dundee extras”. She de- Aboriginal and white. His father, Colin Dillon, was at one scribes herself in the book as an “urban, beachside Black- point the highest-ranking Aboriginal man in the Queens- fella, a concrete Koori … I don’t wear ochre, I wear Revlon; land police force, “and not under any program of positive I don’t go walkabout, I have a sports car; I’m very much assimilation”. Dillon does not identify solely as Aboriginal like my neighbours: we are all working people living in the “because that’s not what I am [his mother, Linda, is white]. suburbs, we mostly have cars, mortgages, gym member- When people ask me, ‘Are you Aboriginal?’ I say, ‘No, I’m ships, and jobs.” part-Aboriginal,’ because that’s the truth.” Heiss unwittingly exposes a broader issue: if Aboriginal Dillon says he and his sister, Sandra, were raised “not as people in urban communities are now “very much like” the Aboriginal, but nor were we raised as non-Aboriginal. We neighbours, why does Australia still have laws that target had a normal, suburban upbringing in Brisbane, although them on the basis of their race rather than their needs? of course we were the blackest kids in school”. He takes umbrage at the suggestion that he’s somehow embarrassed Dillon says he’s perplexed, not least because he believes to be identified as Aboriginal. “I’m actually the opposite,” he that “special laws for Aboriginal people have weakened, not says, “I’m proud that I have two great parents, two fantastic strengthened them. I don’t say that certain Aboriginal peo- role models who instilled a work ethic in me, and a sense of ple don’t need assistance – of course they do, with literacy, decency, and I won’t deny the influence of either of them.” and especially with jobs – but if there is a need, target the need, not the race.” Yet, as he admits, Dillon has himself Dillon doesn’t doubt that some people choose to identify benefited from programs open only to Aboriginal people. as Aboriginal because there’s something in it for them, “and “Yes, I have, and I’ll be upfront about that,” he says. “I ap- I’m not just talking about money. It’s about being a bit spe- plied for an indigenous scholarship, and I got it. I figured, cial. It’s about them getting a bit of extra status, or maybe it’s there for the taking, and why not?” they want other people to feel guilty: ‘Your ancestors killed SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 and raped my ancestors.’” He’s happy to be “the blackfella” Another who would “unhitch the wagon” of race from law is fighting political correctness. “It’s getting absurd. A couple Adelaide’s Paul Albrecht, who lived for more than 60 years of weeks ago I got myself involved in an online debate over on the Hermannsburg Mission in the Northern Territory, the use of the term ‘Aborigine’. There’s a bunch of people a community of 500 Aborigines and perhaps four white out there who want to ban people from using it, and you families, where he and his father before him worked as can see why, because if some of these blokes stood up and pastors. Albrecht, now 80, is not Aboriginal but he learnt said, ‘I’m an Aborigine’ people would laugh at them.” the language of the Western Arrernte people and is one of

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH a handful of white Australians with inalienable visiting rights cal activism. Back when he was Googling around, trying “which no Aboriginal person would deny me” to the land to understand how he could not be Aboriginal, he came where he was born and raised. across the websites of various Aboriginal artists who, he says, “looked nothing like me, and were supposedly speak- Albrecht says the Aboriginal people he lived among had ing for me, when in my view a white-skinned person cannot their own definition of what it means to be Aboriginal. “It tell a black-skinned person how to feel about mockery of had nothing to do with colour and everything to do with their skin colour”. culture … If you were a person who knew the culture, and lived by it, who spoke the language and was sensitive to At the height of his frustration he wrote to the assistant it … that was all part of it.” By contrast, there are “people curator of the Victorian Indigenous Art Awards, Hannah today who want to say they are Aboriginal, and that’s OK, it Presley, asking why awards worth up to $25,000 had gone really doesn’t matter, people can call themselves whatever to people with “white skin, who live in the city” when “it they like. But don’t expect that there should be special privi- would surely be better to give the prize to somebody who leges attached to it. If it were up to me, I would remove all is actually black?” Presley encouraged Scott to enter this references to race in any legislation, and assist people only year’s awards and, to his surprise and delight, one of his on the basis of need.” photographs of smoke rising over still water at Lake Tyers won a $1500 prize. THE Wurundjeri elder responsible for ultimately issuing Dallas Scott with his Certificate of Aboriginality is the chair- He’s really pleased because he can use the money: he and woman of the Dandenong & District Aborigines Co-opera- his partner, Kate Shipley, have four-year-old twins, one of tive, Margaret (“Auntie Marg”) Gardiner. She agrees that it whom was recently diagnosed with autism. For the record, was “a bit of a shame that his application got held up. But that twin, Zeke, is also white – or, at least, much paler than you have to understand why. He definitely looks Aboriginal, his sister, Kyla. “That is a funny thing,” Scott says, “because I’ll agree with you there, but that’s not enough. His problem Kate is white, and when she got pregnant and it was twins, was he had no people to vouch for him.” people were saying, ‘What if you end up with one black one and one white one?’ and that’s exactly what happened.” That scenario is not uncommon. Many Aboriginal people struggle to place themselves on a family tree because they The arrival of the twins has proven to Scott how quickly skin were raised by white people, or because so many of their colour can fade across the generations – but it also firms his ancestors refused to acknowledge the Aboriginal blood view that when it comes to racism, as opposed to race, colin their line. Gardiner’s husband, Gary Murray, who also our matters. “I’ll be honest with you and say I am glad that investigates claims to Aboriginality for people who need my son has white skin because life will be hard enough for a certificate, says pale-skinned people in particular may him anyway, with his autism,” he says. “And I worry about need verification, “like the 17-year-old girl who came for a Kyla, because I can see people looking at her when she’s certificate recently, basically because a Rotary club wanted out with me, and I know it’s not going to be easy for her. to give her a scholarship and somewhere along the line somebody had told her ‘you’ve got Aboriginal ancestry’, so Scott says colour is undeniably an issue in our society. back we went through the records, and we found an ances- “We have one section of the Aboriginal race – pale-skinned tor, and now she’s away”. people – doing well, and another living as if in a third- world country. I will never apologise for believing this must In Scott’s case, his application was deferred several times change.” for lack of evidence but, Gardiner says, “then I went up to meet him, we had a bit of a yarn. I took him at his word that TASK: In a piece of prose, consider the issues that sur- he was a Carter, and in the end we approved him”. Gardiner round the concept of Indigenous identity. What factors do makes no apology for the delay. “We knock quite a few not apply to other concepts of identity? back, and it’s because they haven’t been able to convince us. They might say, ‘I was told when I was 10 or 11 that my great grandmother was Aboriginal, and now I want Abo- riginal housing’, but it could be fraud. We’ve just got to the point, actually, where we are going to make a Certificate of Aboriginality expire, maybe after five years.” But surely SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 one’s Aboriginality, once proven, can’t expire? “It’s to safe- guard us,” Gardiner says. “What if somebody did manage to slip under the wire? Now we’ll have a way to take it back.”

For Scott, the certificate makes no difference to his sense of self – he’s as Aboriginal today as he was before he had the piece of paper – but he’s enjoying his new-found politi-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH YEAR 9 ENGLISH ACTIVITY were burnt black by the fire and smeared with the grey and white ashes.

Two Dreaming tales from the Flinders Buthera continued on his journey until he met Ngarna. Ranges: Ngarna was a little man, Ngarna was Mudjitju, and Mudjitju was a bat. The two men had an argument and fought. In the fight Ngarna was wounded by Buthera, but Ngarna was 1. The Story of Buthera’s rock: A clever and quick-footed and ran away.

Story of the Narungga People of Buthera was at Guguthie and he threw his waddy (club) Yorke Peninsula across the bay at Ngarna, who hid behind a rock. The waddy missed Ngarna and landed with tremendous force, Buthera was a big strong man on a journey through his breaking in two.The club head became the large rock country to the southern part of Yorke Peninsula. On the way known as Buthera’s Rock which lies at Moongurie on the he camped and met a stranger who said he was Mudjitju, western side of Bookooyana (Point Pearce peninsula). the leader of the bat people. Blood from the wounds can be seen in the sand nearby.

Buthera was angry at Mudjitju coming into his land without The handle lies in pieces on the other side not far from permission. They fought and Buthera cut Mudjitju in two, Yudrie, and the stones which formed it can be seen there which is why the bat has short legs today, and the folds still. where he was cut can still be seen on his body.Buthera continued along his way until he came to Gardiemutka Ngarna became a large rock which can be seen on the point (called Curramulka today, meaning Emu Water Holes) where named after him.Buthera’s Rock reminds us of Buthera’s a group were camped by the water holes. They had been great strength and his fight with Ngarna. told of the fight by the willy wagtail, (who the Narrunga and many other people believe to be a messenger and bearer of SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 news). 2. Yurlu Ngukandanha – the Kingfisher Story Buthera was annoyed that the people knew of his fight with Mudjitju and caused a great bushfire to encircle them. The Yurlu, the Kingfisher, decided to go south for a ceremony. people tried to escape into the waterholes but they were On the way he made a big fire, a sign that he was coming. all burnt. The wind rose, turning them into birds – magpies, The remains of that fire is the big heap of coal still at Leigh shags, and seagulls. Today we can see how their bodies Creek today.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH As Yurlu was travelling, there were also two big Akurras (Dreamtime Serpents) going south. Yurlu continued down the valley still making smoke, leaving coal behind him. The two serpents also went on southwards and entered the Pound through Edeowie Gorge and camped at a large waterhole.

That night some people in the Pound were holding a ceremony. When they looked into the sky at the stars to see if it was time to start, the stars they saw were actually the eyes stories/detail/the-early-missionaries-theology, ac- of the two Akurras. cessed 04/08/2014

The male Akurra told his mate to go to the south-west, 4. ’The Story of Buthera’s Rock’, Point Pearce Aboriginal while he went north-east to surround the people. When School,http://www.ptpearceab.sa.edu.au/docs/ Yurlu reached Mount Abrupt he stopped and looked into BUTHERA.pdf, accessed 04/08/2014 the Pound. He could hear the sound of the ceremony. He threw a firestick into the air; it turned into the red star, Mars. 5. ‘How to do an Aboriginal Songlines Map of your Mu- nicipality’, Jim Poulter, 2012, http://www.jimpoulter. While this was going on, the two Akurras came up on each com/article13.html, accessed 04/08/2014 side of the ceremonial ground and ate up all the people except two initiates and Yurlu. 6. ALTERNATIVE: ‘Ethnography’, Oxford Dictionary, 2014, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ St Mary Peak is the head of the male Akurra and Beatrice ethnography, accessed 04/08/2014 Hill is the head of the female serpent, both watching the flight of the initiates. Their bodies form the two sides of the 7. Van Dissel, Dirk, ‘Hughes, Sir Walter Watson (1803- Pound. 1887), Australian Dictionary of Biography, 2014 , accessed 04/08/2014

1. What are these stories seeking to explain to the lis- 8. ‘What is the Dreamtime or Dreaming?’, Creative Spirits, tener? http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/ spirituality/what-is-the-dreamtime-or-the-dreaming, 2. Could you consider these myths as truth? Or are they accessed 04/08/2014 just a myth? Try to think of them from an Aboriginal standpoint. 9. ‘Traditional Aboriginal Musical Instruments’, Aboriginal Art Online, 2000, http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/ Look at one or two of these Native North American creation culture/amusic2.php, accessed 04/08/2014 myths at. 10. ‘Dr. Rosalind Kidd’, Dr. Rosalind Kidd, http://roskidd. com/, accessed 04/08/2014 How are these stories different from Indigenous Australian creation stories? 11. ’Stolen Wages’, Creative Spirits,http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/economy/stolen- wages#toc0, accessed 04/08/2014 Episode Six: ENDNOTES 12. ‘Point Pearce’, SA Memory, 2009 1. Curnow, Paul, ‘Adnyamathanha Night Skies (Part I), Australian Indigenous Astronomy, 2011, http://aborigi- http://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page. nalastronomy.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/adnyamathan- cfm?u=1241, accessed 04/08/2014 ha-night-skies-part-i.html, accessed 04/08/2014

13. Short, Ian, ‘Wilpena Pound - Dreamtime Story’, Ian SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 2. ‘Point Pearce Mission (Anglican Church): Summary Re- Short and Associates, 2008,

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 RICHARD ROXBURGH EPISODE SEVEN

Lisa McCune’s ancestral search unearths ‘a face and a family’, ‘a colourful past’ and new siblings.

SYNOPSIS

I think everyone loves the idea that they may find out that they have a castle and that maybe they were an undiscovered prince or princess... but I don’t think that’s the case in my history... (Lisa McCune)

The subject of this episode will find out much about her family which is possibly more interesting than the typical fairy-tale scenario! On the trail of her ancestors, Lisa McCune will discover a family history laced with tragedy, murder on the goldfields, long-lost family members and an encounter with every parent’s nightmare...

Lisa’s research will involve a wide variety of experts. In her case, genealogists, gold experts, archivists, military and mental health historians, and child welfare experts, all of whom will play a vital role in piecing together the life and times of a past Australian world.

Actor Lisa McCune is one of Australia’s most popular and successful screen and theatre actors, earning more than ten awards and over seven nominations celebrating her performances. She is best known for her role as ‘Mag- gie Doyle’ in the police drama Blue Heelers. Lisa has also

starred as Anna Leonowens in Opera Australia’s produc- SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 tion of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I. Her stage credits also include starring as Maria in The Sound of Music, Sally Bowles in Cabaret, for which she won a Green Room Award, and Hope Cladwell in Urinetown, for which she was nominated for a Helpmann Award and a Green Room Award. Other stage credits include Melbourne Thea- tre Company’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S Bee, Ambassador Theatre Group’s Guys and Dolls, where she earned another Green Room Award nomination, and Shane Warne the Musical for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.

The ‘biological’ family tree

Lisa was born in 1971, the first of two children to Elise Bland and Malcolm McCune. As a teenager, Lisa found out that the McCune family name does not feature in her biological family tree; that the man she grew up knowing as her grandfather, Jack, was not actually her father’s father:

...my dad was not the biological son of my grandfather Jack... I know absolutely nothing about my dad’s biological father and what happened, where he went, where he was from, I don’t know anything.

Lisa has a warm and loving relationship with her dad, but is curious to find out more about her biological grandfather, to see a photograph of him, and to ‘find out whether or not there are any traits that either I or my children carry.’

I hope I’m surprised, I hope I find out interesting things. I would rather have a colourful past than anything too beige....[but] I hope not too colourful! (Lisa)

Making a start

Perth is Lisa’s first stop on her quest to learn more about and retrieved Malcolm’s brothers from the orphanage and her paternal grandfather. It’s where Lisa’s dad, Malcolm Malcolm from his foster parents. The family was reunited McCune, lives and where she spent the majority of her and Malcolm, out of respect for his new stepfather, never childhood. Lisa hasn’t seen her dad in about six months, enquired about his own father and knows little about him and she has mixed feelings about this particular reunion beyond a name – George Bloomer. So, who was this man? – it’s the first time she’s ever broached the subject of her father’s parentage. She reflects: Finding George Bloomer – and there I’m a little anxious about how dad’s going to react, talking are two! about his family and when I ask him questions about his dad, because we’ve never discussed it before and I’m really keen not to see him get sad. [He sounds] like a character out of some English novel! (Lisa) Malcolm has brought along a large box of photographic slides, many of them over forty years old. They’re a view Malcolm gives his blessing to Lisa’s quest to find out more into the early life of the McCune family, capturing Lisa’s about her biological heritage, which is a great relief to her: childhood and her young parents, Malcolm and Elise. This ‘I feel quite scientific about it...an archaeological journey’. is the catalyst for a talk about Malcolm’s parents; what Heading to the Western Australian State Records Office, were they like? Lisa meets up with genealogist Rhonda Grande, who has been looking into the Bloomers. The first thing she tells Lisa

Malcolm was born in 1946, the youngest of three boys. is that George Christopher Bloomer is not her grandfather, SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 When he was two years old, his mother Dorothy Mullenger but her great-grandfather. Her grandfather, ‘something of (known as ‘Dot’) separated from her husband. Malcolm’s an enigma’, is Colin George Bloomer. Lisa has gone looking two older brothers were sent to an orphanage and he was for one ‘George Bloomer’ and has found two! While Rhonda sent to live with foster parents, Anne and Wally McGregor. has found little on Colin, she has found some intriguing ref- Reflecting on his experience, Malcolm considers himself erences to great-grandfather George Christopher. A news- extremely lucky to have been with these kind and caring paper article from The Murchison Times in 1908 spares no people. Six years later Dot remarried, to Jack McCune, adjectives in reporting on a sensational murder:

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S Visiting the scene of the crime

The former mining settlement of Day Dawn is approximately seven hundred kilometres north-east of Perth, in the remote and rugged Gascoyne-Murchison region. There Lisa meets goldfields expert Barry Strickland, who has studied the history of Day Dawn and is able to paint a picture of daily life here at the height of the gold rush.

The Western Australian Gold Rush

The Western Australian Gold Rush began with the first discovery of gold in the early 1890s. News of gold spread fast and soon prospectors were swarming west to seek their fortune. Gold rush towns quickly sprung up in the dusty landscapes of the Kalgoorlie, Goldfields, and Murchison regions.

A DAYDAWN TRAGEDY As more gold was found, more people came out to try their luck. Lonely clusters of tents and rough bough sheds were MAN MURDERED IN BED soon transformed into thriving towns. There were roads, large hotels, shops, businesses, and railways. With the A BRUTAL CRIME completion of the Golden Pipeline, this arid region was provided with a constant supply of fresh water. Body Dragged and Thrown Down a Shaft Many of the original townships are still on the map. Al- A GHASTLY SPECTACLE though the populations are not as big, the character of the buildings and museums provide a fascinating glimpse into The text continues in forensic detail: the wild and colourful spirit of the gold rush era.

‘On Monday afternoon the dead body of a young married man, named William Clinton, employed as a blacksmith’s A sensational trial striker at the Great Fingall Mine, was discovered in a battered state at the bottom of a shaft, 80ft. deep, on the Last Barry tells Lisa that at the time of the murder in 1908, Day Chance lease, on the east side of the railway line...The con- Dawn was filled with prospectors giddy with ‘gold fever’. dition of the body left no doubt that the unfortunate Clinton The main employer was the Great Fingall Mine, but many had been the victim of a cold-blooded murder... A cursory miners also had their own small claim on the side, from examination showed a bullet wound in the throat, under the which they hoped to strike it rich. Barry says that the land- chin, the course of the bullet trending upwards, while the scape was ‘a checkerboard of leases... throughout all this head was horribly battered... The men arrested were James mulga and saltbush... littered with people who still had that Potter, Clinton’s brother-in-law, and George Bloomer, aged gold fever.’ It was a hard place to live; temperatures were about 18, a step-brother of the murdered man’s wife...’ often over forty degrees Celsius, tented accommodation was rough, men outnumbered women four to one, and they It appears that great-grandfather George C. Bloomer, at the reportedly spent at least a third of their wages on grog. age of eighteen, was arrested and charged with wilful murder! Into this rough environment came the victim, William I kind of wanted a colourful past... it’s primary colours going Clinton, holder of a gold lease, and a cast of supporting on here... (Lisa) players including his wife, Lavinia, half-sister to George Bloomer, Lisa’s great-grandfather. Lavinia was also the Lisa then heads to the State Library of Western Australia sister of James Potter, so we have a complex and interre- to ‘fill in the blanks’ with any newspaper reports of this lated network of individuals. The only one there not related, SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 murder case and reads the gruesome, sensational de- but implicated in the murder, was a man called Harry Smith. tails of the murder which was committed in a place called A contemporary photograph of George Bloomer shows a Day Dawn. It seemed to be something of a family drama handsome young man who was to find himself ‘in the thick’ involving George C. Bloomer’s brother-in-law as the victim of one of the most sensational and infamous trials in West and his half-brother as another co-accused. But where is Australian history. Newspaper readers followed the trial in Day Dawn? And how much blood was on the hands of the Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney. The language of the news- eighteen-year-old George Bloomer? papers made it clear that this was no ordinary crime:

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S The crime was carried out with such cold-blooded delibera- state had ever seen. Leigh recounts to Lisa that the court- tion that it must rank as one of the most fiendish murders room was filled to capacity for the duration of the four day yet committed in the state … trial. Without television or cinemas, such events were the entertainment of the day. Lisa reads from George Bloomer’s A news report from The Daily News states that the victim, police statement: William Clinton, and his wife, Lavinia, quarrelled over the attention which Harry Smith paid to her. Clinton had also ‘About four o’clock [in the morning] I was aroused my by apparently threatened to kill his wife. So, there was definite- something … Smith poked me in the ribs and said ‘I have ly bad blood between the victim and Harry Smith. Was it a settled him.’ I heard Clinton groaning; Smith said, ‘I’ve shot love triangle, or did Smith see himself as Lavinia’s ‘knight in him through the back of the head. I don’t know whether he shining armour’? will get over it … but anyhow, you stick to me,’ he said this in a threatening voice.’ Whatever the motive was, the younger men, James Potter and George Bloomer were also in on the plot. William Clin- Leigh says that the defence used this statement to show ton was murdered and his body was found stuffed down that Smith played on George’s youth and that he possibly the shaft of the nearby Last Chance mine. George Bloomer intimidated him into silence and complicity. In his statement was implicated in the crime along with Harry Smith and George Bloomer goes on to admit to his part in assisting James Potter and all were charged with wilful murder – if with covering up the crime and to lying about the wherea- found guilty they all faced death by hanging. bouts of the victim. At the conclusion of the trial the jury took just one hour of deliberation to reach their verdict: Barry takes Lisa on a tour of the old gold settlement and Harry Smith was found guilty and the judge sentenced him shows her a mine-shaft that was typical of the type down to death. In the case of George Bloomer and James Potter, which William Clinton’s body was thrown. Smith’s callous the jury took a more merciful stance: the two younger men disposal of Clinton’s body indicates his desire to conceal were found not guilty of murder but guilty of being acces- SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 his pre-mediated crime and ‘get away with it’. sories after the fact. Each was sentenced to six months in gaol with hard labour. Lisa goes to the courthouse at Geraldton, north of Perth, where George Bloomer faced trial. Here she will learn the I can’t tell you how relieved I am that he wasn’t the one that fate of her ancestor; what did the jury decide for him? She fired the gun … George at eighteen was [not] a particularly meets historian Dr. Leigh Straw, who has uncovered the good judge of character. (Lisa) court records for what, at the time, was the biggest trial the

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S Meeting the family through photographs

Lisa meets her second cousin Joe Porter – his mother and Colin Bloomer were brother and sister. Joe shows her a photo of Colin in his army days in which Lisa recognises the familiar features of her uncle. Another photograph is of a young Dot, Lisa’s grandmother. Dot’s photograph portrays her as a beautiful young woman, remembered by Joe’s mother as affectionate and kind. The photograph of Colin and Dot as a couple look very much in love. The George C. Bloomer, A.I.F. resemblance is further noticed - the photograph shows a handsome and tall young man who resembles one of Lisa’s But what happened to Lisa’s great grandfather after that? sons. Joe tells her that Colin fought in the Middle East dur- Did he turn over a new leaf? After he completed his six month ing World War II, and that his understanding of the family sentence it appears that George Bloomer stayed clear of breakdown from his mother was that Colin couldn’t handle the wrong side of the law. His next appearance in the public ‘structured responsibility’. But what was it about Colin that record is six years later – at the outset of World War I. Lisa meant he couldn’t handle structured responsibility, which heads to the National Archives office in Perth to examine the therefore made the happy couple in the photo so poorly war service documents of her great-grandfather. She meets matched? Did Colin’s wartime experiences impact his life archivist Marjorie Bly who shows her George’s military service after the war? records indicating that he enlisted in the army three weeks after Britain declared war on Germany in 1914 but was ‘de- An online search via the National Archives brings to light clared medically unfit’ and discharged after only four months. Colin’s war service records which provide some clues to his character. Lisa learns that her grandfather was constantly Two years, and thousands of casualties, later the army charged by his superiors for repeatedly going AWL – the wasn’t so particular anymore. George enlisted again and military abbreviation for ‘absent without leave’. Why did was successful – but he seems to have lied about his Colin Bloomer keep absenting himself from duty? Would criminal conviction. The record also shows that since his last the answer to this question explain the desertion of his application he married a woman called Mabel Vaughan Red- family in later years? fern – Lisa’s great grandmother. George was sent to fight in France in 1917, for four or five months, and he returned with After serving in the Middle East, Colin, on his return, a gunshot wound to the leg. The next time he appears in the absented himself for fifty-eight days, the longest period of records is thirty-five years later in 1952, in Western Australia absence for him. At the Army Museum of Western Aus- – it’s his death notice and it holds a big surprise for Lisa. tralia in Fremantle, military historian Dr. Mark Johnston has located records of Colin Bloomer’s courts martial and the statements he made as explanation for his actions. These Newly discovered siblings, a face, tell of a man desperately worried about the health of his and a family family, far away in Perth: Lisa reads one of these statements by Colin:

George and Mabel had eleven children. The oldest of them is Lisa’s paternal grandfather, Colin George, she reflects:

When I read the death notice I kind of thought oh! That’s so many people that my dad has missed out on growing up and all of the relationships there that never happened.

The record shows that Lisa’s grandfather, Colin Bloomer, grew up in a large family with a father who stayed around SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 to see his children into adulthood. These siblings could provide a windfall of information in her quest. So, what was it that triggered grandfather Colin’s own family break-up a generation later and led to him abandoning his children, among them Lisa’s dad? Might the descendants of one of those long-lost ten siblings cast some light on the life of Colin Bloomer?

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S My child is suffering from attacks due to an enlarged heart; he’s aged two [years] and four months. The illness has been apparent for at least five months ... as to the first charge I applied for leave and was granted one day’s leave only.

To visit his family, Colin had been granted one day’s leave. The round trip, from the base to Perth and back, was five hundred kilometres. This left him with little time to spend with his sick child. Colin’s pleas for mitigation fell on deaf ears. He repeated his offences and was imprisoned for increasing periods of time, culminating in a one year sentence, despite the court recommending clemency under the circumstances.

of war, or incarceration? Lisa knows she is now close to Dark days for Australia, dark times understanding the factors that led to Colin abandoning his for Colin, ‘big stuff for a family’ family and her father, Malcolm: It’s obviously going to play a huge part in the future of my At the time of Colin’s family troubles, Australia was at war, family because it’s obviously been the reason for the frac- and these were dangerous days for the nation; an individual ture. It’s big stuff for a family… soldier’s problems were of no consequence. In Europe and North Africa the war was still raging with heavy casualties on all sides. The Japanese were on the verge of invading ’The wrong personality at the wrong Australia. Singapore had fallen, Papua New Guinea was a time in history’ – Lisa bloody quagmire, and Darwin had been bombed. Japanese submarines had even penetrated Sydney Harbour. This was At Graylands Hospital Campus, mental health historian Dr. a time of national emergency and Colin Bloomer, regardless Philippa Martyr helps Lisa interpret the medical terminology of his mitigating circumstances, had to be made an exam- in Colin’s case files. She explains that ‘psychopathic’ did ple of. Dr. Johnston notes that Colin never served out his not have the same meaning in the 1940s that it has today. year long sentence because he was discharged as medi- It seems that Colin suffered from what we now refer to as cally unfit just a few months later. Lisa reflects: ‘anxiety attacks’.

I suspect at the age of twenty-four and going through what This medical condition is very frightening for the sufferer my grandfather was going through, he’s asking a lot of and can lead to danger. Philippa shows Lisa a report of questions about life. He’s disillusioned; he’s feeling things Colin’s attempted suicide by hanging, after which he was maybe are a little unfair. I think he’s trying to be a man and transferred to hospital for psychiatric assessment. The hos- he’s locked up in prison and he can’t fight for his country pital record card then reveals that Colin was often in trouble and he can’t look after his family, and I think that he’s gone for his violent outbursts, had a number of breakdowns as to some pretty dark places during that time. early as 1938, and that he experienced childhood bullying.

What was medically wrong with Colin Bloomer? Lisa needs The breakdown in 1938 pre-dates WWII and his references to see his medical records and with some trepidation ap- to childhood bullying all point to a pre-existing emotional plies for them under the Freedom of Information Act. On trauma. The portrait that emerges is of a man very anxious, his field medical card she reads the diagnosis: ‘depression with mood problems and trouble coping with everyday life, psychosis, anxiety state and psychopathic personality.’ So what we might now call a personality disorder. was Colin’s mental condition pre-existing, was it a product Colin was discharged from the army in 1943, three years before Lisa’s father Malcolm was born. Philippa points out that while it may have been a relief that Colin wasn’t institu-

I guess the fact that my grandfather had had some issues with mental illness explains why he disappeared from the life of my grandmother and my dad and his two brothers...I guess the longer he was away the harder it would be to step back, particularly if he went on to have another life.

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S mately five years to overtake the shortage of 300,000 houses in Australia. The West Australian newspaper reported in 1952 that, ‘the acute housing shortage in the post-war period was worldwide’. Bomb damage had caused the housing shortage in Europe, but in Australia it was because there was no domestic construction for the duration of the war. This problem was exacerbated by the massive influx of immigrants from Europe in the immediate post-war years.

20,000 homes were built in WA by the State and Federal Gov- ernment, which accounted for almost half of all homes built within the state during that time. Despite this tremendous effort, housing numbers were still short by an estimated 30,000.

Lisa’s grandmother was in an impossible situation which was not going to improve for some time to come. Another report on Dorothy Bloomer and her children by a different inspector, A recipe for tragedy two years after the first visit, records that the children are ‘neglected’ and thus to be taken into state care. Dr. Rosser points What happened to Colin’s wife, Dot, and their children, after out to Lisa that her grandmother would have taken the initia- he left? Lisa wants to understand the sequence of events tive to call in the Department because she knew she was not that led to her dad being fostered out, and his brothers coping and wanted what was best for the children. In addition, being admitted to an orphanage. She heads to the Depart- she lets Lisa know that Dot was on record as visiting her son, ment of Child Protection which holds the child welfare Lisa’s father, every month over the coming years while he was records of the time. She is handed a censored report of a in care, until she was able to bring her children back to her. Department Inspector’s visit to Dot and the children at a place called ‘Camp 22 Hut 37A, Kalamunda Road, South ...You know, she was happily married and living quite an afflu- Guildford’ in 1947. The report reads: ent life …but, you know, I sense that I have a very grounded quality and I’ve always tried to maintain that and maybe that’s ...Mrs. Bloomer had no food whatever in the house nor a because of Dot … penny with which to procure any... This family is absolutely destitute... and Mrs Bloomer … will need immediate assis- ‘This is your dad …’ tance and in circumstances I recommended same be granted. Now Lisa knows a whole lot more about her paternal fam- The Department gave Dot some financial assistance to help ily tree and the enigma of her biological grandfather, Colin her out of her immediate predicament. Lisa wonders why, with Bloomer. She still has one more step in her journey – sharing such a big family around her, Dot hadn’t asked them for help? what she has learnt with her dad, Malcolm. For the first time Could it have been pride? he will see his father’s face:

I think I’ve been trying to find a way to be brave through this I hope that Colin, my grandfather, found peace in some way part of the story because it’s close. It’s not a tale anymore; it’s in his life. I don’t want his memory to be tarnished by this one kind of my life. (Lisa) disorder that he had because I’m sure that there are other really wonderful stories about him that I don’t know...it’s quite Child welfare expert, Dr. Debra Rosser, puts the records amazing... that night when he did attempt suicide – if he have into perspective for Lisa. Camp 22 was a collection of dis- gone through with that... It’s just a classic example of how life used army barracks on the north-eastern outskirts of Perth would have been so different because my dad would never used as a temporary measure to try and ease the post-war have been born. Hence, we would never be here. Life is housing shortage. After World War Two, public housing was amazing when you go back and look at it like that and I guess I sorely needed, but there simply was not enough avail- just... part of me refuses to find tragedy in it. able. Pensioners, welfare recipients, war widows, and war wounded were sent to Camp 22, with the hope that they’d It is a moving and emotional moment for this gentle, reserved SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 be re-housed within a couple of years. Five years later, the man, looking at his father for the first time, thanks to Lisa’s media and state parliament reported on the squalid condi- journey. It appears that Colin Bloomer bears a strong resem- tions with one MP declaring it a ‘damnable disgrace’. blance to Malcolm’s brother, Daryl. Viewing his parents’ photo, when they were young and in love, before war, tragedy, and The public housing crisis was so serious that a Royal Com- destitution struck, is an equally profound experience. It brings mission was called to investigate in 1947. The Commission closure to the journey for both of them. found that the shortage was so dire that it would take approxi-

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S APPENDIX: VOCABULARY fers to the difficulties faced by many Australians in wartime and the post-war era. The following Activity: • archivist: An information professional who maintains and organises archives. http://www.anzacday.org.au/education/activities/homefront/images/homefront.pdf • paternal: relatives belonging to the father’s side of the family focuses on life on the home front during World War II.

• enigma: puzzle or mystery

• quagmire: a muddy bogged area of land YEAR 10 CIVICS AND CITIZENSHIP

• mitigating: to mitigate, i.e. make something bad less ACTIVITY severe, serious, or painful. In this episode, Lisa McCune discovers that her grandmother Dorothy was: • trepidation: nervousness • living in public housing; • incarceration: imprisonment • receiving government assistance;

ACTIVITIES • had her children taken in foster care. Today, various government departments also attend to the needs of those individuals and families who are in financial Year 10 Australian difficulties or familial distress. Working in pairs, look up the History: Australia in World following government department websites:

War II: Activity 1 1. Australian Government Department of Human Ser- vices; Task: Read the following account of the Japanese midget submarine attack in Sydney Harbour, 1942: Public housing in Australia is usually provided by departments of state and territory governments; look up http://www.ww2australia.gov.au/underattack/sydharbour. the Victorian Office of Housing. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 html Task: Write a short report on the duties of each of these The following excellent Activity, based on the reading of departments, taking care to include: this document, is to be found at: https://www.awm.gov.au/ education/schools/resources/remembering-1942/ • child care services;

Activity 2: This episode of Who Do You Think You Are? re- • foster care;

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S • public housing Just as Grandpa meant we should. We’d feed the hens and milk the cows And go for picnics in the wood. VCE English Context: Whose Reality? I didn’t know that Grandpa drank Till his cattle and crops had rotted black, As we’ve observed in many episodes thus far, photographs And the boys went off to die in France or portraits of our protagonists’ family members so often And the burden broke old Granny’s back. show them in happier times. As each episode progresses, And yet my mother never lied however, we often read of the reality that existed for them And gave me more than half a fact. which was often far removed from the young, smiling She shared with me the charity individuals captured by the camera. The following poem, by That keeps a dignity intact. Margaret Scott reveals a similar idea: What is the link to the Context here?

‘Stories Of My Mother’s Childhood, Firstly, the poet’s mother takes her child back to a past ru- Told In Wartime’ ral life and childhood in Gloucestershire, England. In story, the dead come back to life, to the idyllic imagery of tranquil farming and a happy youth of ‘abundant peace’, blossom From the album of my mother’s mind, trees and golden corn.’ Even when the Second World War Secret in their innocence, arrives, there’s almost an element of fun for the family as The dead walked out in comic hats they hide ‘in a cupboard underneath the stairs’, the coun- To posture in a new pretence. tryside obviously not a serious target for the enemy. My uncles, always young and smart, In Norfolk Jackets, cut the hay, But then a darker side emerges of the reality of wartime and And Granny in a long white frock, its terrible psychological toll: how Grandpa, with his tales of Tripped abroad to gather may. a happy future for his grandchildren actually drank heav- Embowered in abundant peace, ily and ruined his farm, and Grandma’s death coming from

The farm where all the Farrs were born grief over her sons’ deaths in France and the burden of toil SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Rose tranquilly amid its flocks, on the farm. Its blossom trees and golden corn. The winters of the war were cold, Now she is older, the poet knows these things; but why did The people hid in smelly lairs. her mother shield her from that sad reality? The answer is But we hid out in Gloucestershire, one often given by those who seek to both protect their In a cupboard underneath the stairs. children from sorrow and preserve the dignity of loved I knew we’d have it all one day, ones: ‘charity’, in other words, kindness, both to the dead,

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S so their stories, however tinged with fantasy they may be, accessed 11 August 2014 were offered with love, and to the living, so they may think well of their past family. 4. ‘Sydney Harbour’, Australia’s War 1939-1945, , accessed 11 August 2014 ENDNOTES 5. Scott, Margaret, ‘Stories of My Mother’s Childhood, 1. ‘Gold Rush History’, Australia’s Golden Outback, Told in Wartime’, Australian Poetry Library, < http:// 2014, , accessed 4 wartime-0745004>, accessed 11 August 2014 August 2014 6. ‘Remembering 1942: Sydney under attack’, Australian 2. ‘Centenary flashback: Post -war housing crisis War Memorial,

sparks Royal Commission’, Department of schools/resources/remembering-1942/>, accessed SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Housing WA, : , accessed 8 August 2014 org.au/education/activities/homefront/images/ homefront.pdf 3. ‘Archivist’, Oxford Dictionaries, 2014, ,

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 LISA MCCUNE’S EPISODE EIGHT

Paul McDermott uncovers the tragic story behind his mother’s childhood – a tale of colonial misdeeds and a succession of battles against overwhelming odds.

I’ve been a wastrel for forty years. You know, [a] totally hedonistic existence. I think about it occasionally, the horrors that faced previous generations that people had to endure so that… I could waffle around…and have this sort of life. (Paul McDermott)

ntertainer Paul McDermott found fame with the musical comedy group The Doug Anthony All-Stars Eand established a career as a TV host on Good News Week. In more recent years he has stepped out of the limelight to pursue his other artistic passions. Beginning his own family instilled in Paul a desire to seek a connection to his past.

The blood relatives, the people that are part of your blood history, they’re the … final result of the all the pain and suffering and joys and sorrows that people have endured for centuries.

Among the many experts called upon in this Series to unravel the various mysteries of the ancestry of our subjects, this Episode will require the unique abilities of insolvency experts, social historians, medical researchers and archivists.

Paul embarks on a quest to find out more about his maternal grandparents. His mother, Betty, has next to no knowledge of them. She was adopted as a child and raised by her aunt and uncle, Teresa and Robert Thomson. Betty also assumed that her biological parents both died while she was still a toddler. Beyond that, the family history remains

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 ANDREW DENTON something of a blank canvas. Paul’s mother’s adoptive Betty’s childhood was one of secrets and whispers: parents never told her that she was adopted. It seemed to be the way people were in those days, you At the time, the issue of adoption tended to be shrouded know. They were quite happy … to go on with their life in secrecy; adoptive parents were often advised not to tell and bring you up and…never think about what they the child. They thought they were protecting them from should tell you. (Betty McDermott) the social stigma of being born outside of marriage, or in the case of Paul’s mother, to protect them from becoming Once, as a child, Betty was eavesdropping and overheard emotionally scarred by the information. people talking about her mother’s death; no one, however, ever spoke of her father. She recalls in conversation with Today, the world is different; old stigmas have given way to Paul that when she was ten years old, in a moment of an- a considerable extent and there is an increased community ger, she said to Teresa “You’re not my mother!” The remark awareness of the adopted person’s right to know the truth shocked her adoptive mother, but still nothing was ever about his or her origins. In Victoria, the Adoption Act of said in response to this. 1984 enshrined the right of adoptees to access information about their family of origin. Also, it is now acknowledged that telling a child they were adopted and the circumstanc- Kathleen Riley and Harold Williams es surrounding their adoption was difficult for the adoptive – long-lost parents parents.

Paul’s quest begins with a trip to Canberra, our nation’s In her early twenties, Betty received an inheritance from her SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 capital, where he spent most of his childhood. The fam- birth grandfather’s estate. It confirmed that her grandfather ily moved here from Adelaide when he was three years was George Williams, and that her father’s name was also old. Paul is one of six children born to John and Betty Williams. It was then that Aunt Hilda told Betty the names McDermott. In Canberra, Betty shows Paul a photo of her of her biological parents: Kathleen Riley and Harold Wil- as a child with two older women – her Aunt Hilda and the liams. The only other thing Betty knows about them is that woman she knew as her mother, Teresa Thomson. Teresa they met in a hospital for people with tuberculosis. was actually her great aunt.

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 PAUL McDERMOTT What became of Kathleen Riley?

Paul’s mother and grandmother seem to have shared the same tragic tale: both were separated from their parents at an early age through circumstances beyond their control. He heads to Adelaide to find out more; it’s his birthplace and both sides of his family have lived here for many generations. Under the Freedom of Information Act, Paul is able to access documents relating to Kathleen’s time as a state ward. He reads, in the punitive language of the time, about how Kathleen, not yet six years old, was charged and convicted of ‘being a neglected child’:

Order for a child to be placed under the control of the Betty then shows Paul one treasured memento of the mother State Children’s Council: she never got to know: a photo of Kathleen. The photo shows her as a little girl, about ten years old, posed in a KATHLEEN VERONICA RILEY of Adelaide photography studio. In the early twentieth century, portrait photographs were often made into multiples and used as ...was charged with being a neglected child within the postcards. This photograph is a postcard sent from Kathleen meaning of the State Children’s Act 1895 in that she is to her sister Mary. Paul reflects on the ‘tsunami of emotion’ under the guardianship of EDITH MARY RILEY, who is unfit coming from his mother as she recounted this sad tale: to have such guardianship....

I can’t imagine what it would be like to live without having And whereas the said KATHLEEN VERONICA RILEY any reference… to your real parents… was convicted of the said offence … and is of the age of five years and eleven months… do order that she… be From Canberra to Naracoorte – placed in the custody and under the control of the State more photographs and grandparents Children’s Council until she shall attain the age of eighteen years.

To find out more about the Riley side of the family, and The language of the document is ‘brutal’ and Paul notes that to help Paul’s mother understand more of her family it is especially ‘nasty’ that a small child should be charged background, Paul travels to Naracoorte in regional South with her own neglect. He reads on to find that Kathleen and Australia and the home of his second cousin, Carol Bennier. her siblings, Hugh, Hilda, Wilfred, and Mary, were sent to the Carol is the daughter of Aunt Hilda, the aunt who revealed Edwardstown Industrial School. It doesn’t sound like a very to Paul’s mother Betty the true identity of her birth parents. pleasant place and Paul wants to know more.

Carol’s collection of photos is a slice of family history Paul has never known: his mother as a baby being held by Aunt Hilda; Kathleen’s parents, Edith and Joseph Riley, and Kathleen at around seventeen years of age. Edith’s own early life was difficult: her husband Joseph died in 1912 from a respiratory disease at the age of forty-two. In 1916, Edith was found by the state to be unable to care for her children. So all but the two eldest were fostered out.

The Riley family was in turmoil – Joseph was dead, Kath- leen was struggling, and then the children were removed and scattered into different foster homes. Carol shows

Paul another photo postcard, identical to the last, sent by SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 Kathleen to her mother, Edith. Clearly the young girl tried to stay in touch with her dispersed family and the words on the card are particularly moving for Paul:

With fondest love to my dear mother. I often think of you dear mother when I am all alone. I often think of gone by days when we were together home. From Kathleen.

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 PAUL McDERMOTT In South Australia in 1916, children in state care were Kathleen, the teenager escorted to state-run institutions such as the Edwardstown Industrial School, a reception centre where children were The records of Kathleen’s teenage years as a domestic housed while suitable fostering arrangements were made. servant tell of a volatile period when she was shunted from Like many such institutions of the time, it was an austere and one house to another almost every year. Employers were daunting place, particularly for a young child like Kathleen. constantly complaining about her uncooperative behavior. Documentation from her various places of employment At the site of the former school, which ran from 1898 record her as ‘unsuitable, uncontrollable’ and of ‘mutual through to 1972, Paul meets social historian Dr. Karen dissatisfaction.’ Finally, whether as a result of her behavior George. She has documents that cast some light on what or as a result of her mother’s constant pressure to return, awaited Kathleen Riley and her siblings once they were records show Kathleen is returned to the family home. She taken into state care. was sixteen years old and had been away for eleven years.

For a history of the Edwardstown Industrial School, see: Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be a usual homecoming. Karen http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/sa/SE00064 then shows Paul a newspaper article headlined ‘Waitress Shot’ from The Register. It turns out that not long after her After less than three weeks at Edwardstown, Kathleen was return home, Kathleen was accidentally shot in the thigh ‘boarded out’, in other words, sent to a foster family. Kath- by her brother Wilfred when he was cleaning his gun. She leen was boarded out to a woman in Gawler, regional South survived, but her days were certainly numbered. Australia. Karen explains that, at the time, it was believed that it was better to board children in the country to physi- A very hard, sad existence... and cruelly brief as well. (Paul) cally remove them from the ‘evils’ of the city. Paul and her agree that it was also to further ‘break the bond’ between Paul knows from his mother that Kathleen died young leav- parent and child. ing the infant Betty behind. So, what was the sequence of events that took Kathleen from troubled teenager to moth- Gawler was Kathleen’s home for the next seven years, erhood and, finally, the tuberculosis ward? At the South until she turned thirteen years old. At the age of thirteen, Australian Genealogy Society, local historian Beryl Schahi- children in state care were sent ‘out to service’ rather than nger has the birth, death and marriage records which may SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 boarded out. Girls were made to be domestic servants, and hold the answer. Paul learns that in 1933, just over six years boys to be labourers. During this period it is also noted that after she returned to her family, Kathleen Riley, at twenty Kathleen’s mother Edith made constant requests to have two years old, housemaid, married Harold Williams, stone- her children returned to her and that they these appeals mason, aged twenty five years. were consistently rejected by the authorities. A recurring theme of this period in Edith’s life was this persistence in A search of the Death Register reveals that Kathleen and trying to reunite with her children. Harold had a very short time together. In 1936, three years

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 PAUL McDERMOTT after they were married, Harold died and was followed three ‘DO NOT SPIT’ signs months later by Kathleen. Paul’s mother, Betty, was alone in the world at three years old. In the three short years they Tuberculosis could be carried in saliva and this gave rise had together, what would daily life and parenthood have to a great many signs in public places forbidding the habit, been like under the shadow of tuberculosis (TB)? common to some, of spitting. The ‘DO NOT SPIT’ signs on the walls in the pedestrian subway leading to the platforms of Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station were placed there TB - ‘the white plague’ during a massive outbreak of tuberculosis in 1919.

In the grounds of the former tuberculosis sanitorium in Ad- Paul’s grandmother spent much of her last few years in elaide Paul meets medical researcher Dr. Carol Putland to and out of the TB clinic. Within a few weeks of giving birth learn more about the effects of TB, or ‘the white plague’ as to Betty, Kathleen was back in hospital for another three it was known. Tuberculosis was the leading killer of young months. Denied contact by the authorities, and often adults in Australia from early settlement to the 1930s. It was absent due to treatment, mother and child would have an airborne disease, most commonly settling in the lungs. been virtual strangers. In May 1936, Harold Williams died of TB leaving behind his wife Kathleen and their two-year- Patients were generally isolated from the community old daughter. Three months later, Kathleen followed. Paul and placed in specialized hospital wards, or sanitoriums, reads the death notices in the newspapers and is particu- where good food and fresh air offered the best chances of larly moved by the reference to Kathleen as ‘mummy of recovery. Some responded to treatment, but two thirds of Betty’. sufferers spent their final days gasping for air and coughing blood. So, it seems the family story Paul has heard from Next, Paul goes to West Terrace Cemetery and finds that his mother is correct. For more information on tuberculosis, Kathleen is buried in an unmarked grave. A sad discovery, see Appendix 2. but at least now his mother has gained some knowledge about her parents: Tuberculosis was linked to overcrowding and malnutrition and was so highly infectious that it generated enormous I think all people need to know their history, and if it’s taken fear throughout the community. Paul reads The Register, an from you, or there’s deception in it, you want to solve it Adelaide newspaper of the time: regardless of the emotional or personal cost because you need to know. (Paul) How to avoid infection for children

Never allow a baby or young child to be near a tubercu- Now for the McDermott side of the lar patient. A mother of a new baby who has the disease family... should neither nurse nor handle her baby at all. It is the only way to save the child from infection. Like Paul’s maternal grandfather, Harold Williams, the first male McDermott who arrived in Australia was a stonemason. Michael and Mary McDermott came from Ireland in around 1840 and settled in South Australia. Unlike the other Australian colonies, South Australia did not begin as a penal colony but as a ‘free settlement’. If, as a free settler, Paul’s three times great grandfather had purchased land in the new colony, there’ll be a record of it in the Land Titles Office.

Archivist Mark Richardson has found an indenture, or title deed, dated 1847. Finding the document is one thing, understanding it is another. Paul reads the wordy record to discover that his ancestor paid twenty pounds for a block

of land on the corner of Wright and Lowe Streets in what is SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 now central Adelaide. Is the property still standing?

Paul meets local historian Patricia Summerling at the site of the property purchased by Michael McDermott. At first glance it all looks very promising – it’s a pub! Patricia tells Paul that unfortunately his ancestor didn’t own the pub, which was built much later than 1847. She gives Paul

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 PAUL McDERMOTT ‘Father gone to California’

I thought this plucky little family would rise above the vulgarity of [their] environs and furnish me with some joy, but sadly, no. (Paul)

Next, Paul visits the State Records Office to look for further traces of his troubled ancestors. Paul is shown a Register of Destitute Persons and finds his ancestors are on the first page. Mary McDermott, and her four children, are registered. Mary is declared destitute – she has no source of income and needs food rations from the state. Paul then reads the circumstances for her destitution, ‘Father Gone to California’. It appears that Michael has abandoned his family to partake in the Californian Gold Rush. Paul reflects that his family had a troublesome start to their time in the colony and hopes Mary’s luck improves.

Dr. Catherine Kevin has more news for Paul. They meet back in the pub, on the site of the original McDermott fam- a short history of colonial Adelaide and the conditions ily home. She informs Paul that Michael sold the property for Michael, Mary, and their family would have faced on their fifty seven pounds just before he went to California. It is clear arrival; they were about to find out just how difficult life that Michael sold the family home out from under his wife and was. Adelaide had only been established for the last ten children, pocketed the tidy profit, and deserted his family. years when the McDermott family arrived in the hope of a new start in a new land. Against the odds, one year later, the family’s luck does start to change. Catherine shows Paul another title deed - an inden- At the time, Adelaide was struggling. Half of the population ture of a purchase of property, this time in the name of Patrick had left in the early 1840s because there was no employ- McDermott, Mary’s oldest son. What’s his name doing on a ment. An early construction boom had already burst, crops document of this nature at the age of ten years old? Paul is were failing, and the whole colony had gone bankrupt. dumbfounded. Michael’s great expectations on arriving in the colony would have been quickly dashed. They were living in the Adelaide Catherine explains that women were not allowed to own prop- slums, a place without any sanitation, so the sewerage erty, so Patrick’s name on the deed would be the closest Mary would run down the streets. The unpaved roads were a could come to owning a home. It is unclear where the money quagmire in winter and a dustbowl in summer. Nevertheless came from but Mary and her family would remain in the new Michael had no real option but to tough it out; there was no house on Chatham Street for many years to come. Mary’s turning back. He built a house on his twenty pound block funeral notice from 1871 shows she was still in the house and ’made a go of it’. twenty years later, dying at the age of sixty two years – a ‘ripe old age’ for the time. So, how did the family’s luck change? Paul’s next meeting with an expert takes place at the Queen’s Theatre. Social historian Dr. Catherine Kevin explains that the theatre was also used as a courthouse. Michael McDermott is listed on the court records as being charged with drunkenness and ‘threatening to take away the life of Mary McDermott, his wife.’ The magistrate let him off with a warning; he was ‘told to be mindful for the future how he makes use of such threats.’

Domestic violence was common in the colonies at the time. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 The McDermott marriage continued to be unstable, as shown by the next document. A newspaper advertisement states that Michael McDermott refused to pay debts accu- mulated by his wife Mary. It was not uncommon for men to publish such notices in order to maintain control over their wives. Still, this suggests a very public relationship breakdown and Paul is keen to see how it unfolds.

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 PAUL McDERMOTT What became of that young boy whose name graces the prison and a few white lies, Paul’s great-great grandfather deed of the property his mother bought? Paul visits the family avoided paying his debts and got to keep the roof over his home of his second cousin, Michael Rabbitt, who has been mother’s head. The daring of the action impresses Paul: assembling a family history of their shared ancestor Pat- rick McDermott – Paul’s great-great grandfather. A photo of It’s an extraordinary gamble that thankfully pays off for the Patrick, the first McDermott to be photographed in Australia, family, but man! You would have dragged them all to hell if shows an imposing figure with a big white beard. Paul is also it’d gone wrong. shown newspaper reports of Patrick’s conviction for drunkenness and assaulting a police officer. Yet another report shows What then became of Patrick McDermott? Paul’s cousin him in court for an unpaid debt of ten pounds – if he fails to Michael has given him a family heirloom, a Bible belonging pay he faces forty days imprisonment. to Patrick’s wife, Annie. In it he reads that Patrick McDer- mott died on the 12th of September, 1887, at forty seven years old. Paul finds it hard to believe: the photo he has is The debts mount up and a of a man with a big white beard, who looks old. He reflects dangerous lie is told that they must have aged quickly in the colonies.

At the Old Adelaide Gaol, Paul meets insolvency expert, A last visit to the cemetery Associate Professor Chris Symes. Chris shows him that Patrick’s debts in fact totalled nearer to ninety pounds, and Interestingly, Paul finds the McDermott plot in the same for each debt he could be re-imprisoned for forty days. cemetery as Kathleen Riley’s grave. For all the humble With creditors queuing up to redeem their pound of flesh, beginnings and the life of struggle, it seems that Patrick’s Paul’s great-great-grandfather faced the prospect of a passing didn’t go unmarked. His gravestone is rather long spell in prison. Patrick has himself declared a pauper, ornate with monuments and statuettes, ‘a much grander which was considered an act of insolvency, also known as eternal residence than I thought they’d be capable of,’ Paul bankruptcy. This way, he could have his debts wiped and declares. start again. As he declared earlier, Paul has given his mother Betty The record shows that Patrick had wasted no time working ‘a great gift’ – that of the history of the mother and father the system, his notice of intent was lodged before lunch she never knew. She now has a story of Kathleen; a loving time on his first day in prison. In declaring that he only had daughter, a rebellious teenager, a young married wife, and the clothes on his back, Patrick was neglecting to men- sadly, a victim of ill-health. On both sides of Paul’s family tion the house on Chatham Street which was bought in tree there is now evidence of a determined spirit, prepared his name. With Mary now elderly, Patrick would not have to overcome life’s hardships: SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 wanted to see the house seized and his mother once again cast out destitute because another McDermott man. There’s a little bit of pride in that as well. That against incredible adversity these people kept going and kept striving Chris explains how by making a false statement to the In- and struggling. I would like to believe I have some of that solvency Commissioner, Patrick risked a further three years’ in me. I don’t think I would have lasted five minutes in that imprisonment. With the greatest of luck, his gamble paid off world. and he kept the family home. So, for the price of a stint in

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 PAUL McDERMOTT APPENDIX 1: VOCABULARY: In the Middle Ages, it was believed that the touch of a sovereign of England or France could cure diseases. This • Wastrel: an idler or good-for-nothing practice was used especially for TB which became known as the ‘mal du roi’, or ‘the King’s evil’. During the eighteenth • Hedonistic: from ‘Hedonism’; to live a life devoted to century, TB reached its peak. As many as nine hundred the pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification people died per 100,000. Massive population increases, overcrowding, and primitive sanitation are just some fac- • Punitive: inflicting, or intended as punishment tors that lead to the rise. The term ‘white plague’ emerged around this time. The vaccine for tuberculosis was first • Plucky: courageous, determined to rise above obstacles used on humans in 1921. It is the most used vaccine in the world. • Heirloom: a family possession handed down from generation to generation Some famous people known to have suffered from tuberculosis include Emily Brontë, George Orwell, Saint Thérèse • Ornate: elaborately decorated, often excessively de Lisieux, Nelson Mandela, Vivien Leigh, and Ringo Starr.

APPENDIX 2: ACTIVITIES

• The Freedom of Information Act of 1982: is a piece of Australian legislation which gives members of the pub- Year Ten Civics & Citizenship lic rights of access to official government documents. Before this, the various governments of Australia had Class discussion: How much do you know about the pro- no obligation to release information to the public The cesses and policies regarding adoption in Australia? The Freedom of Information Act is considered to be a ‘land- following sites should be of assistance: mark in the development of Australian democracy’. http://www.adoptionaustralia.com.au/au-adoption-

• Tuberculosis: has been known to mankind since ancient stories.html SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 history. This disease has many names including ‘consumption’, and ‘the white plague’. Despite advances in and: modern medicine, over ninety percent of people in the developing world have been exposed and infected by http://www.decd.sa.gov.au/docs/documents/1/Adoptin- TB. Some strains of mycobacteria that cause TB have gAustralianChild.pdf been found in artifacts from Ancient Egypt. After sharing your knowledge, prepare a Report for the group. 106

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 PAUL McDERMOTT VCE English Units 1-4 2. The emotions and experiences involved in the adop- Contexts: Identity & Belonging, tion journey often lead to great creativity in books, documentaries, poetry and more. This is a poem on an Personal Journeys, Who are you? adopted child’s relationship with their birth mother and adopted mother. The following poetry is a useful supplementary text for you your file in this Context: Legacy of an Adopted Child

Once there were two women who never knew each other, Poems about adoption: One you do not remember — the other you call Mother. Two different lives shaped to make yours one. 1. ‘To Her Birthmother’ was written by Tom Fisher. The One became your guiding star — the other became your sun. poem focuses on the love and connection between birth parents and adoptive parents. The first gave you life and the second Taught you to live in it. To her birthmother The first gave you a need for love And the second was there to give it. You gave her birth We’ll give her life One gave you a nationality; the other gave you a name. You gave her today’s One gave you the seed of talent; the other gave you an aim. We’ll give her tomorrows One gave you emotions; the other calmed your fears. One saw your first sweet smile; the other dried your tears. You gave her race We’ll give her identity One gave you up You gave her heritage It was all that she could do. We’ll give her future The other prayed for a child And God led her straight to you. You gave her possibilities

We’ll give her potentials And now you ask me through your tears SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 You gave her up The age old question through the years: We’ll have to let go Heredity or Environment – Which are you the product of? You dream of her future We’ll work hard for your dreams to come true Neither my darling, neither – You gave her hope Just two different kinds of love. We will too.

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 PAUL McDERMOTT ENDNOTES: Daniel, T.M., ‘The history of tuberculosis’, Respiratory Medicine, 2006, , accessed man Services, 2011, , accessed 17/08/2014 you-are-adopted>, accessed 17/08/2014 6. ’Adoption Stories’, Adoption Australia, 2011, , accessed 17/08/2014 freedom-of-information/about-freedom-of-information>, accessed 19/08/2014 7. ‘Adopting an Australian born child’, Department for Education and Child Development, 2014, , accessed 17/08/2014 au/guide/sa/SE00064>, accessed 17/08/2014

8. ‘Adoption poetry: To Her Birthmother’, Adoption Star, SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2014 4. History of tuberculosis: News Medical: poetry-to-her-birthmother/>, accessed 17/08/2014

‘Tuberculosis through history’, Encyclopedia Britan- nica, 2014, , accessed 19/08/2014

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WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Series 6 PAUL McDERMOTT This study guide was produced by ATOM. (© ATOM 2014) ISBN: 978-1-74295-477-6 [email protected] For information on SCREEN EDUCATION magazine, or to download other study guides for assessment, visit . Join ATOM’s email broadcast list for invitations to free screenings, conferences, seminars, etc. Sign up now at . For hundreds of articles on Film as Text, Screen Literacy, Multiliteracy and Media Studies, visit .

Series 6