Xavier Herbert

Figure 1: Xavier and Sadie Herbert at the launch of Poor Fellow My Country , 1975.

Wendy K. Rogers 2/22 Daventry St West End, Q 4101

Film and Television Creative Industries Faculty Queensland University of Technology

Masters of Arts (Research) 2010 ii

KEY WORDS

Documentary Script Writing Biographical Documentary Creative Practice Australian Documentary Industry Australian Broadcasting Corporation Screen Australia Xavier Herbert Percy Trezise

ABSTRACT

As a biographical documentary concept develops, its intention and its form are impacted and may be transformed by market demands. The documentary idea about the life of Xavier Herbert has been in development through a number of iterations within the shifting landscape of the Australian documentary industry from the mid- 1990s to 2009. This study is, on the one hand, an endeavour to find a workable way to express and practise the multi-layered complexity of creative work, a long-form documentary script on Herbert, an Australian literary icon. On the other hand, this thesis represents a cumulative research exercise, whereby my own experiences in the documentary industry in Queensland, Australia and overseas are analysed in an effort to enlighten the broader documentary community about such a complex, even labyrinthine, process. iii

Table of Contents

Illustrations v. Abbreviations vi Statement of Original Authorship vi Acknowledgements vii

Chapter One Introduction: the creative challenge 1 Outline of Chapters 3 Methodology, Significance and Limitations of the study 4 Contextual Review 7 The Documentary Field 10 Conclusion 13 Timeline of the development of the documentary idea about Xavier Herbert 14

Chapter Two Taking on ‘Old Horrible’: the documentary in development 16 Background to the Current Study 17 Vérité and the Documentary Industry under stress 20 ABC Documentary History 22 The Herbert Story in Development 23 The Form of the Documentary 25 Case Studies 25 Case Study 1: Mike Rubbo’s “All About Olive” (Rubbo 2005) 26 The Travelogue 27 The Investigator and Interactional Moments 28 The Tragedy 29 A New Producer 30 Narrative Approach and Form 31 The Style of Reconstruction 32 Case Study 2: “The Legend of Fred Paterson” (Laughren and Dawson 1996) 33 Film Industry Merger: Screen Australia 34 iv

Approaching the Commissioning Editor 36 Interpretive Interactionism: The Interview and Scriptwriting 38 Case Study 3: Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst (Armstrong 2006) 40

Chapter Three Creating the script for a new age of documentary production 44 Wrapping the Creative Practice Script 47 Future Challenges 50 References 53 Filmography/Broadcast Programs 60

Bibliography 61 Films, Television and Radio Programs 69

Creative Component: Script Xavier Herbert: My Own Road 71 References 127 Filmography/Broadcast Programs 129

Appendix A 131 Appendix B 143 v

Illustrations

1. Xavier and Sadie Herbert at the launch of Poor Fellow

My Country (Herbert, 1975), 1975. i

2. Red Bluff at Jowalbinna, N.Q. – taken from video

by the author, 1997. 1

3. Xavier Herbert at Narrabeen NSW, 1940, Fryer Library. 16

4. Xavier Herbert at 21 and Sadie Norden, Fryer Library. 20

5. Mike Rubbo and Olive Riley during the production of All

About Olive, http://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/645.html 26

6. Xavier Herbert 1980 in Darwin for the Kungarakun land claim

hearing in 1980, Northern Territory Library. 27

7. The Legend of Fred Paterson poster

http://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/682.html 33

8. Mark Twain poster

http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/ 38

9. Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence

Broadhurst (Armstrong 2006) poster

http://www.filmaust.com.au/unfoldingflorence/default.asp 40

10. Xavier Herbert and Percy Trezise visiting cave paintings

Nth Qld, freeze- frame from Xavier Herbert Profile ,

4 Corners ABCTV, Dec 3 1978, Director P. Ross. 44

11. Percy Trezise at Jowalbinna, taken from video interview by Wendy Rogers, 1997. 48

Abbreviations

ABC Australian Broadcasting Corporation FFC Film Finance Corporation SBS Special Broadcasting Service

Statement of Original Authorship

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

Signature

Date vii

Acknowledgements

This MA (Research) was created with immense contributions from my supervisor, Associate Professor Geoffrey Portmann, and my associate supervisor, Helen Yeates. Associate Professor Geoffrey Portmann supervised the writing of the script, which is the practical component of this study. I am indebted to him for his professional yet light-hearted and supportive role during the process. His generosity added a broad, creative vision to the project. Helen Yeates has supervised the writing of the exegetical component of this study. Her approach to this task has always been receptive and warm and her valuable assistance crucial in the creation of a flowing document of quality and magnitude. From a practitioner’s point of view Helen added the much needed academic rigour to the exegetical component of the study. I am grateful for the assistance of my supervisors and for the opportunity to work within the walls of the Faculty of Creative Industries, QUT. It has truly been a transformative experience.

This study is the culmination of my work on this particularly long-term documentary project on the life of Xavier Herbert. Since I commenced researching into Xavier Herbert in 1995, there have been many people who have offered support and assistance without which I may not have proceeded. My close friends, Carol Voigt and Michael Duffy, have long been greatly supportive in my shifting ideas and queries about Herbert’s life; have listened and given feedback. Kevin Guy, a great Herbert enthusiast, first came to me with the idea and collected key articles. As the idea of forming a documentary about Xavier Herbert progressed, many people working in film and television generously gave assistance and became involved. Dick Marks lent me his new digital camera for the interviews which I videoed in the mid-nineties. The former Film Queensland, now Screen Queensland, funded much of the early research and the interviews which are now so cherished. David Flatman has also contributed to the development of the Herbert documentary story, and, as executive producer, worked with me to present it as a documentary project idea to Film Australia in 1997. Gil Scrine, writer, was also a contributor to the 1997 attempt at raising broadcaster interest this documentary. I value and respect their professionalism. I would also like to thank my long-term friend and colleague, Mark viii

Chapman, who presented this documentary idea to the ABC in 2006. Mark has been a leading light in the Queensland documentary production industry for many years and we would not be seeing the stories that we now do without his hard work and inspiration. Sue Clothier, then Head of TV Factual Production, Screenworld, and her colleague, executive producer, Mike Bluett, also saw the value of the Herbert story and became involved. This production team contributed their time and intellect to its development when presenting it to Film Australia in 2008. Mark Hamlyn of Film Australia became involved at this point, and took the project forward to the ABC. I appreciate the opportunity of having witnessed and drawn on the great abilities of this team.

Robyn Pill, holder of the Herbert Estate, has also been a consistent support. Robyn has lent me many valuable materials over the years and has kindly permitted the use of copyright material for this study. Her professional approach has been mirrored by that of Fran Moore and Tim Curnow, literary agents with Curtis Brown (Aust), who have also been very helpful. It is a great responsibility to be the ‘keepers’ of such an important body of work and I appreciate their time and patience.

The research that surrounds the documentary script in this study was possible through the co-operation of a number of key researchers who generously gave their time and information. I am particularly indebted to Dr Russell McDougall, for supplying me with integral information about Herbert. We have had numerous meetings, and Russell has always been open to sharing ideas especially during the first phase of research in the mid-1990s. Another eminent Herbert researcher (and friend of Xavier and Sadie Herbert), Professor Laurie Hergenhan, has been most forthcoming and has assisted this work through many conversations and a videoed interview. Professor Hergenhan’s great work in collecting and preserving materials belonging to Xavier and Sadie Herbert, and the numerous publications he has produced, represents the backbone of this great Australian writer’s heritage. Frances de Groen also kindly met with me to talk about her extensive research into the lives of Sadie and Xavier Herbert. Professor Harry Heseltine, whose work has also helped lay the foundation of our understanding of Xavier the man and artist, also took the time to speak with me about his personal memories of Xavier Herbert. I would also ix like to thank Eddie Acland for the copy of his unpublished article on Herbert’s family heritage.

Many of the people who knew and loved Xavier and Sadie also contributed to this research project. The late Percy Trezise, welcomed me onto his fabled rural property, Jowalbinna , and kindly gave a long interview over the four days I was there. Percy’s son, Stephen, has also been interested in the project and has freely given information. John McHugh, long-term friend of the Herberts, also generously gave an interview, as did the late Joe McGinness. The opinions and recollections of other members of the McGinness family, particularly Mim Morley, have been integral in forming the portrait of Xavier Herbert, adding breath and life that only those present in his life could offer. Others who have contributed include Margaret McHugh, Robert Reid, Ken Wilder, David Marshall, Speedy McGinness, Alan Hudson and Bill Horsfall. It has been an immense honour to have met and spoken with Xavier Herbert’s friends and colleagues; my life has been greatly enriched through this process.

I want to also thank number of people have contributed to the exegetical component of this study. ABC broadcaster, Andy Lloyd James, documentary director and academic Dr Pat Laughren, Documentary maker, Michael Rubbo, film producer with a significant background in industry governance, Susan MacKinnon, Katherine Thomson, factual screenwriter, along with Sue Clothier, Mike Bluett and Mark Hamlyn, have all generously given their time and offered their experience to further this study.

I want to thank all of those I have mentioned above and my friends and family who have listened and supported me personally over the years. Most of all, I am indebted to Xavier and Sadie Herbert who have enriched our understanding of ourselves as Australians and of what it is to be human.

Wendy Rogers. x

Chapter One Introduction: the creative challenge

Figure 2: Red Bluff at Jowalbinna, NQ.

This Masters of Arts (Research) comprises a 60% practical component and a 40% exegetical component (approx. 15000 words). The creative practice aspect of the MA (Research) is a long-form biographical documentary script on the life of the eminent Australian writer, Xavier Herbert (1901-1984). The exegetical component is a mapping of the development of the documentary script in relation to key changes within the Australian documentary industry.

In this exegesis, I will be exploring my own personal and professional journey as an industry practitioner in the throes of attempting to raise commercial interest in the documentary about Herbert, within the shifting industrial landscape of the Australian documentary from the mid-1990s to 2009. This work from a practitioner perspective is set against a cultural history of the broader, industrial conditions of documentary production practice, commencing in the 1960s.

During my Masters candidature (2005-2009) I have created and written the documentary script, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road . At the same time, I have placed this creative practice in the context of an investigation into the elements of a shifting industrial structure that has, historically, waxed and waned in relation to nurturing, supporting and promoting the production of certain kinds of art/historical/biographical documentaries. The exegesis is also a critical reflection on the complex process of verifying and pitching a particular project that is not necessarily considered suitable for commercial television broadcast. The progress of this pitching history relates to one broadcaster, that is, the Australian Broadcasting

Corporation (ABC), through both the former Film Australia and a large professional production company.

In this study, I am engaging with three key research questions: 1. What form of documentary would best serve the telling of the story of Xavier Herbert’s life? 2. How can this documentary be successfully developed for viable production within the current documentary industry? 3. What are the elements that are impacting on the production of documentary films in a changing technological and industrial landscape? In pursuit of the answers to these questions, this study has become, on the one hand, an endeavour to find a workable way for a practitioner to express the multi-layered complexity of creative work. On the other hand, it represents a cumulative exercise, whereby my own experiences in the documentary industry in Queensland, Australia and overseas are presented here in an effort to enlighten the broader documentary community about such a complex, even labyrinthine process. The industrial concerns arise not only from my previous experience as a documentary producer, but also from my own longstanding activism in the cultural sector of the film industry. For instance, as a film maker growing up in the repressive, seemingly chaotic years of Queensland under the leadership of Bjelke-Petersen and the National Party, I acquired a keen interest in developing creative public spaces that engender pluralistic approaches to history and society and storytelling. As Pulitzer Prize winner Ron Powers says, creating documentaries ‘satisfies our hunger for the real and our need to make sense, make order, out of chaos’ (cited in Gerard, 1996:4). This project is a result of my own passion and ‘hunger for the real’ through developing a documentary on the highly significant Australian novelist, Xavier Herbert.

Outline of Chapters

This exegesis has, therefore, a strong autobiographical element shaping its form. In effect, this study represents a narrative, both of a documentary’s journey and of my role as a creative practitioner in facilitating that creative journey. As a result, the literature review is largely interwoven into the discussion of documentary in

Australia at appropriate times (see Chapter Two), with a short discussion in this chapter (Chapter One) on the core literature that has been sourced. Various theories around documentary practice are also addressed throughout Chapter Two. Chapter Three encompasses the creation of the script, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road , which is the practical component of this Master of Arts study. This creative practice journey concludes with a self-reflective critique of the documentary script, a critique which also contains, in Chapter Three, a contextual analysis of policy and technological changes in the documentary industry.

Furthermore, the exegesis includes certain case studies of other documentary- makers’ works, along with industrial information gleaned from interviews with documentary executives and other creative practitioners within the documentary industry. Articles from contemporary film industry magazines are used to track the major shifts occurring in the broader film industry throughout the development period of the documentary about Xavier Herbert. These shifts include the implementation of the Producer Offset and the formation of the new national screen entity, Screen Australia, both of which are highly significant events in terms of restructuring the operational and financial modes of the film industry.

The script, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road , is placed directly after this exegetical work and is followed by Appendices A and B. Ethical clearances with all interviewees included in this study form Appendix A. Materials that have been important to the script content, and pitching and marketing to executive producers and documentary commissioners, form Appendix B.

Methodology, Significance and Limitations of the study

In creating both this exegesis and the creative practice script, I have employed a range of methodological practices, materials and perspectives. Above all, this study involves the ‘emerging’ methodological distinction termed practice-led research (Haseman, 2006:102). As a practice-led inquiry, the methodology utilised in this study can be encompassed within Carole Gray’s definition:

[R]esearch... is initiated in practice, where questions, problems, challenges are identified and formed by the needs of practice and practitioners (cited in Haseman, 2006:104). In this specific study, the research is ‘initiated’ within the ‘practice’ involved in creating the documentary idea about Xavier Herbert and writing the long-form script, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road . This creative practice can be further identified as the ‘principal research activity’ within the practitioner context of a study of the documentary industry (Haseman, 2006:103), as this documentary idea is integrally connected with the wider documentary market. Haseman adds that the ‘practice’, which is, in this study, the long-form documentary script, becomes an outcome of the research, an ‘all-important representation … of research findings in [its] own right’ (Haseman, 2006:103). The script has, therefore, been both the result of, and part of, the research activity, its current form being linked to a range of contextual commercial considerations.

The second key point in Carole Gray’s definition of practice-led research is the following: ...[T]he research strategy is carried out through practice, using predominantly methodologies and specific methods familiar to us as practitioners (cited in Haseman, 2006:104). The methodology used in this current study forms part of a range of qualitative research methods appropriate for such a creative practice, worked through by myself, the practitioner. The script has been developed using ‘research cycles’ (Heron, 2008:374), whereby I have collected information about Herbert and incrementally revealed in this study what I have constructed from that information. After a period of reflection at each developmental stage, I have returned to the research process, searching the archives and elaborating on particular areas of Herbert’s life story. In the case of this documentary script, each major research cycle has culminated in a presentation of a documentary concept to the broadcaster, such as directly to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV Documentaries or to Film Australia which, in turn, has at some stage also presented the concept to the ABC. Three pivotal approaches have been made, including those before and during my candidature, each one being discussed in the body of this exegesis, as an important part of the mapping of the industry context. The first approach was in 1996, the second was in 1997 and

5 the third was in 2008. Moreover, this exegesis has documented the process of reviewing the major emergent themes and form of the documentary script within each iteration.

Significantly, the exegesis may be read as a form of applied commercial research, in effect, a discussion of the pivotal relationship of the researcher/writer to the commercial potential of the project, as well as the influences and pressures on one documentary in research development. Due to the sparseness of relevant published information on the nature of this specific aspect of documentary-crafting, an issue which is often only implicit within the writing process, it has been necessary, as part of the research, to collect data through qualitative interviews with other industry practitioners about what actually happens, forensically, to a documentary concept as it traverses the development phase 1.

To further inform my contextual study of the Australian documentary industry, I have employed ‘autoethnography’ as the overarching research method linked with creative practice. As discussed by Tedlock, I have ‘reflect[ed] on and critically engage[d] with my own participation within the ethnographic frame [the documentary industry]’ (Tedlock, 2005:467). Tedlock further defines autoethnography as ‘connecting the autobiographical impulse (the gaze inward) with the ethnographic impulse (the gaze outward)’, elaborating that ‘autoethnography’ itself can be seen as: ...a cultural performance that transcends self-referentiality by engaging with cultural forms that are directly involved in the creation of culture (Tedlock, 2005:467). As a film practitioner developing a documentary idea about Xavier Herbert, I have been ‘engaging’ with the documentary industry as one particular ‘cultural form’, in my effort here to avoid and transcend mere anecdotal ‘self-referentiality’. The latter process of the ‘gaze inward’ could be deemed self-indulgent, and therefore such a subjective gaze needs, at every stage, the counterbalancing of the ‘gaze outward’ (Tedlock, 2005:467) to the wider cultural context.

1 In most cases, I have organised certain ethical considerations with regard to the treatment of the data collected, whereby the interviewee supplying the data has been allowed to review the relevant portion of the exegesis before consent was ultimately granted to use the data for this study (see Appendix A).

Denzin adds that the ‘critical ethnographer’ enters ‘situations that connect critical biographical experiences (epiphanies) with culture, history, and social structure’ (Denzin, 2008:121). His notion of epiphany is defined as ‘a biographically meaningful event or moment in a subject's life’ (Denzin, 2008:117). In this study, my autobiographical experiences during the development of different iterations of one particular ‘cultural form’, the documentary script about Herbert’s life, are discussed in relation to other important and relevant ‘cultural forms’ of the film industries of western cultures, that is, other inspirational documentaries. Also this study focuses on the documentary film industry, charting how this industry both enables and discourages creative endeavours.

By writing about my ‘lived experience’ in this engagement with the industry, I have attempted to act as an insider, a ‘complete-member-researcher’ [itals in original], interpreting the culture of the documentary industry for ‘outsiders’ (Bryant, 2005:423). In order to give more texture and significance to the study, I have collected and analysed data from other documentary scriptwriters in the field. At the same time, as mentioned, I have also reported on the trends within the documentary and broader film industry through my own experience in that ‘world’.

To further inform and transform my practice, I have used material gathered through a critical review of existing literature, of audio visual material, as well as a collection of data. Data for the writing of the film script were collected through a series of ‘structured’ interviews , where I requested clearly defined information ( Fontana and Frey, 2003:68), and ‘unstructured’ interviews, where the interviewees defined the content of given information (Fontana and Frey, 2003:74). The ‘crystallisation’ of the information in the script views the subject, Xavier Herbert, ‘from a number of different points of view’ (Denzin, 2000:5). This is done largely through the interviews without, however, ‘limit[ing] historical understanding to the personal’ whereby the portrayal of Herbert might collapse into what Nichols calls the ‘rhetorical’ mode, using the so-called ‘Great Man theory of history’ (Nichols, 2005:25). Therefore, researching an authentic context to Herbert’s life and works has been a significant impetus in creating an appropriately multi-layered view of the protagonist.

As the writer and researcher, I have been the ‘facilitator’, relating to the people represented in the script who perform the live interviews, respecting their ‘rights, needs and aspirations’ (Williamson, 2004:62). All of these strategies create a documentary with which the audience can become actively involved, through glimpsing the levels of complexity of the life of this famous Australian author and icon, Xavier Herbert. As the creative practice project has evolved, the subject area has shifted and expanded, resulting in a script which contains a montage of information and content presentation styles . The script attached to this exegesis for examination is, in effect, a ‘bricolage’ of ‘competing and overlapping perspectives and paradigms’, combining the ideas and inspirations of all of the stake-holders represented in the development of this documentary program (Denzin, 2000:6). Within the scope and scale of this Masters thesis, however, the study is limited to the above methods and practices, and cannot, therefore, give a detailed study of the nature of biographical documentary genre itself, nor can it engage with a comprehensive, in-depth history of the Australian documentary industry.

Contextual Review

Looking back on the critical and academic works on Herbert, the number surged around the publication of Poor Fellow My Country in 1975 and his gaining the Miles Franklin Award in 1976. The most prominent researchers of Herbert’s works are Emeritus Professor Laurie Hergenhan and Professor Harry Heseltine. Dr Hergenhan, as the then editor of the journal, Australian Literary Studies , published in 1970, a transcript of Herbert’s original presentation to the Australian Writers Guild Conference, ‘The Writing of Capricornia’. Following on from this, in 1973, Dr Heseltine published his critical analysis of Herbert’s books, linking these works with elements of Herbert’s life story, in a small book, entitled Xavier Herbert. The writings of these two researchers continued the ground-breaking research in 1960 of Vincent Buckley, one of the first academics to review Herbert’s book, Capricornia (1938), over twenty years after its publication, in an article of the same name in the journal, Meanjin .

The works of Buckley, Hergenhan and Heseltine represent the core research around which others, including myself, have worked. The next wave of researchers produced different, more comprehensive work about Herbert: for example, Dr Frances de Groen wrote the biography, Xavier Herbert , in 1998, and co-edited a collection of Xavier Herbert’s letters with Dr Laurie Hergenhan in 2000. In the early stages of my own research into Herbert (pre-Masters), Hergenhan, who was a personal friend of Xavier and Sadie Herbert, agreed to a videoed interview in 1997 from which I sourced important insights into their characters for the current script.

Dr Russell McDougall, who has yet to publish his long-awaited biography on Xavier Herbert, has also contributed strongly to early versions of my work on Herbert. In 1996-97, Russell made himself available for many meetings and supplied an invaluable, succinct life chronology for use in my early research. This chronology now appears in Appendix B. The work of the current script presented here for examination, leans toward that of McDougall in theoretical approach, and I have long intended to involve him in the eventual production of the documentary as the biographical consultant.

Dr Frances de Groen also generously met with me and discussed her work on Herbert. Her book, Xavier Herbert (1998), is fascinating and very useful in its detail; however, I found her oppositional approach to Herbert problematic, in that the value and nature of his achievements are often unclear and ambiguous 2.

All of these contributors have given their time and information, not only with the view of being recognised in a produced documentary on Herbert, but through a deep appreciation of Herbert’s profoundly significant contribution to our understanding of ourselves as Australians within a post-colonial society.

The existing collections of written material on Herbert are awe-inspiring for an intending documentary-maker. Each writer over the years has brought a new element to the Herbert story, until it seems now that every facet of his existence has been dealt with, probed and discussed. As a documentary researcher, I have felt overcome,

2 Sean Monahan, a well respected biographer, found that de Groen’s work, while extensive in its scope, failed to acknowledge Herbert’s positive attributes (Monahan, 2003).

9 at times, by the sheer weight of academic scrutiny that Herbert and his work have sustained. I have attempted to identify elements that this documentary would be able to offer to the existing, weighty body of knowledge, hopefully giving, in this study, a fresh, enlightened perspective in the New Millennium.

In discussing the historical documentary genre and its relationship to the academic world, Eitzen says: Academic historians naturally tend to evaluate historical documentaries according to how well they do what academic historians are supposed to do. Their verdict, when analysing extant historical documentaries, is almost always that they do not do that very well. This is not just a matter of factual inaccuracies; in fact, it has to do more with the kinds of questions that historical documentaries pose and answer. It has to do with how they function as discourses about the past (Eitzen, 2005:410). As in many other documentaries viewed as inspiration for my project, my own work on Herbert has aimed to offer something apart from the academic, another form of creating such ‘discourses about the past’. I have worked on making a distinct script, creating within the documentary form what it must have been like to be Xavier Herbert the man, as well as what he experienced in the places he had been, rather than simply presenting flatly, on the one hand, the so-called ‘facts’ about his life, or, on the other hand, what might amount to an academic critique of his works.

The most voluminous amount of existing material on Herbert was bestowed by Herbert himself after the death of his life partner, Sadie Herbert, in 1979. The Fryer Library at the University of Queensland holds the largest manuscript collection of any Australian writer in the Papers of Sadie and Xavier Herbert . The massive holding consists of seventy-eight boxes of notebooks (referred to by Herbert as ‘literary logs’), drafts, proofs and other papers relating to Poor Fellow My Country (1975), Disturbing Element (1963), Soldiers' Women (1963), short stories, poems, articles, publications, newspaper cuttings, correspondence, photographs, financial records and artwork by Xavier Herbert (Herbert, 1941-1980). The existence of this extraordinary collection has become one of the marketing features of this documentary, offering, as it does, important self-reflexive material from Herbert

10 himself, a primary source that is utilised extensively in the current script. A large proportion of the material in the Herbert collection is subject to copyright laws and I have sought the permission of Robyn Pill, the owner of the Herbert estate, through her literary agents, Curtis Brown (Aust) to include such material in this study.

The Documentary Field

Fortunately for this project, Herbert was also the subject of many television interviews. He appeared on ABC television throughout the 1960s until the 1980s, and in televised material reutilised posthumously in 1988, the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Capricornia . This audio-visual archive of Herbert’s testimony to the public has been sourced extensively in the documentary script.

It is the contention of this current Masters study, that this creative practice script is significant and ground-breaking in that no other long-form, television documentary about Xavier Herbert currently exists. The following useful work does, however, exist. For instance, Nicole Steinke produced In Capricornia Country: The Legend of Xavier Herbert (Steinke 2003), a fascinating radio documentary for Hind Sight on Radio National in 2003. In the following year, George Negus conducted a concise enquiry into Herbert’s life and work during his television program, George Negus Tonight (Negus 2004) for the ABC. As this study into the documentary industry will discover, however, the fact that a story has not already been told on television in long form, is not necessarily an argument for the production of a documentary; it is only one consideration of many.

Theorists such as Rosenthal and Corner (2005) do offer a useful, comprehensive discussion on documentary form and global industry trends. Their work does not include conditions peculiar to the Australian documentary industry which are the focus of this study (Rosenthal and Corner, 2005). Nichols is another eminent writer on documentary; however, I agree with Duncan’s critique that Nichols is ‘more concerned with the analysis of existing texts than the approach to researching new projects’ (Duncan, 2004:82). The works of such documentary film theorists are often too general to be of specific relevance for this creative practice study, although they

11 are useful in forming a background understanding of the global documentary industry. More pertinent to this study is the work of Stella Bruzzi, who defines and illuminates certain contemporary forms of documentary including the ‘travel film’; her interesting perception has been utilised in this documentary script (Bruzzi, 2000), and her work and its application will be elaborated on further in Chapters Two and Three. I have also found existing sources with excellent, general information about documentary scriptwriting, such as in the material from United States documentary producer/director, Ken Burns, and his writing teams on their documentary work, which I have investigated through a number of case studies in Chapter Two. Such material throws invaluable light on approaches to documentary research, the writer’s role and the process of scriptwriting a documentary.

Within this study, another related aspect of developing an understanding of documentary creation has been to view and critique a number of relevant documentaries. For instance, the documentary, Mark Twain (Burns 2002), is a two- part biographical documentary series using photographs, interviews and voiceover as the main storytelling devices, amounting to what Nichols would term, an ‘interview documentary’ (Nichols, 2005:23-4). The Australian production, Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst (Armstrong 2005), a well-received biographical film about the flamboyant wallpaper entrepreneur, uses interviews extensively, as well as dramatising sections of Broadhurst’s life with animation 3.

Errol Morris’ Academy Award winner, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (Morris 2003), also an interview documentary, employs Robert McNamara’s recounting of his years as Secretary of State in the United States, as a riveting main story thread. The eminent Australian documentary director/producer, Mike Rubbo, interviewed for this thesis, speaks about his film, All About Olive (Rubbo 2005), which utilises vérité and dramatic reconstruction. Furthermore, I have interviewed Queensland historical documentary writer and director, Pat Laughren about his works, Red Ted and the Great Depression (Laughren 1994) and The Legend of Fred Paterson (Laughren and Dawson 1996). Analysing these various documentaries, along with the associated interview with one of the filmmakers, has helped me to ground the Xavier Herbert documentary

3 I have interviewed producer, Sue Clothier, and writer, Katherine Thomson. This will be expanded in Chapter Two.

12 contextually within the Australian and global documentary landscape, as well as informing the development and research process, central to my forensic study as well as my practice. This analysis will be expanded on in Chapter Two.

Denzin’s work on the ‘epiphany’, mentioned above, has also illuminated my approach to the biographical documentary script about Xavier Herbert. I would contend that the final version of the script fits into Denzin’s definition of an ‘interpretive biography’, where I invent ‘a new version of the past, a new history’ of Herbert’s life and work (Denzin, 2008:117-8). In this way I have set out to identify the ‘meaningful event’ or ‘epiphany’ in Herbert’s own life, and to show how such a key experience has influenced his life view and shaped his journey. This key experience is discussed in Chapter Two and elaborated on in terms of the script content in Chapter Three.

Conclusion

This exegesis sets out to offer an insider’s view of the Australian documentary industry, how projects can be developed and by whom. It examines, as a core narrative arc in itself, the processes involved in the development of a particular documentary form and content, at the same time as this documentary script idea about Xavier Herbert interfaces with the documentary industry, in competition with other documentaries. The exegesis will consider, by example, the position of several documentary creators in that process and examine the effectiveness of the industry processes.

Timeline of the development of the documentary idea about Xavier Herbert

As stated above, a large part of this study forms a narrative of the documentary’s journey through the various stages of raising commercial interest in the project. This timeline outlines the major moves through the industrial process.

1996 The first submission was sent to ABC Documentaries for a documentary about the life and times of Xavier Herbert, entitled The Stirrer. ABC Documentaries provides letter of interest. The resulting script fails to attract a commission.

1997 A second proposal for a documentary on the life of Xavier Herbert, entitled Disturbing Element , was submitted to Film Australia with David Flatman as Executive Producer. Film Australia was not interested in the project at this point.

2003 The National Interest Program is initiated through Film Australia.

2004 November: With the commencement of this Masters of Arts (Research) in mind, I submitted a short proposal for a documentary on the life of Xavier Herbert to Film Australia. Executive Producer, Mark Hamlyn indicated that Film Australia would be pleased to consider the documentary.

2005 February: I commenced this Masters of Arts (Research) at Faculty of Creative Industries, Film and Television at QUT. June: Meeting with Mark Hamlyn who advises that I involve a producer in the project.

2006 Mark Chapman comes on board the Herbert documentary project as producer. December: Film Australia and the ABC decline the project.

2007 May: Mark Chapman becomes ill. November/December: Sue Clothier, Head of TV Factual Production for Becker Entertainment, takes on the documentary project.

2008 January: A proposal document is worked up between Sue Clothier, producer and Head of Factual at Becker Entertainment, Mike Bluett, executive producer at Becker Entertainment and myself as writer. March: the team approach Film Australia with the documentary proposal entitled, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road. April – June: Film Australia submits documentary proposal to the ABC. ABC declines.

Chapter Two Taking on ‘Old Horrible’ 4: the documentary in development

Figure 3: Xavier Herbert 1941

Xavier Herbert (1901 - 1984)

From humble beginnings on an outpost of North-western Australia to international literary figure, haunted by his disapproving yet possessive family, controversial writer, Xavier Herbert, grapples with his inner demons to write the Great Australian Novel.

Xavier Herbert is the most controversial figure of Australian literature. Over twenty years after his death, experts are still arguing the merits of his work. Strong terms are used from botcher to genius. People who knew him are also still at odds: is he a man of great vision or an outright bully? This documentary looks inside the writer of Australia's Magnum Opus, Poor Fellow My Country , to discover what drove him, as Herbert (1970) himself said, to ‘write the hair off his arm’.

The above represents the opening paragraphs of my short proposal to Film Australia in late 2004, not long before this Masters study began. Film Australia was then one of the main organisations that worked hand-in-hand with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) to produce Australian content documentaries.

4 From the title of the article, Wrestling with Old Horrible [Review of De Groen, Frances. Xavier Herbert, 1998] (Darby, 1999).

Since 1 July 2008, Film Australia has become part of Screen Australia, a national screen organisation recombining the traditional roles of Film Australia, the Australian Film Commission and the Film Finance Corporation of Australia. The central aim of Screen Australia’s National Documentary Program is ‘to provide a distinctive slate of projects with a sense of cultural ambition’ (Screen Australia, 2009b).

In 2004, within the earlier industrial context for pitching documentary films, I sent the above proposal for a biographical documentary about Xavier Herbert, in order to test the market for interest in the documentary idea, prior to embarking on this Master of Arts (Research) in 2005. A reply came very quickly (within a week) saying, in effect, that Film Australia would be pleased to consider the documentary. This informal interest from Film Australia triggered a new development phase for the documentary on Herbert which has culminated in the creative practice element for the Masters, entitled Xavier Herbert: My Own Road .

Background to the Current Study

Although this study is written from my point of view as the writer/creator of the documentary about Xavier Herbert and not as the project’s producer, I looked to Webb’s work with regard to including certain details in relation to the documentary industry and documentary development. Webb says of writers, that unless they know the structure of the field and the shape of the industry, they risk missing out on approaches to creative expression that might drive, or at least inform, both their personal practice and their capacity to derive a professional income or career from their practice (Webb, 2007:118). This study, therefore, follows the history of the development of this documentary about Xavier Herbert with a view to elucidating my own context, as well as demonstrating an industry experience that may benefit other writers when creating similar projects.

It is therefore in the wider interest of describing the ‘structure of the field’ (Webb, 2007:118), to mention here that I had commenced developing this documentary project as an independent producer in 1996. An independent producer, as Trish Fitzsimons states, is one who is ‘freelance, not on the roll of any institution’ (Fitzsimons, 2000:173). I would add to that definition, that an independent producer also raises funds for a production and is responsible for all aspects of production, such as the administering of funds, liaising with the creative principals of the documentary, the film crew and the broadcaster representative, the delivery of the program, along with the marketing and distribution. An independent producer will often hold a share in the copyright of the production.

My 1996 pitched version of the documentary on Herbert, entitled The Stirrer , was well suited to Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) programming. The protagonist, Xavier Herbert, was definitively Australian, his professional life was well documented by the ABC from the 1960s to the 1980s, and there was still some interest in Herbert within the culture of the ABC. The form of the documentary, The Stirrer , as proposed in 1996, was an interview-based, historical biography utilising archival footage and stills, along with some visual reconstruction. With a ‘post mortem’, historical documentary, that is, one made after a person has died, there was little choice in the area of form, considering the level of documentary budgets and the accepted style in the mid-nineties in Australia.

The Herbert documentary idea did gain formal interest from the ABC in 1996. Inspired by this, I subsequently raised funds through Film Queensland (now Screen Queensland) for research and script development. The resulting script, written by Jonathan Dawson, was not taken up by the ABC, and the dream of a broadcasting contract for a Xavier Herbert documentary had to be put on hold. I also realised that I would certainly have to gain more experience in order to produce such a complex story.

At that time, a substantial documentary budget was $A 350,000/hour in Australia. A small to medium budget in the United States was over $US 500,000/hour. This is a sizeable difference considering that the exchange rate in the mid-nineties averaged about $US 0.75 to the Australian dollar. This difference reflects the size of the

primary audiences of each country and the resultant funds available for documentary production. Australian documentaries had much lower budgets to tell stories of national importance and were dependent on television presales to raise that budget.

In 1996, the Keating government lost power to John Howard’s conservative coalition. On 16 July, 1996, Senator Richard Alston, the new Liberal Minister for Communications, announced a cut in the ABC budget of 2% for the 1996-1997 financial year, with a further cut of $55 million, 10 % of the ABC budget in the following financial year, 1997-1998 (Inglis, 2006: 382-4). According to one commentator, the effect on the ABC was no less than ‘cataclysmic’ (Lloyd James, 2008:8). Even so, as I considered that Xavier Herbert’s work was still very important, I attempted to raise interest in the project in 1997, in my role as independent producer. This time it was entitled Disturbing Element and pitched to Film Australia, with David Flatman as Executive Producer and Gil Scrine as writer.

Unfortunately, Film Australia could not see a place for the documentary in the existing market. Again the project Disturbing Element failed to gain interest and seed funding, and I subsequently shelved the idea. In particular, I realised that this version of a documentary on Xavier Herbert profiling, as it did, the life of an ‘anarchic’ Australian republican (Buckley, 1960:29) with a commitment to Indigenous Land Rights, was difficult to market in the prevailing industrial/political environment under John Howard’s very conservative Prime Ministership.

Given the rejections of my early configuration of the documentary project on Xavier Herbert, I realised that my approach to the subject would have to be rethought. Ironically, my negative experiences in pitching the documentary brought to mind similar experiences Xavier Herbert had endured when attempting to gain acceptance for an early unpublished novel, Black Velvet . After unsuccessfully presenting the novel to publishers in England, he then heeded the advice of Sadie Norden (whom he would later marry). He wrote about this period:

I began to talk to Sadie about the loveliness of the land I'd left, not simply about the violences, that harshness, the cruelty of it. I'd tell her how the Wet Season would come in ... how the land that had been sterile dust, would be emerald with growth and its deathly silence forgotten in the melody of running water ... and she kept on saying: 'Why don't you write about it?' 'I can't write about things like that,' I said. But I did start writing about them, just a little bits [sic], not to sell, not to stagger the world, but just to paint pictures for myself and Sadie (Herbert, 1970:212). As a result, in 1932, Herbert had commenced writing what would become one of Australia's classics, Capricornia (1938).

Figure 4: Xavier Herbert aged 21 and Sadie Norden.

Wishing that my own Xavier Herbert project might bring about a classic documentary , nevertheless, at that stage, I shelved it and took on a new project commissioned by the ABC, producing The Diviners (Thatcher, 1999), a half-hour vérité style documentary about a family of water diviners. However, the idea and vision I had for a documentary about Xavier Herbert would not dissipate. His tenacious inventiveness against all odds was an inspiring example for me and, I hoped, would be also for my imagined prospective audience.

Vérité and the Documentary Industry under stress

The impacts on the documentary market in the mid-nineties included the beginnings of a new impetus in documentary form creation. Across the globe, vérité, or observational documentary, was emerging (Maslin, 2004). This low-cost genre was creating an audience expectation of immediacy and frankness, offering new, inside

21 information about the subject. More significantly for the potential success of Disturbing Element , the arrival of low-cost digital cameras made vérité documentaries more cost-effective than the biographical documentary, the budget for which would be encumbered with expensive archival licence fees of up to $85 per second (world rights for ABC archival footage in 1996). The new vérité documentaries were being made for $200,000/hour and sometimes for as little as $120,000/hour (Screen Australia, 2009a).

If the script of The Stirrer had been acceptable to the ABC in 1996, I would have then applied for funds through the ABC/Film Finance Corporation (FFC) ‘accord’5. The accord, an agreement between broadcasters and the FFC, was designed to ameliorate the outsourcing of independently produced films, a mode of operating that broadcasters had commenced to employ in the late 1980s (see more details about ABC outsourcing below). Furthermore, the accord grew out of a ‘prototype system’ of program commissioning, which was set up with funds from the FFC in 1988 (Fitzsimons, 2000:175-6) 6.

During the era of the investor-driven 10BA system, introduced in 1981, documentary production was not tied to distribution (MacKee, 2000). However, the documentary accord regulated the industry and required a presale agreement to ensure free-to-air broadcast, ensuring some consistency in budgetary expectations and streamlined business practices between broadcasters and independent producers (Hamlyn, 2008). This arrangement was used by Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), the ABC, and, more rarely, the commercial free-to-air networks (FFC, 2000/01; MacKinnon, 2008). This process topped up the budget of Australian content domestic documentaries that had gained a commission and licence fee (approximately the first 30% of budget) from a broadcaster (Lloyd James, 2008).

5 The accord was later replaced with the Domestic Door and the International Door in 2006-7 (Screen Australia, 2009a:11), a scheme which required 50% of the budget to be provided by a broadcaster with an investment cap of $200,000 for a one-off program. This arrangement is still in place under the industry support programs of the newly formed national entity, Screen Australia (Screen Australia, 2009b).

6 This new funding system largely replaced the investor-driven, 10BA tax rebate incentive which was reduced from 120% to 100% in 1988-9 (Screen Australia, 2009a:10). The accord was initiated in 1991-2 (Fitzsimons, 2000:176).

ABC Documentary History

Prior to the outsourcing of documentaries, a method which was formalised through the accord, ABC productions were mostly made in-house, travelling on a particular evolutionary path. For instance, in the Sixties, before the advent of This Day Tonight in 1967, the ABC provided programs ‘in which ABC interviewers tugged their forelocks to the powerful and famous’ (Inglis, 2006:254). Although This Day Tonight was squarely in News and Current Affairs, the program established a new vision which triggered shock waves throughout the ABC. Long-time ABC producer, executive producer and network head, Andy Lloyd James, describes the resounding effects of This Day Tonight and the ABC’s subsequent approach to factual television: Slowly the idea that you could actually comment on things got into the ABC’s books. And then Whitlam came in, money came in and at the same time people like Alan Bateman were coming through just filled with bright ideas. And that’s what started the change (Lloyd James, 2008:3).

By the early eighties, the ABC was purchasing externally produced documentary programs, firstly as finished programs, and later, pre-purchasing the rights for between ‘10-20% of the production cost’ (Lloyd James, 2008:3). Independent documentary producers had been attempting to interest the ABC in airing their programs for some time, until Alan Bateman as Head of Programming and Andy Lloyd James, Head of Features made way to source these documentaries. There wasn’t a vast amount of money for it but … it made an enormous difference and, like when you open any door, you get a great blast of fresh air through it (Lloyd James, 2008:3). The ABC had internal divisions concerning this controversial issue of outsourcing. Strong elements within the ABC lobbied against independent documentaries being sourced, because of the following issues: firstly, the flow of funds that would obviously be going outside the ABC; and, secondly, a suspicion of the potential bias of independent producers (Lloyd James, 2008).

Nonetheless, the ABC continued to outsource documentaries which, according to Lloyd James, brought great benefits; independent filmmakers had exposure to a broader range of aesthetic and technical competencies and brought new creative approaches: the ‘blast of fresh air’ (Lloyd James, 2008:3). The ABC also saw outsourcing as a chance to save funds. From this perspective, licensing documentaries for a certain number of screenings of documentary programs cost a fraction of the expense of employing permanent, full-time staff for in-house production (Hamlyn, 2008).

The ABC screened approximately forty hours of independently produced documentaries under the Accord in 1994-95 and 1995-96 (ABC 1994-95, 1995-96). Documentary content declined in 1996-97, much more than the 2% drop in ABC funds instigated by the federal government that financial year ( ABC 1996-97; Inglis, 2006). A further ‘reduction of seven documentaries’ was quoted in 1997-98 (ABC, 1997-98).

In the following years, the ABC annual reports ceased mentioning independent documentary all together (ABC, 1998-99). Andy Lloyd James explains the fluctuations in documentary funding within the ABC as being a function of shifting managerial interest in the broad genre of documentary, linked with the extent of finance made available to documentaries and the prioritisation of documentaries in ABC programming (Lloyd James, 2008). The market for high-end, quality, independent Australian documentaries had shrunk, and it appeared that ‘the ABC were moving away from history films in favour of vérité style docos’ (Maslin, 2004:80).

The Herbert Story in Development

Historical documentaries were bolstered in 2003 when the federal government allocated funds to Film Australia’s National Interest Program initiative (Film Australia, 2008). In late 2004, I made the above-mentioned approach to Film Australia. This reframed documentary idea on Xavier Herbert elicited Executive Producer Mark Hamlyn’s informal, renewed interest in the documentary for

inclusion in the National Interest Program slate. At this stage, I chose to be the writer rather than the producer of the documentary, and, in order to advance my skills in this area, I commenced the Master of Arts (Research). I probed the Film Australia potential a little more.

Mark Hamlyn came to a meeting in June, 2005, the year I commenced my Masters study. He advised me to find a producer who would take on the project and develop it before approaching Film Australia formally. I had not produced anything significant since The Diviners in 1999 due to child-rearing duties, and also, in light of the magnitude of the project, I could see that an experienced producer would greatly enhance it. I looked for a collaboration that would form, as Webb states, a ‘point … of connection’. She elaborates on the importance and the benefits of collaboration: [C]reative practice is and has always been about the beehive of society. Creative work and workers are, like everyone else, defined, determined and delimited by the structures, logic and trajectories of the field and of social institutions and practices. To work effectively in the field, therefore, we must find ways of forming points of connection in the network that is society, that is industry, that is the creative community (Webb, 2007:119). As part of forming a strategy toward making an effective, collaborative pitch for the project, I approached Brisbane documentary producer, Mark Chapman, of Big Island Films, a long-term colleague, and he agreed to take on the Herbert story. I composed a writer’s statement outlining the possibilities of the documentary for Mark to refer to, when discussing the project with Film Australia (see Appendix B). This document outlined the considerable research materials available to the story, the main biographical points and some stylistic ideas. Mark Chapman, however, came back with a negative response from Film Australia; by then they had moved to other priorities in their slate of documentary productions. At that stage, he also unsuccessfully approached ABC Arts.

The Form of the Documentary

The story of this project as a ‘cultural performance’ took a turn when, within the framework of the Masters candidature, I took steps to change the emphasis of the project (Tedlock, 2005:467). Inspired by what I had read about Mike Rubbo’s ideas on documentary, I went to talk to this eminent documentary director/producer in 2005, to ask his opinion. I was particularly interested in what Mike would have to say, considering that, coincidentally, he was the Commissioning Editor at ABC Documentaries when I first submitted the earliest phase of the Herbert project in 1996. Mike patiently listened to my ideas on the Herbert documentary. ‘How are you going to visually treat the subject matter?’ was his main question. At the time I met with Mike, I was planning a documentary that utilised archival footage and impressionistic, visual collage to complement a threaded monologue of the deceased subject, Xavier Herbert. Mike pointed out that the budget levels available for Australian domestic documentaries would not sustain the high production costs that this type of archival treatment would incur; in short, it would be a very expensive way of telling the story. I therefore concluded that the documentary would need some kind of ‘real-time’ activity through which to tell Herbert’s story.

Case Studies

To better understand the evolution that my documentary project on Xavier Herbert had gone through since 1996, in the context of the changing budgetary and policy pressures within the documentary industry, and to compare my creative experiences with those of other documentary practitioners, I then decided to investigate further the research and development processes of a number of other documentary projects. Methodologically, I had, as Stake advises, an ‘intrinsic interest’ in each individual case and was also investigating ‘a phenomenon, population, or general condition’. Therefore, in conducting the ‘collective case study’ via an interview method, in order to seek out the general conditions of the documentary industry, I was also conducting a series of ‘intrinsic case studies’ that involved my researching relevant projects and gaining insights into how they had been developed (Stake, 2000:437).

Case Study 1: Mike Rubbo’s ‘All About Olive’ (Rubbo 2005)

My first case study related to documentary filmmaker Mike Rubbo, mentioned above. I wanted to investigate in more depth his latest documentary at that time, All About Olive . All About Olive is a predominantly vérité-style documentary about Olive Riley, a 105 year-old woman who travels from her nursing home in Sydney to visit Broken Hill, the town where she grew up. The documentary also employs dramatic reconstructions, depicting major events and memories in Olive’s life story as she visits the places she knew almost a century ago. The visually riveting reconstructions are directed by Olive Riley herself, making her the oldest person in the world to have a directing credit on a film. The reconstructions weave in and out of her dialogue about her childhood and enhance the viewers’ experience of the documentary (Rubbo, 2005).

Figure 5: Mike Rubbo and Olive Riley during production.

While the ABC commissioners had expressed early interest in this film, they wanted Film Australia to partner the production. However, Mike could not procure the commitment he needed from Film Australia, which was more narrowly focused on a straightforward, essay-style film about people over a hundred years old. As Mike was much more interested in Olive’s extraordinary, personal story, and although Film Australia offered $25,000 to develop the film, he declined the potential partnership and went back to talk to the ABC (Rubbo, 2006).

When he approached the ABC again, a fortuitous co-incidence took place; Executive Producer, Stephan Moore, who was about to leave the ABC after many years of dedicated work, was offered by management the film All About Olive ‘as a sort of going away present…And it just went ahead from there’ (Rubbo, 2006:2). The script document that Mike submitted to the ABC was ten pages long. Mike added: ‘It went through various versions, becoming less and less essay-like. The final document was

27 actually a string of Olive’s stories and it was basically the stories that you see’ (Rubbo, 2006:3). Inspired by this example, I considered ways of employing a vérité treatment in the story about Xavier Herbert, without compromising its integrity.

The Travelogue

Figure 6: Xavier Herbert 1980

I considered everything I knew about Herbert. Herbert was a great traveller. He was also a supreme landscape writer (Heseltine, 1975). While preparing for the pitch of this documentary, which was presented to the ABC in 2008, I decided that this documentary might be told effectively as a travel documentary, in effect, a biographical, cultural travelogue. I considered the approach of telling the story by observing someone who was following Herbert’s footsteps, investigating what influenced Herbert and what Herbert influenced: historico-cultural relic hunting. This would take the story into semi-vérité style, sidestepping (as advised by Mike Rubbo in the interview) the issues of archival film cost, which can be up to $A85 per second. I thought that designing the film as a travelogue was fortuitously appropriate, considering that, according to Mike Rubbo, the word ‘documentary’ comes from the French word meaning travel film (Rubbo, 1986). Thus the Herbert documentary would become one of ‘the new journey documentaries’ that Stella Bruzzi has identified, which ‘signal[s] the influence of direct cinema upon more intellectual and relatively elitist documentary filmmaking’ (Bruzzi, 2000:99). I saw an opportunity, through the use of direct cinema, to provide access to Herbert’s life story for a broader audience.

The greatest consideration at this stage was the identity of the investigator. The story about Xavier Herbert would require someone experienced in the media with a literary background or an interest in Herbert. Producer Mark Chapman and I were stumped. Associate Professor Geoffrey Portmann suggested that a high profile person with some personal similarities to Herbert might work in the position of investigator. We realised then that both Herbert and the Scottish comedian, Billy Connolly, had experienced difficult relationships with their fathers. We agreed that it was worth developing that core idea further. Mark Chapman reported back that both ABC Arts and Film Australia rather gleefully agreed to take on the film, if Billy Connolly expressed a strong interest.

In 2007 I wrote a new document outlining the approach (see Appendix B). The investigator, viz. Billy Connolly, would visit Herbert’s place of birth, meet the experts to discover his hidden origins, follow Herbert’s trail to Melbourne and then north to Sydney, Brisbane, Cairns and overland to Darwin. The audience would see and feel the textures of the places Herbert lived in, and meet the people he knew. In this way, the documentary would directly depict a layered view of Herbert’s complexities as both man and writer.

The Investigator and Interactional Moments

This new approach envisaged that the investigator would also take Herbert’s experience of life and, in particular, discourses regarding his issues with his father and compare them to his/her own. As the camera catches the moments of the investigator’s identification with Herbert’s life, more depth and richness would be added. Such moments are ‘interactional moments ... that leave marks on people's lives [and] have the potential for creating transformational experiences for the person’ (Fontana, 2003:81 ). As mentioned earlier, Denzin describes these moments variously as 'epiphanies', ‘dramatic events’, or ‘ruptures in the structure of daily life’ (Denzin, 2008:121). The investigator would gain insights into his/her own experiences that might lead him/her to form a new set of values and meanings.

The universal theme of Xavier Herbert’s search for the father, or the father’s approval, could ‘breathe’ within this sort of treatment. However, there was a danger that the use of an investigator (especially a celebrity) would take the focus off the key character, Herbert. On the other hand, a live investigator would also add significant, contemporary contexts and relevance to the human story.

Sadly, if predictably, Billy Connolly declined the offer of traversing Australia in Xavier’s wake. Who else, then, would take the journey on camera? All of the people I approached turned out to be already fully engaged in their own creative pursuits. I then wrote to actor Brian Brown, comedian Barry Humphries, Indigenous writer Melissa Lukoshenko and was looking into contacting writer David Malouf, when a tragedy struck close to home.

The Tragedy

In May 2007, soon after our meeting to discuss the next step, the producer I had been working with, Mark Chapman, became seriously ill as a result of a stroke. The whole Queensland film industry was devastated; Mark was an integral part of the industry and had a slate of projects in development and a series in production. I had known Mark since the early eighties. Our association floated around in my memory. The eighties was a time when the Brisbane art scene was relatively unharnessed and all- inclusive, with filmmakers, musicians, performance artists mixing and connecting subversively underneath the repressive politics of the Petersen era (Harley, 1986). Mark was not only important to the documentary industry and our current project, but he was also a significant part of the broader artistic and social history in our town.

As I patiently waited for a few months to see how Mark’s illness would progress, it became evident that, sadly, his recovery would take some time 7. By August 2007, I

7 Mark Chapman appeared not to have any income or health insurance. Budgets for Australian documentaries do not allow for such costs, and Mark would have ploughed whatever finances he could into the company’s projects. It seemed that the financial stress of his business was already showing within his family relationships. If he had been working in-house at the ABC under the old system, he would have been at least partly covered for such eventualities and his family would not have suffered the economic difficulties that exacerbated those caused by his illness. I wondered if he would have had the stroke under different, less stressful circumstances.

30 realised that I had to continue alone or seek out another producer. It dawned on me that film producers act in a similar way to a publisher of literary works; they can have significant creative input as well as managing the production and marketing of the work. The publisher of Xavier Herbert’s Capricornia (1938) was Inky (Percy Reginald) Stephensen. Together they had worked on the manuscript in 1934 with a view to Stephensen publishing it. However, when it became evident that Stephensen’s publishing company was going bankrupt at that time, Herbert turned on him in anger, and then fled to Darwin (Munro, 1984). Two years later they had healed their rift: You are my publisher, you know. I'm convinced that we were born to work with one another. Some day we shall. Till then I shall do no writing, & shall keep 'Capricornia' in my swag. You were the midwife at the birth of 'Capricornia'; & you have to be its wet nurse. Poor 'Capricornia'! The other day Sadie was rooting round the box where it is stored, & found that the white ants were getting to it (Hergenhan, 2002:79). Herbert’s professed allegiance to Stephensen in 1936, although characteristically dramatic and stormy, reflects the depth of these kinds of creative relationships – publisher/writer; producer/writer. Herbert had developed emotional ‘points of connection’ with Stephensen (Webb, 2007:119). Later, in the second half of 2007, I set out again to create a collaborative working partnership, albeit a less emotional ‘point of connection’, with other members of the documentary industry.

A New Producer

The search for a new producer led me to one particular film, Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst (Armstrong, 2005) which screened on SBS in November, 2007. It had been released theatrically and I had seen the documentary at the cinema the year before. This film utilised a rich and engaging approach to biographical documentary, with animation and dramatisation as its core visual languages while exploring the life of the famous Sydney wallpaper designer and her murder in 1977. The similarities between Florence’s self-constructed life and

Herbert’s persistent fabricated accounts about his place and circumstances of birth resonated and intrigued me when I first saw Unfolding Florence .

Inspired by seeing the film again, in November 2007, I contacted one of the producers of the documentary, Sue Clothier, Head of TV Factual Production for Becker Entertainment, to offer her the documentary about Herbert. After a brief discussion, I sent a written proposal to her (see Appendix B). A week and one day later, the Rudd government gained power. Co-incidentally, at the same time, Sue Clothier agreed to take on the Herbert documentary.

She claimed that she liked the travelogue approach to the documentary and asked me to write a number of documents so that she could consider the possibilities. I wrote an outline for a four-part half-hour travelogue series, a list of possible informants to the documentary, an outline for an historical, interview-based approach and a story arc (See Appendix B). An executive producer, Mike Bluett, also took an interest in the idea. During the Christmas break while visiting Cairns, he went to Xavier’s old home in Redlynch, met some of Herbert’s neighbours and became committed to the idea of the documentary.

Narrative Approach and Form

When business resumed in mid-January, 2008, we all spoke over the telephone. The executive producer was looking for a structure through which the story could unfold, using dramatic reconstructions. He was not sure that the format of a travelogue with an investigator was going to serve the story well, and he felt that the presence of the investigator would take too much attention away from Herbert, the subject.

We agreed that Herbert’s last journey could be a good narrative backbone. The last journey was one Herbert took alone, overland from Cairns to Alice Springs in early 1984. He signed over his estate to a close friend of Sadie, Robin Pill, said his good- byes and drove his ancient Land Rover to the centre of Australia to die: an appropriately dramatic point to enter into his life story. We tested the approach

through more discussions of how it might work. I wrote another series of points around his last journey to explore how this could tie in to other parts of Herbert’s life and the discourses surrounding it. It became clear that if we continued the journey to his death and funeral in Alice Springs, this approach would certainly offer sufficient narrative opportunities for the story to be able to explore the various significant elements in Herbert’s life. This approach would also incorporate a substantial amount of dramatic reconstruction, with an actor playing the part of Herbert in his last year of life. I looked further, therefore, into the use of the convention of dramatic reconstruction in documentary for my creative practice.

The Style of Reconstruction

Derek Paget has defined drama-documentary as the use of the sequence of events from real historical occurrence or situation and the identities of the protagonists to underpin a film script intended to provoke debate about the significance of the events/occurrence. The resultant film usually follows a cinematic narrative structure and employs the standard naturalist/realist performance techniques of screen drama. If the documentary material is directly presented as all, it is used in a way calculated to minimise disruption to the realist narrative (Paget, 1998:82). The next draft of my creative practice film (2009) utilised drama-documentary only in parts 8. I attempted to blur the boundaries that Paget outlines; his definition is more relevant to a type of Australian television drama-documentary program popular in the last decades of the twentieth century, such as Joh’s Jury (Cameron 1993). In the case of the newly-reconstituted, hybridised Herbert documentary, I decided that the ‘documentary material’ would not necessarily be minimised, nor would it be a disruptive element within the realist narrative I was attempting to create. I realised that further, in-depth research into documentary practice was needed at this point.

8 This is the version prior to the script in this MA.

Case Study 2: ‘The Legend of Fred Paterson’ (Laughren and Dawson 1996)

Figure 7: The Legend of Fred Paterson Poster showing a scene using dramatic reconstruction.

With a new creative purpose in mind, I discovered in my case study research of biographical films that The Legend of Fred Paterson was the first documentary made in Queensland to use dramatic reconstruction. The film is about the life and times of the only communist Member of Parliament in Queensland, Fred Paterson. A number of reconstructed scenes were filmed including the depiction of Paterson’s bashing by the police during a street march in Brisbane in the Fifties. I consider that the dramatic reconstructions in The Legend of Fred Paterson work well in eliciting a feel for the time and underlining the dramatic power of Paterson’s life. This bashing scene in particular is used as a climax to the documentary, as the horrific violence disables him forever. Pat Laughren explains (in an interview conducted for this thesis), that the reason he used dramatic reconstruction was not simply as a preference for a story-telling device. There were also issues regarding the budget, as well as access to and availability of appropriate archival footage: [O]ur budget for Red Ted [ and the Great Depression (Laughren, 1994)] was $320,000. It had a huge archival budget. ... By the time we got to [The Legend of Fred Paterson ] we knew we wouldn’t get $320,000. We were going to get, at the most, about $280,000 or $270,000 but there was far less archive [archival footage] relevant to the story (Laughren, 2008:11). Reconstructions can fail, however, if not treated skilfully. The critic, Rosenthal, warns of this, but, at the same time, he cites Culloden (Watkins, 1964) as a particularly successful example. He says that reconstruction is best used to represent

34 the pre-photographic era or, presumably, when the event has not been recorded, as in the bashing of Fred Paterson (Rosenthal, 1996:256). In my view, the dramatic reconstructions in The Legend of Fred Paterson do enhance the biographical drama and aesthetic appeal of the documentary. Hence this locally produced documentary became another source of influence and inspiration for the next iteration of the Herbert documentary.

Film Industry Merger: Screen Australia

In early March, 2008, the production team which had been assembled through Sue Clothier as producer, took the proposal for the newly-titled documentary, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road to Film Australia. At the time, there were huge fluctuations emerging in the industry that deeply concerned both our team and the staff at Film Australia. A key issue was the scheduled finalisation of the National Interest Program at the end of June, 2008. Some fears were allayed in February 2008, with an announcement that Film Australia and the ABC had reached a new agreement, whereby the ABC would commission ten new historical documentaries by December, 2008, continuing ‘their “History Initiative” partnership’ (ABC TV Publicity, 2008). This indicated that the National Interest Program may also continue.

A more pressing concern, however, would impinge on the whole film industry in Australia. A federally-initiated move for the complete reconstruction of the landscape of film investment, funding and culture in Australia was taking place; this involved the proposed merging of Film Australia with the Film Finance Corporation of Australia and the Australian Film Commission to form a new body, Screen Australia. The idea was that Screen Australia ‘will focus on development, marketing, and strategic planning for the industry in Australia’ initiating a new distribution-led approach to film production in Australia (Newby, 2007).

As Schembri argues, our understanding of the audience and the marketing strategies in Australia are often sadly lacking (Schembri, 2008). Therefore, it was considered that an attempt at a co-ordinated, national policy and implementation strategy for

35 marketing and distribution could open doors for documentary programs. Previous efforts of the FFC in this area involved informing producers of standard deals, providing a list of potential distributors and following up on sales agents and distributors for outstanding returns. Often, in the case of the smaller budgets and returns of documentaries, the amount of the return was not worth the legal costs of implementing an audit of a sales agent’s books so that the outstanding returns often remained outstanding (MacKinnon, 2008).

A major difficulty in dealing with distribution itself is the ever-fragmenting contemporary audience – fragmenting, that is, through the expanding choices between online, cable, free-to-air and theatrical viewing options. Susan MacKinnon, former Investment Manager (Documentary) at the former FFC says of the ‘transitional’ market: [T]he broadcasters are commissioning for free-to-air but really what interests them is anything that can be done on the internet. And they’re still showing [programs] free-to-air but all their dealings in their legal contracts are all about the internet really; all that long tail stuff. And it doesn’t work financially because there are no financial models for the internet except advertising. ... Free-to-air will mean online; that’s what it will be and they’ll just have to keep paying filmmakers (MacKinnon, 2008:5). The ways in which documentaries are marketed and even financed were in the midst of a huge shift. Many of the smaller, traditional documentary distributors from the last century had closed, while internet-based distribution was growing (MacKinnon, 2008). This is often true for documentaries that are framed as issue-based, such as the US production, Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers (Greenwald, 2007) where 3002 people contributed $US367,892 in nine days to finance the film (Greenwald, 2008).

During the six-month transition period in 2008, when Screen Australia was in the process of becoming the peak organization within the Australian screen industry, Mark Hamlyn, then an executive producer at Film Australia, said on this crucial matter: The main financing comes to you via television. That’s not going to change in the next ten years. The internet may get more powerful but it’s not going to do what TV does in terms of being the financial engine to drive production or become the trigger to financing projects (Hamlyn, 2008:16). Within this fluid and relatively uncertain industrial milieu, my documentary on Xavier Herbert, could only feasibly be financed through the commissioning process with ABC Documentaries or ABC Arts; the finished production would then, hopefully, be broadcast on the ABC with a limited, but free, online access period, and would ultimately have a DVD release. With this in mind, I therefore attempted a further pitch to the appropriately targeted ‘powers-that-be’.

Approaching the Commissioning Editor

Despite the understandable nervousness of the commissioning staff at Film Australia regarding the imminent amalgamation into Screen Australia in mid-to-late 2008, they added the Herbert documentary idea to the shortlist of projects they were discussing with the ABC. During those discussions, the Xavier Herbert film was probably considered by the Commissioning Editor at the ABC, Stuart Menzies. Interestingly, at that time, Menzies said to an Age reporter, in relation to his vision concerning documentary: Everything we do talks about identity; about us. I'm unashamedly nationalistic in the focus of the documentaries ... The ambition of our department has always been to explain to our audience where we come from and where we might be headed (Kalina, 2008). While such sentiments might seem to be in support of a documentary about an Australian icon such as Xavier Herbert, I suspected that there might be many less complex Australian cultural narratives in competition with this particular pitch, and the odds may still be against this project. Still awaiting a final decision from the

ABC, I returned to refining the script for the Masters and ultimately also for the hoped-for industry outcome.

To forward the documentary Xavier Herbert: My Own Road to a new stage, I revisited the existing plan sketched earlier in collaboration with Sue Clothier, producer, and Mike Bluett, executive producer at our initial meeting early in 2008. The documentary proposal presented to the ABC through Film Australia had outlined the use of dramatic reconstructions, with an actor playing the part of Herbert, and, at the same time, incorporating live interviews with those who knew and worked with Herbert. With the new focus of the documentary, at that stage, fully on Herbert, his inner thoughts and human mechanisms could be directly explored.

Nichols asserts that offering the audience a larger map of knowledge and analysis provides a broader choice of experiences and allows space, which Nichols terms the ‘gap’, in which members of the audience can flex their own understandings of reality (Nichols, 2005:24). He says that, to do this, the documentary, seen as an 'autonomous whole', includes the following: visual and sound elements; the 'textual “voice” spoken by the style of the film as a whole', and ‘the surrounding historical context, including the viewing event itself, which the textual voice cannot successfully rise above or fully control' (Nichols, 2005:28). Therefore, if such a tiered approach was to be taken onboard in this project, all elements of the documentary must be treated critically in order to find the authentic ‘voice’. This would involve a deeper examination of the broader intent of the film, placing the organic textual elements upon a rich canvas of relevant Australian socio-political history.

As mentioned earlier, Herbert had grappled with himself and his view of the world in his letters, journals and in his major works. Autobiographical/self-reflexive material written by Herbert was therefore embedded within the developing documentary script. A critical understanding of his life and work can also be informed through live interviews with others who have knowledge of and insights into Xavier’s life story. The information gained through the live interviews would provide ‘the surrounding historical context’ (Nichols, 2005:28) of the story. However, discovering a viable mode with which to approach the interviews within the script presented a creative

38 challenge: how do I obtain the further information necessary for the script, while not pre-empting the actual production interview process?

Interpretive Interactionism: The Interview and Scriptwriting

When conducting interviews for previous films I have made, the approach I followed could be summed up by the adage: ‘Don’t let the interviewee start talking until the camera is rolling’. Collecting sufficient material on what the interviewee knows in order to produce a script before shooting is problematic; there is a possibility that the interviewee will remember what he or she has said to the researcher/writer prior to the filming, and often will not be able to reproduce the statement in its entirety, or with the same conviction or quality of delivery.

Figure 8: Poster for the documentary, Mark Twain.

As discussed above, Denzin has identified the phenomenon of the ‘epiphany’ (cited in Fontana, 2003:81). Fontana adds: ‘Thus the topic of inquiry becomes dramatized by the focus on existential moments in people’s lives, hopefully producing richer and more meaningful data’ (Fontana, 2003:81). Similarly, US filmmakers, Ken Burns, director/producer, and Dayton Duncan, writer/co-producer, have also identified the intense dramatic qualities of the interviewee experiencing a transformative recollection on the screen. Burns claims that he uses a technique to prevent his subjects from losing the quality, in effect, Denzin’s ‘epiphany’, in their delivery to camera; he and his team conduct the interviews for the film as part of their primary research. During his writing of their pertinent biographical film on the iconic

American writer, Mark Twain (Burns 2002a), writer, Dayton Duncan describes this process: The last thing that we want to have happen is for an interview to sound like we're just asking somebody to fill a hole in a script. … We ask very open-ended questions and just see where it takes us. ... [The interviews] help us in our discovery process; they're not just the tail end, they're the very start (Burns, 2002). Interestingly, Brisbane documentary-maker Pat Laughren’s approach to the documentary interview is very close to that of Ken Burns. When talking about the process of writing Red Ted and the Great Depression (Laughren 1994) Pat describes writing the script using ‘imagined interview or interview transposed from other sources’ (Laughren, 2008:1). He then conducts long oral history interviews with the film’s informants without pre-interviews: Because consciously or unconsciously they’ll think, ‘I told you that.’ and you’ll get the Readers Digest version rather than the full version (Laughren, 2008:4). These interviews form the backbone of Laughren’s films with the narration written later to weave the interviews into a story structure.

Another US documentary director, Errol Morris, also describes the outcome of an effective interview process when talking about the extended interview he conducted with Robert McNamara for Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (Morris, 2003). Morris says: [T]he remarkable thing about McNamara is that he is involved in this inquiry about himself. ... What I find fascinating is his struggle. Here is a man who is clearly struggling with himself and trying to understand who he was, who he is today the nature of what he did and why he did it. And that is a noble inquiry – certainly a fascinating and powerful inquiry (Morris, 2005). Therefore, these three documentary directors analysed here recognize the powerful impact for their respective audiences in this form of ‘meaningful data’ (Fontana, 2003:81).

Case Study 3: Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst (Armstrong 2006)

Figure 9: Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst poster

Unlike the films of Burns, Laughren and Morris which are mostly reliant on interviews as a story-telling device, Unfolding Florence utilised other visual mechanisms including some rich animation. Significantly, the interview was not the central focus. The scriptwriter of Unfolding Florence , Katherine Thomson, whom I also interviewed for this project, spoke to all of the informants to the story, before the director, Gillian Armstrong, conducted her interviews.

The quality of delivery in the final filmic version is very moving for the viewer. The production relied on the passing of time between the research work of writer, Katherine Thomson, and the on-camera interviews conducted by Gillian Armstrong who also acts as a fresh interface for the interviewees. Katherine says: Obviously Gillian did her own expert interviews. She’s the one that conducted them. I deliberately wasn’t there. ... So it was a sense of: if you want to tell your story you’re going to have to do it with clarity and energy to this new person (Thomson, 2008:1). The producer, Sue Clothier (then Head of TV Factual Production, Becker Entertainment) added, again in interview, that the budgetary constraints led to tight schedules and precluded a long research process (Clothier, 2008). It would seem that this pressure is often experienced by Australian documentary filmmakers.

According to her interview text, Sue Clothier had initiated Unfolding Florence after noticing an article about Florence Broadhurst in an inflight magazine. After a nine- month exploration period and some initial discussions with broadcasters, the development team at Becker Entertainment produced several drafts outlining an approach for the documentary, only to have the idea knocked back initially. Eighteen months into the process of pitching the idea, the producer offered the document to a colleague at SBS, and asked what was missing in the pitch document. Margaret Murphy, a commissioning editor at SBSTV, returned with a positive response and the documentary was finally commissioned.

Florence Broadhurst’s designs were visually lush. This led the producers to consider that Unfolding Florence had great potential for a ‘bigger canvas’. They approached the well known director, Gillian Armstrong, to direct the film. Impressed by Signature Prints, Broadhurst’s wallpaper company, which was still operating, Armstrong came on board. With Gillian Armstrong as the director, a presale from SBS, as well as investment from the New South Wales Film and Television Office, the production had several noteworthy ‘hooks’, and easily attracted the commitment of Film Australia to include Unfolding Florence in its National Interest Program.

The producers pitched Unfolding Florence as a theatrical film, gaining a theatrical release commitment through the Dendy cinema chain. The problem they faced then was that the documentary was already in preproduction and had a production path planned for television broadcast. Sue Clothier recounts the difficulty they encountered in transforming a television documentary into a cinema release film: ‘It was highly stressful at that particular time but Film Australia were extraordinary partners to work with. ... It was a rollicking couple of months’ (Clothier, 2008:6).

Screenwriter Katherine Thomson, also interviewed for my Masters project, was introduced to the production through Gillian Armstrong’s recommendation. After some in-depth, detective-style work, Katherine uncovered a trunk full of invaluable papers and photographs that once belonged to Florence Broadhurst (Thomson, 2008). With this research material in hand, Katherine worked on the form and visual approach of the documentary. The idea of using animation had been part of the original document with which Sue Clothier had marketed the film, and, along with

42 the new bank of archival images from Florence’s trunk, Katherine’s script took shape.

Some writers have criticised the use of the animation technique in the film as ‘alarming’, claiming that ‘it trivialises and distracts’ (New Zealand Herald, 2006). Furthermore, Variety film reviewer, Russell Edwards thought that [The] Terry Gilliam-like animation with old family photos does jangle the nerves. Intention may have been to replicate Broadhurst's zeal, but the effect is trivializing and detracts from Armstrong's other, smarter directorial choices (Edwards, 2006:40). By contrast, I did not have the same reaction to the animations when I watched the film, experiencing the treatment as Edwards thought it may have been intended: ‘to replicate Broadhurst’s zeal’. Hence, this aspect of the film could be a matter of taste depending on the viewer’s predilection.

I reflected on the choices other than animation that confronted Armstrong and her production team in depicting Broadhurst’s life, in view of the fact that this was a post-mortem biography of a flamboyant design artist. Other than a full-blown dramatic reconstruction (which was impossible for the budget) the animation sequences seemed a perfect choice, as articulated by the scriptwriter in the promotional production package for the film: Once we knew the details of her extraordinary life, how much she loved life, what fun she was to have around, the challenge became how we told the story with as much energy as Florence had. We also had to tell the other side of her character. Neither Gillian [Armstrong] nor I wanted to do a conventional biography. We knew that a week in, just from looking at the press clippings, and Film Australia said ‘go for it’ (Thomson, 2006:9). Other critics question the validity of making a film about Broadhurst in the first place, citing ‘Broadhurst's dubious morality’ as reason enough not to document her life (Metro NZ, 2006:132). This statement, dubious in itself, made me wonder which biographical documentaries would be valid if a morality-based process drives such production choices. This also begs the questions: who would have the right to make such a loaded judgement? Why should such judgements even be considered?

Herbert’s story would certainly be rejected from such a biased, moralistic standpoint. In my view, a morality-based, decision-making criterion would be completely invalid, as is sanctimonious, morality-driven film criticism.

Indeed, the production team working on Unfolding Florence also took a positive approach to this complex, flawed yet fascinating person, impressed as they were that one remarkable woman could achieve so much in her life. Their creative impulse was that they wanted to show this to the world: There is a feeling that options become limited as we get older. Not in Florence's life they didn't (Thomson, 2006:10). This type of universal theme elevates the particular ‘voice’ of the text within its own historical, cultural context, into a production that would resonate with an international audience.

One of the most pertinent points that Katherine made in her interview for this study, was that ‘the writer always puts more than the director needs to shoot’ (Thomson, 2008:6). This particular comment resonated strongly with me, with regard to the Herbert script I was working and reworking at the time of interviewing her. The main narrative arc decided on by the creative team was chronological, using a recreation of Florence’s final walk to her studio – the place of her murder – as a vivid linking device between the various chapters of her life. Katherine Thomson, the writer, was involved with the production throughout the editing phases, writing the voiceover of Florence and keeping personal links with the interviewees to ensure their satisfaction with the process (Thomson, 2008).

Clearly the amount of time-consuming work involved in researching and writing a documentary is often under-estimated and possibly underpaid as a result. Such weighty considerations raised by the Unfolding Florence example made me reflect more deeply on my own work.

Chapter Three Creating the script for a new age of documentary production

Figure 10: Xavier Herbert and Percy Trezise visit cave paintings Nth Qld during the filming of 4 Corners, ABC, 1978.

After the flurry of activity between the production team and Film Australia in March 2008, unfortunately all communication ceased. By June 2008, the documentary’s future was still uncertain and Film Australia was about to be subsumed into Screen Australia. Even though there was no definitive indication, it was becoming evident within this production landscape-in-flux that the documentary, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road, was not going to be commissioned at this point in time. Linked with my contextual research for this study, I was closely following the events leading up to the formation of Screen Australia and the policies that may impact on the documentary industry. Screen Australia, the national film entity, was finally formed officially on July 1 2008. Since then, new initiatives and incentives, such as the Producer Offset 9, have been implemented, and, arguably, are currently transforming the Australian film industry. The Producer Offset is ‘the biggest change to the industry since introduction of 10BA in 1980’ (Rosen, cited in Williams, 2007b). This Offset is an indirect subsidy, which ‘provides a rebate of 40 percent of eligible

9 When the Howard government originally flagged the Producer Offset in 2007, the contentious issue for documentary production was that the documentary budget threshold was $500,000. Documentary producers strongly criticised the Producer Offset stating that it would only benefit a small number of producers, less than 15% as in the case of 2006/7 (Williams 2007a; Screen Australia 2009a). In Australia’s documentary industry, with documentaries holding only a 2% share of television broadcasting content, compared with 11% in New Zealand and 21% in Canada, and with the bulk of Australian documentaries under the prescribed $500,000 qualifying expenditure, the actual income generated through the Producer Offset would be insignificant (Screen Australia, 2009a). The level of qualifying Australian production expenditure (QAPE) (which excludes certain development and marketing expenses) for documentaries has subsequently been reduced to $250,000-an-hour for television documentaries (Barnard, 2008; Screen Australia, 2009).

Australian expenditure to producers of qualifying feature films, with a 20 percent rate for qualifying TV productions’ (Montgomery, 2007).

Under the captaincy of the new CEO, Ruth Harley, Screen Australia has reviewed key policy areas and has subsequently maintained some investment conditions pertaining to documentary, including the National Documentary Program, similar to the former National Interest Program where funds from Screen Australia can make up to 75% of the budget (Screen Australia, 2009b). One of the most important shifts has involved the devolution of the executive producer role from Screen Australia to the independent production sector (PFTC, 2008). This is in contrast with the earlier Film Australia model, whereby Film Australia would present documentaries to broadcasters to attract presales, package series and co-produce with international entities (Hamlyn, 2008).

With the devolution of executive roles, there has been an expectation that film companies will increase in size. In July, 2008, in his speech for the Opening of the Melbourne Film Festival, the Minister for the Arts, the Hon. Peter Garrett, indicated the government would bring about ...a level of consolidation in the industry – not necessarily more businesses, but larger ones – but this should be embraced, not resisted, because the global media and entertainment world is not one in which a cottage scale industry can expect to survive (Garrett, 2008:8). Within Screen Australia’s programs, one of the key initiatives to support this growth of company size is the newly formed Enterprise Program … designed to engender larger companies and new partnerships. This program will offer $500,000 over a three-year period to screen production companies with experienced principals who have identified opportunities to develop and expand their business (PFTC, 2008). These first Enterprise Program funding approvals were announced in September, 2009. The internationally acclaimed, Queensland-based, digital entertainment company, Hoodlum, received $A1m to extend their overseas partnerships (Screen

Australia, 2009d). However, at present there were no Queensland documentary- specific production companies funded under the scheme 10 .

A predicted outcome from Screen Australia’s new initiatives for television documentary programming was articulated by Mark Hamlyn in late 2008, in his role as executive producer for the National Interest Program: [W]e are seeing the evolution of the medium of tv documentary into something quite diverse. On one hand it’s Who do You Think You Are?. On the other hand it might be a fairly standard doco with narration on it. But there will be less space … The broadcasters are buying less of them – of the auteur film which isn’t particularly popular with audiences (Hamlyn, 2008:16). During this time, the ongoing, developing version of my creative practice documentary, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road , seemed to be situated in a position that, arguably, was in keeping with this shift. The documentary’s intended producer, Sue Clothier, is Head of TV Factual Production for Screenworld (formerly Becker Entertainment), one of the longest standing independent production houses in Australia (Off the Fence, 2009; Wikipedia, 2008). Most importantly, as researcher and writer, I still considered that Sue Clothier would be the right person to be involved with the Herbert documentary. The future of the Herbert documentary therefore looked even brighter, with a three-fold increase in independent documentary production investment at the ABC in 2009 (Knox, 2009).

On the other hand, there was a significant decrease in support for Screen Australia in the 2009 Federal budget. The Screen Australia budget has been cut by $9.5million, from $31.4 million to $21.9 million (Bodey, 2009). This is explained as ‘direct appropriations to Screen Australia’ being ‘reduced over time proportional to the uptake of the Producer Offset’ (Brown, 2009). The Screen Producers Association of Australia’s official line is that there is

10 I wondered if Queensland documentary would have benefitted from this scheme if Mark Chapman was able to maintain his position as the long-term, major documentary producer. He had extensive networks and had trained many people still working in the industry. If any individual in Queensland could engender new partnerships it would have been Mark. The Enterprise Program is a scheme with great benefits which came too late for Mark Chapman.

no pick-up on the Offset from local investors, markets are fickle, there are no presales, gap funding is virtually dead for film, and we're experiencing the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression (Brown, 2009). The drop in Screen Australia’s funds has been balanced in the light of the $A90 million increase for ABC Drama programs granted in the 2009/2010 Federal budget (Hudson, 2009). Hence the future for documentary productions is hanging in the balance.

Wrapping the Creative Practice Script

By early 2009, in the absence of a firm commercial industry agreement, I chose to write the next version of the script, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road , using a fictitious character to travel through Herbert’s life utilising extensive dramatisation. While still moving toward the final iteration of this documentary project, I had already abandoned the idea of including Billy Connolly, or any other luminary in the documentary, as explained earlier.

I first wrote a script with a chronological structure and a varying style using vérité (the investigator’s real-time journey), interviews, traditional documentary material (stills, archival material and newspaper articles) and re-enactments. From that material I identified the main elements of the story I wanted to highlight. Xavier’s relationship from 1956 with his long-term friend, Percy Trezise, was a pivotal subplot. One of the main ideas in the final version of the script I have submitted for this Masters study involves the ways this relationship is a catalyst to Xavier overcoming writer’s block to commence writing Poor Fellow My Country , more than thirty years after writing Capricornia .

Despite some fresh ideas, the problem of the identity of the investigator remained unresolved. I had already written Xavier as a reconstructed character, to be played by an actor, in most of the script. Why not also reconstruct his best mate, Percy

Trezise 11 , to drive the story? The more I considered this approach, a clearer pathway emerged. The great bushman and larrikin, Percy Trezise, could serve all of the purposes I wanted the investigating character to perform, and, as he already played a major part in this story, the constructed ‘presence’ of Percy Trezise would not be a distraction. Instead, Percy would add significant perspectives on Xavier himself and the great author’s personal relationships, particularly with his partner/manager, Sadie.

Figure 11: Percy Trezise at Jowalbinna with part of Red Bluff in the background, 1997.

I had conducted a long interview over a period of four days with Percy Trezise in 1997, years before embarking on this study. I had found then that his relationship with Herbert had a particularly turbulent period between 1971 and 1975. On the one hand, Trezise seemed objective in his opinions about Herbert. His negative experiences of Herbert were, however, tempered with his continuing respect for him and would ameliorate the documentary’s attempt to explore Herbert’s life experiences. On the other hand, in the interview, Percy Trezise displayed a reluctance to enter into a full discussion of the difficult period in their relationship, until I demonstrated prior knowledge of some of the underlying reasons of the disruption. Then he clarified the problem. The complex personal events leading up to what could be called Herbert’s ‘poison pen letter’ to Trezise became, therefore, in this latest version of the script, the pivotal driving tension in the narrative, and consequently, the key reason behind both Trezise’s riveting personal journey of understanding and illumination, and, it is to be hoped, the audience’s interest in and engagement with Herbert and his friend.

11 Percy Trezise was an aviator and Aboriginal rock art expert. He and Xavier rediscovered much of the Cape York Aboriginal rock art. Trezise involved many of the traditional owners in his endeavour to uncover and interpret the paintings and left a wealth of information with research groups such as the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. Percy died in 2005.

Thus, the biographical documentary script presented in this study has evolved into a form of travel documentary with an actor playing the part of the investigator/narrator, Percy Trezise. He takes the audience on a journey to tell a story about his relationship with his long-term friend, Xavier Herbert. More specifically, Trezise relives the events around their five-year estrangement and undertakes a personal search into Xavier’s life story to discover reasons driving Herbert’s volatile personality, as well as the source of his extreme anger toward Trezise during that period.

I have used Trezise’s words from my own extensive 1997 interview archive as part of the documentary script. However, I found that the interview did not provide sufficient information of Percy Trezise’s experience of Herbert. Hence, I have added further clarification about this relationship in the script, gleaned from comparing the testimonies of one about the other – thoughts that Trezise and Herbert may or may not have revealed to each other (Herbert in Hergenhan, 2002; Trezise Interview, 1997).

In short, I have, at times, embellished Percy’s experience of Herbert with projections extending from fact, but not grounded in fact. The reconstructions of Trezise (and Herbert), and the elaboration of his feelings about Herbert and their sometimes tumultuous relationship represent an ‘overt form … of performativity’ that documentary theorist Bruzzi claims is an important element in the agenda of new documentaries, part of the ‘change’ in the way documentary has chosen to represent reality (Bruzzi, 2006:252).

The characters of Percy Trezise and Xavier Herbert co-exist in this biographical story along with the onscreen, live ‘experts’ on Herbert’s life. These extant experts provide ‘disciplines of knowledge’ for the story (Ulmer cited in Denzin, 2008:123) as does factual documentation represented through newspaper headlines and archival material. Following Denzin, I have tried to make the current biographical script represent a story that ‘is simultaneously a personal mythology, a public story, a personal narrative, and a performance that critiques’, re-performing Herbert’s

experiences to create ‘a meaningful biographical experience’ for the potential audience (Denzin, 2008:117, 122-3).

After touring Herbert’s life across a range of key sites, the documentary ends with Herbert’s funeral. Herbert’s contribution to Australian society is summarised and highlighted during a dream-like reconstruction of segments of the funeral service. Undoubtedly, Herbert’s role in bringing the plight of the Indigenous stolen generations to public scrutiny with the publication of Capricornia in 1938 is a landmark achievement in our short white history. On a more personal level, Percy Trezise finds that Herbert’s strong vision, coupled with his difficult family background, separated him from non-Aboriginal Australian society with which he worked so hard to communicate.

In a way, while working on Herbert’s story over the past fourteen years my research for this documentary has become an archive. I have accessed multiple archives during the process of script development and, in effect, this thesis has formed another archive. For instance, I have put into my Appendix B an unpublished chronology of Xavier Herbert’s life and work which was compiled by Dr Russell McDougall when I commenced research in the mid 1990s. I have also conducted interviews with some of the key players in Herbert’s life, from which I have drawn for the script. I also have filed a substantial collection of original articles now out of publication. This is all part of the original contribution that this study has made to the documentary industry and to the study of this indefinable writer, Xavier Herbert.

As this documentary has not yet found a commercial placement, the script that is part of this Masters study is not a ‘shooting script’, that is, a blueprint designed to guide the production of the documentary. This draft script is ready for the next stage of production, with room for a producer and a director to bring their individual changes to it. Subsequently, this version would be rewritten into a form that would facilitate production and budgetary considerations.

Future Challenges

In this thesis, I have set out to draft a contextual map of the documentary industry and the shifting processes and pressures through which one documentary ‘idea’ has passed in order to gain the ultimate prize, a firm commission with the ABC. To date, this biographical documentary script about Xavier Herbert has not secured such a commission – which is not to say that this hoped-for outcome will not come to pass in the future.

Australia is currently on the threshold of a new era in internet services, including film distribution, with the creation of the National Broadband Network, which is predicted to connect ninety percent of homes and businesses to high speed ‘Fibre-to- the-Premises’, with the remaining ten percent connected to ‘next-generation wireless and satellite … broadband’ (Conroy, 2009). Mike Quigley is the new Chief Executive Officer of NBN (National Broadcasting Network) Co, the company set up to roll out the broadband initiative. He talks of the ‘likely inclusion of [radio frequency] in down stream’, which would allow internet protocol television (IPTV) to be more economical in terms of download time (cited in Bajkowski, 2009:49). Paul Budde, international telecommunications research specialist states: Once you have 10 or 20 percent penetration of 100 Mbps services, you start seeing that a whole new range of media are going to be developed. And that advertising-driven, sequential broadcast model [as in free-to-air television] is unlikely to survive; instead, it’s going to be much more like YouTube, but on steroids [a greater scale] (cited in Braue, 2009:10). The internet landscape of distribution already holds additional potential for the long- tail 12 distribution of documentaries, although this is hindered by the fragmented nature of programming pricing that can sometimes have a devaluing effect. Liesl Copland, an executive of William Morris Endeavor, which operates the online distribution facility, Netflix, addressed the Toronto International Film Festival in September, 2009. In that address, she asked the global independent documentary community to consider an agreed release model for feature documentaries, rather than allowing the continuation of the problem of varying prices of release platforms

12 Program sales after broadcast.

52 where programs can be hired or purchased, for between one dollar and fifteen dollars ‘at the same time’ (Copland, 2009:10). A globalised, co-operative approach to independent documentary distribution online would, arguably, enhance the future of documentary production through adding value to program sales.

More recently, in December, 2009, producer, academic and author, John Howkins, speaking at the opening of the new Creative Industries Innovation Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney, indicated that thinking around the issue had been further developed. He concluded that: [T]he consumer, is increasingly impatient – and explicitly so – in making sure that they … can make their own decisions about what they want to see and when they want to see it and on the device that they choose. … [I]f you want to pay 100 dollars to see [a film] when it is released, sitting at home, we've got to work out so that you are … enabled to do that. [W]e are now beginning to think about how we can use price and to develop … a waterfall of different [viewing] licenses (Encore Magazine, 2009: 3,4). With the transforming digital developments, the documentary industry, as with all media, is currently in a state of flux that will continue to create new platforms and access to audiences for some time to come, although the implications of such multiple platforms for individual filmmakers are, as yet, uncertain. As Mark Hamlyn, the former Executive Producer at Screen Australia has stated, however, documentary sales and the raising of budgetary funds through the internet does not replace the ‘financial engine’ that drives production, nor does it ‘become the trigger to financing projects’ offered through the commissioning practices of the free-to-air broadcasters (Hamlyn, 2008:16). For now, it is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation where this story of Xavier Herbert belongs.

References

ABC (1994-95) Annual Report. Accessed 30.4.2008. www.abc.net.au/corp/annual_reports/ar95/arconts.htm.

ABC (1995-96) Annual Report. Accessed 30.4.2008. www.abc.net.au/corp/annual_reports/ar96/pdfs/auspro2.pdf.

ABC (1996-97) Annual Report. Accessed 30.4.2008. www.abc.net.au/corp/annual_reports/ar97/ar97.pdf.

ABC (1997-98) Annual Report. Accessed 30.4.2008. www.abc.net.au/corp/annual_reports/ar98/AR98.pdf.

ABC (1998-99) ABC Annual Report. Accessed 30.4.2008. www.abc.net.au/corp/annual_reports/ar98/AR99.pdf

ABC TV Publicity (2008) ABC TV and Film Australia green light more history programming. IN Media Room (Ed.). Accessed 22.2.2008. http://www.abc.net.au/corp/pubs/media/s2168843.htm

Australian Film Commission (2007) Get the Picture, Accessed 30.5.2007. http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/gtp/mptax10batype.html and http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/gtp/mptax10bastats.html.

Armstrong, G. (2006) Unfolding Florence Press Kit. IN Film Australia. (Ed.), Programs, Film Australia. Accessed 23/7/08. www.filmaustralia.com.au/production

Bajkowski, J. (2009) Quigley backs NBN time frame. Australian Financial Review, Sydney, J. Fairfax & Sons, 49, 16.9.2009. Accessed 23.9.2009. http://www.afr.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/search

Barnard, A. and Urban, A. (2008) Producer Offset Special Edition 3. IN Centre for Screen Business (Ed.), The Knowledge, Sydney, AFTRS. Accessed 4.5.2009. http://www.aftrsmedia.com/CSB/?p=196

Bodey, M. (2009) Film agency takes $9.5m budget hit. The Australian, 20.5.09 . Accessed 20.5.09. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25508503-16947,00.html

Braue, D. (2009) For Whom the NBN Tolls. Encore, Chatswood, NSW, Reed Business Information P/L, September, 29:9.

Brown, G. (2009) Are producers being short-changed with A New Deal? Encore, Chatswood, NSW, Reed Business Information P/L, April, 29:4 .

Bruzzi, S. (2000) New Documentary: A Critical Introduction, London, Routledge. Accessed 25.2.09. http://www.qut.eblib.com.au.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/EBLWeb/patron/

Bryant, K. A. (2005) Performance Ethnography: the Reenacting and Inciting of Culture. IN Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, S. Y. (Eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Ed., Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, Inc, 411-442.

Buckley, V. (1960) Capricornia. Meanjin, XIX:1 , 13-30.

Budde, P. (2009) BuddeComm. IN Budde, P. (Ed.). Accessed 23.9.2009. http://www.budde.com.au/About/

Burns, K. (2002) Mark Twain. Mark Twain, PBS. Accessed 16.5.06. http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/

Clothier, S. (2008) Interview about Unfolding Florence: the Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst. IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Brisbane/Sydney, unpublished.

Conroy, S. The Hon Senator (2009) Regional Broadband Forum, Tamworth. IN Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Ed.), Tamworth, Australian Government. Accessed 23.9.2009. http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/speeches/2009/063

Copland, L. (2009) ‘Dear theater owners, fear not – you are not going anywhere’. Documentary Conference, Toronto International Film Festival, indieWIRE. Accessed 13.9.09. http://www.indiewire.com/article/liesl_copland_dear_theater_owners_fear_n ot_-_you_are_not_going_anywhere/

Darby, R. (1999) Wrestling with old horrible [Review of De Groen, Frances. Xavier Herbert , 1998]. Eureka Street, 9 , 32-36.

Denzin, N. K. (2008) Interpretive Biography. IN Knowles, Gary J. and Cole, Ardra L. (Eds), Handbook of the arts in qualitative research : [perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues], Los Angeles, Sage Publications, 117- 125.

Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, S. Y. (2000) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Second Ed., Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications.

Duncan, S. (2004) Representing (the Other) Reality. Metro, 143 , 82-87.

Edwards, R. (2006) Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst. Variety, 402 , 40. Accessed 3.5.2008. http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb? did=997010381&Fmt=7&clientId=14394&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Eitzen, D. (2005) Against the Ivory Tower: An Apologia for ‘Popular’ Historical Documentaries. IN New Challenges for Documentary, Second Ed., Rosenthal, A. and Corner, J. (Eds), Manchester, UK ; New York : New York: Manchester University Press, 409-418.

Encore Magazine (2009) Looking for a new business model. Encore, Chatswood, NSW, Reed Business Information P/L, December. Accessed 9.12.2009. http://www.encoremagazine.com.au/articles/CA/0C0662CA.aspx?sc=226022

Film Finance Corporation (2000/01) Annual Report. Accessed 3.5.07. www.ffc.gov.au/annual/FFCaRep01.pdf

Film Australia (2008) National Interest Program. Accessed 20.2.08. http://www.filmaust.com.au/production/default.asp?content=nip

Fitzsimons, T. (2000) Accords, Slates, Slots, Strands and Series: Australian Television Takes on Independent Documentary. Metro Magazine, 131/132 , 172-183.

Fontana, A. and Frey, J. H. (2003) The Interview: From Structured Questions to Negotiated Text. IN Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, S. Y. (Eds), Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, Second Ed., Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, 61-106.

Garrett, P. The Honourable MA MP, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts (2008) Opening of the Melbourne International Film Festival, Melbourne. Accessed 2.9.08. http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/garrett/2008/pubs/sp20080725.pdf.

Gerard, P. (1996) Creative Nonfiction, Cincinnati, Story Press, an imprint of F&W Publications, Inc.

Greenwald, R. (2008) Iraq for Sale. Accessed 12.6.08. http://iraqforsale.org/filmmakers.php

Hamlyn, M. (2008) Interview with Mark Hamlyn. IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Sydney/Brisbane, unpublished.

Harley, R. (1986) Know Your Product , Brisbane, Institute of Modern Art.

Haseman, B. (2006) A Manifesto for Performative Research. Media International Australia, C&P: Practice-led Research, Brisbane, University of Queensland, 118 , 98-106.

Herbert, X. (1941-1980) Papers of Sadie and Xavier Herbert. Brisbane, Fryer Library. Accessed 22.4.06. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/fryer/index

Herbert, X. (1970) The Writing of Capricornia. Australian Literary Studies, VI, 207- 214.

Hergenhan, L. and Degroen, F. (Eds) (2002) Xavier Herbert: letters , Brisbane, University of Queensland Press.

Heron, J. and Reason, P. (2008) Extending Epistemology within a Co-operative Inquiry. IN Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (Eds), The Sage Book of Action Research, First Ed., London, Sage Publications Ltd, 366-380.

Heseltine, H. (1975) Xavier Herbert's Magnum Opus. Meanjin Quarterly, 34 , 133- 136.

Hudson, P. (2009) Budget's $90m a jobs boon for ABC. Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Fairfax Digital, 16.5.09. Accessed 2.11.09. http://www.smh.com.au/national/budgets-90m-a-jobs-boon-for-abc- 20090515-b62u.html

Inglis, K. S. (2006) Whose ABC?: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 1983- 2006, Melbourne, Black Inc.

Kalina, P. (2008) Rogue vogue: the shaping of documentary. The Age, On-line ed., Melbourne, 17.4.08. Accessed 17.4.08. http://www.theage.com.au/news/tv--radio/rogue-vogue-the-shaping-of- documentary/2008/04/16/1208025264089.html

Knox, D. (2009) ABC Hearts independent docos. tvtonight.com.au. Accessed 20.2.09. http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2009/02/abc-hearts-independent-docos.html.

Laughren, P. (2008) Interview with Wendy Rogers. IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Brisbane, unpublished.

Lloyd James, A. (2008) Interview with Andy Lloyd James. IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Brisbane/Sydney, unpublished.

MacKee, A. (2000) Prime Time Drama: 77 Sunset Strip to Sea Change. IN Turner, G. and Cunningham, S. (Eds), The Australian TV Book, St Leonards, Allen & Unwin, 142-154.

MacKinnon, S. (2008) Susan MacKinnon Interview. IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Sydney, unpublished.

Maslin, S. (2004) Telling the 'Truth'. Metro, 144 , 80-85.

Metro NZ, (2006) Unfolding Florence, 306, 132. Accessed 3.5.2008. http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=anh&AN=23466114&site=ehost-live

Monahan, S. (2003) a long and winding road , Perth, Western Australian University Press.

Montgomery, T. (2007) Widespread Praise for Enhanced Incentives. Encore, Chatswood, NSW, Reed Business Information P/L, , June , 16.

Morris, E. (2005) Truth, with Errol Morris. IN Lydon, C. (Ed.), Passion. Open Source: Public Radio International. Accessed 18.5.06. http://www.radioopensource.org/passion-truth/

Munro, C. (1984) Wild Man of Letters, Carlton, Victoria, Melbourne University Press.

Newby, J. (2007) The Creation of a 'Super Agency'. Encore, Chatswood, NSW, Reed Business Information P/L, June, 18.

New Zealand Herald (2006a), Unfolding Florence . Accessed 3.5.2008. http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=anh&AN=HOB311574911106&site=ehost-live

Nichols, B. (2005) The Voice of Documentary. IN Rosenthal A. and Corner, J. (Eds), New Challenges for Documentary, Second Ed., Manchester, Manchester University Press, 17-33.

Off The Fence (2009) Becker Entertainment. Accessed 13.5.09. www.offthefence.com/content/contetn.php?ID=46

Paget, D. (1998) No other way to tell it: Dramadoc/Docudrama on Television, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Pacific Film and Television Commission (2008) Screen Australia Address [sic] the Industry. IN Onscreen , Pacific Film and Television Commission online (Ed.), Brisbane, December, 2008. Accessed 1.12.08. http://www.pftc.com.au/pftc/news/content.asp?pageid=546&top=&menupare nt=540

Rosenthal, A. (1996.) Writing, directing, and producing documentary films and videos, Carbondale :Ill, Southern Illinois University Press. Accessed 5.9.07. http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://www.netlibrary.com/urlapi. asp?action=summary&v=1&bookid=11973 and http://www.netlibrary.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/Reader/

Rosenthal, A. & Corner, J. (2005) New Challenges for Documentary , Second Ed., Rosenthal, A. and Corner, J. (Eds), Manchester, UK ; New York, Manchester University Press.

Rubbo, M. (1986) Mike Rubbo – the documentary. IN Australian Film and Television School (Ed.), Australian Filmmakers, Sydney, AFTS Resources.

Rubbo, M. (2006) Interview with Mike Rubbo. IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Brisbane, unpublished.

Schembri, J. (2008) Lack of faith in our own films sinks The Square. The Age Online, Online ed, Melbourne. Accessed 18.8.08. www.theage.com.au/news/film/lack-of-faith-in-our-own-films-sinks-the- square/2008/08/17/12118911455164.html

Screen Australia (2008) Screen Australia Production Investment Guidelines 2008/2009. Accessed 5.12.08. http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/documents/SA_publications/Guidelines/Gl ine_Production.pdf

Screen Australia (2009a) Documentary Production in Australia, 2009: a Collection of Key Data. IN Screen Australia (Ed.), Get the Picture , Screen Australia. Accessed 30/5/2007. http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/gtp/docos/index.html

Screen Australia (2009b) Industry Support , Screen Australia. Accessed 5.12.08 and 10.12.09. http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/industry_support/

Screen Australia (2009c) Eligibility. IN Screen Australia (Ed.), Producer Offset , Screen Australia. Accessed 5.12.08. www.screenaustralia.gov.au/producer_offset/eligibility.asp

Screen Australia (2009d) Enterprise Funding Approvals – 25 September 2009. IN Screen Australia (Ed.), Industry Support, Screen Australia. Accessed 10.10.09. http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/industry_support/Approvals/enterprise_09 0925.asp

Stake, R. E. (2000) Qualitative Case Studies. IN Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, S. Y. (Eds), The Handbook of Qualitative Research, Second Ed., Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, Inc, 435-454.

Tedlock, B. (2005) The Observation of Participation and the Emergence of Public Ethnography. IN Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, S. Y. (Eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Ed., Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, Inc, 467-482.

Thomson, K. (2006) Unfolding Florence Press Kit. IN Film Australia (Ed.). Accessed 23.7.08. www.filmaustralia.com.au/production

Thomson, K. (2008) The Writing of Unfolding Florence . IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Sydney, unpublished.

Trezise, P. (1997) Interview about Xavier Herbert. IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Cairns, unpublished.

Webb, J. (2007) Acting, Interacting and Acting Up: Teaching Collaborative Creative Practice. IN Harper, G. and Kroll, J. (Eds), Creative Writing Studies: Practice, Research and Pedagogy, Clevedon, Multilingual Matters Ltd, 117- 129.

Wikipedia (2008) Becker Entertainment, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becker_Entertainment.

Williams, F. (2007a) Documentary in the Doldrums; The Film Industry Package has Raised More Questions than it has Answered. Encore, Chatswood, NSW, Reed Business Information P/L, July, 5.

Williams, F. (2007b) Industry welcomes new rebate scheme, merger; Landmark Changes to the Screen Sector have been Welcomed. Encore, Chatswood, NSW, Reed Business Information P/L, June , 7.

Williamson, D. (2004) Documentary and Civic Culture. Metro, 143, 61-65.

Filmography/Broadcast Programs

Armstrong, G (2006) Unfolding Florence , Australia, Film Australia. Accessed 23.7.08. www.filmaust.com.au/programs/attachments/unfolding_flo_prkit.doc

Burns, K. (2002a) Mark Twain , United States, Public Broadcasting Service. Accessed 16.5.06. http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/

Cameron, K. (1993) Joh's Jury , Australia, ABC Program Sales. Accessed 20.10.09. http://www.afc.gov.au/filmsandawards/filmdbsearch.aspx?view=title&title=J URYAA

Laughren, P. (1994) Red Ted and the Great Depression , Australia, Ronin Films.

Laughren, P. and Dawson, J. (1996) The Legend of Fred Patterson , Australia, Film Australia.

Morris, E. (2003) Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara , United States, Sony Pictures Classics. Accessed 5/6/05. http://www.sonyclassics.com/fogofwar/indexFlash.html

Negus, G. (2004) Xavier Herbert. In George Negus Tonight, Sydney, ABCTV. Accessed 10/10/05. www.abc.net.au/gnt/history/Transcripts/s1224186.htm

Rubbo, M. (2005) All About Olive , Australia, Ronin Films. Accessed 11/8/09. http://www.roninfilms.com.au/feature/645.html

Steinke, N. (2003) Capricornia Country: The Legend of Xavier Herbert . In Hindsight, ABC Radio National. Accessed 11/1/08. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/hindsight/stories/2006/1746752.htm.

Bibliography

This Bibliography also applies to the script, Xavier Herbert: My Own Road .

Acland, E. (2004-5) Xavier Herbert's Mining Shadow. Unpublished.

Addie, B. and Nelson, A. (2004) National Identity in Australian Documentaries. Metro, 143, 76-80.

Avenell, J. (2006) Design for life: Unfolding Florence [The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst (2005) Gillian Armstrong's new documentary]. Metro, 150, (68)- 72.

Barnes, G. (2004) Xavier Herbert Remembered. On Line Opinion. Accessed 13.5.08. www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2746

Biederman, L. (2006) What Are Proper Responses? Hip Hop, Aesthetics, Race and Feminist Politics. philament: an online journal of the arts and culture , University of Sydney. Accessed 3.5.07 http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/publications/philament

Bodey, M. (2008) In with Lyn, just not for long. The Australian Online . Accessed 19.3.08. www.theaustralian.news.com.au .

Boland, M. and Bodey, M. (2004) Bryan Brown. Aussiewood - Australia's Leading Actors and Directors Tell How They Conquered Hollywood, Crows Nest, Allen & Unwin, 97-112.

Brown, B. (1999) A 'Houso' in Hollywood: Bryan Brown. IN McHugh, S. (Ed.), Shelter from the Storm, St Leonards, Allen & Unwin, 29-38.

Brunton, P. (2004) The Diaries of Miles Franklin, Sydney, Allen & Unwin.

Cattoni, J. (2006) Interview with Wendy Rogers about After Maeve . IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Brisbane, unpublished.

Charmaz, K. (2005) Grounded Theory in the 21st Century: Applications for Social Justice Studies. IN Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, S. Y. (Eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Ed, Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, Inc. 507-535 .

Chesterman, J. and Heather, D. (2004) 'Their Ultimate Absorption': assimilation in 1930s Australia [Paper in Colonial post, Nile, Richard (Ed.)]. JAS, Australia's Public Intellectual Forum, 81, (47)-58, 205-208.

Clancy, L. (1981) Xavier Herbert , Melbourne, La Trobe University.

Connolly, B. (2006) Billy Connolly the Official Web Site. Accessed 11.2.07. www.Billyconnolly.com

Cusack, D. (1941) Love Poems to Herbert. Sadie Herbert Collection, Brisbane, Fryer Library, Mss 83 Box 30.

De Bruyn, S. (2008a) AFI puts major focus on docos in 2008. Inside Film Magazine . Accessed 26.8.08. www.if.com.au/2008/08/26/article/AFI-puts-major-focus-on-docos-in- 2008/MQXIIQLMMO.html

De Bruyn, S. (2008b) Screen Australia gets $100m: Budget 2008. Inside Film Magazine . Accessed 14.5.08. http://www.if.com.au/2008/05/14/article/Screen-Australia-gets-100m- Budget-2008/YCSELKBIGV.html de Groen, F. (1987) Three Background Studies of Poor Fellow My Country . Notes and Furphies, 18, 29-33. de Groen, F. (1988) Xavier Herbert's Birth - The Documentary Record. IN Department of English (Ed.), Occasional Paper no. 11, Australian Defence Force Academy, University of New South Wales. de Groen, F. (1993) Xavier Herbert, journalist? Australian Literary Studies, 16:1, University of Queensland Press, 116-118. de Groen, F. (1995) Larger Than Life: A Biographical Study of Xavier Herbert. Australian Defence Force Academy, Sydney, University of New South Wales. de Groen, F. and Pierce, P. (Eds) (1992) Xavier Herbert - Episodes from Capricornia, Poor Fellow My Country and other fiction, nonfiction and letters , Brisbane, University of Queensland Press,.

Dodson, P. (1999) Lingiari - Until the Chains are Broken. IN Northern Territory University (Ed.), Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture, Darwin, Reconciliation and Social Justice Library. Accessed 5.10.07. http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/media/pressrel/CVX06/upload_ binary/cvx067.pdf;fileType%3Dapplication%2Fpdf

Garrett, P., The Honourable MA MP, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts (2009) Producer Offset review released. Dept of Environment, Heritage and the Arts. Accessed 29/4/09. http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/garrett/2009/mr20090408.html

Garrett, P., The Honourable MA MP, Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts (2008) Screen Australia Bill 2008, Second Reading Speech. Accessed 2.3.08. www.environment.gov.au/minister/garrett/2008/pubs/tr20080220a.pdf

Grindon, L. (2005) Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson. Cineaste, 30, 50-52.

Hansard (1997) Senate Proof Committee Hansard - Environment, Recreation, Communications and the Arts Legislation Committee, 27.11.1997. Accessed 3.5.08. http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/committees/s9527891.pdf

Hegedus, P. (2007) Interview about My America . IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Brisbane, unpublished.

Hegedus, P. (2008) Interview about My America II. IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Brisbane, unpublished.

Herbert, X. (1938) Lynch 'Em! The Publicist, 1 May, 2.

Herbert, X. (1959) Seven Emus, Sydney, Angus and Robertson.

Herbert, X. (1960) I Sinned Against Syntax. Meanjin, XIX:1, March, 1960, 31-35.

Herbert, X. (1960) I, the Little Widow, & the World. Meanjin, XIX:1, March, 1960, 36-48.

Herbert, X. (1960s) Tape Recording #2. Herbert Estate, unpublished.

Herbert, X. (1961) Bang Goes My O.B.E.! The Bulletin, 22.2.1961, 52.

Herbert, X. (1961) Herbert's Retort to Stephensen. The Bulletin, 29.3.1961, 52.

Herbert, X. (1961) How 'Capricornia' Was Made. The Bulletin, 8.3.1961, 51-52.

Herbert, X. (1961) Xavier Herbert. IN, National Library of Australia (Ed.), Oral History Collection. Canberra, National Library of Australia. Tape 88.

Herbert, X. (1962) A Town Like Elliot. The Bulletin, 31.3.1962, 23-25.

Herbert, X. (1963 - 74) Hal Porter Letters. Hal Porter Papers, 1924-1975, Sydney, Mitchell Library, Mss 794, CY 3541, 51-54 & 61-62.

Herbert, X. (1969) Letter to Percy Trezise, unpublished.

Herbert, X. (1972) The Agony and the Joy. Overland, 50-51: Autumn 1972, 65-68.

Herbert, X. (1972) Soldiers' Women, 10 th Ed., London, Panther Books Ltd.

Herbert, X. (1975) Angus and Robertson Copyright Case. Herbert Estate, unpublished.

Herbert, X. (1975) Herbert to Hergnhan. Papers relating to Xavier Herbert: Hergenhan Collection. Brisbane, Fryer Library, Mss 203, Box 13.

Herbert, X. (1975) Poor Fellow My Country, Sydney, William Collins Publishers.

Herbert, X. (1976) Me and the Monarchy. Sadie Herbert Collection, Fryer Library, Mss 83, Box 60.

Herbert, X. (1976) Xavier Herbert talks about his first journey to Darwin in 1927. Papers relating to Xavier Herbert: Hergenhan Collection. Brisbane, Fryer Library, Mss 203 Box 16.

Herbert, X. (1978) Essay 13. IN Ross Fitzgerald (Ed.), What it Means to be Human, Rushcutters Bay, Pergamon Press, 241-245.

Herbert, X. (1980) Reflection on Land Rights while in Darwin. Herbert Estate, unpublished.

Herbert, X. (1981) Larger Than Life, Third Ed., Melbourne, Fontana, Collins.

Herbert, X. (1983-84) Journal. Sadie Herbert Collection, Brisbane, Fryer Library, Mss 83, Box 83.

Herbert, X. (1984) As a prophet, the great satirist was a failure. Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 1 Jan, 10.

Herbert, X. (1989) Capricornia, Twenty-fifth Ed., Sydney, Angus and Robertson Publishers.

Herbert, X. (1990) South of Capricornia : short stories 1925-1934, McDougall, R. (Ed.), Melbourne, Oxford University Press.

Herbert, X. (late 1960s) His reflections at his bush camp while writing Poor Fellow My Country . Herbert Estate, unpublished.

Hergenhan, L. (1998) Summoning Xavier Herbert's Ghost [Account of correspondence between Xavier Herbert and Laurie Hergenhan over Herbert's contribution to the fiftieth issue of Overland in 1971]. Overland, 150, 56-59.

Hergenhan, L., Heseltine, H. & Herbert, X. (1988) The Making of Xavier Herbert's "Poor Fellow My Country" , Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, James Cook University.

Heseltine, H. (1973) Xavier Herbert , Melbourne, Oxford.

Heseltine, H. (1985) Xavier Herbert - Obituary. Australian Literary Studies, 12, 91 - 93.

Hetherington, J. (1962) Forty-two Faces, Melbourne, F. W. Cheshire.

Holman Jones, S. (2005) Autoethnography: Making the Personal Political. IN Denzin, N. K. and Lincoln, S. Y. (Eds), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Ed, Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications, Inc. 763-792.

Horn, J. (2008) Documentaries lose box office muscle. Los Angeles Times - online . Accessed 30.6.2008. www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-word19-2008jun19,0,5835030.story

Hinkemeyer, J. (1981) Poor Fellow My Country (Book). Library Journal, 106, 74.

Humphries, B. (2002) My Life as Me, Camberwell, Penguin Books Australia Ltd.

Kalina, P. (2008) Let it All Hang out. The Age, Melbourne. Accessed 27.11.08 http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/tv--radio/let-it-all-hang- out/2008/11/26/1227491613167.html

Karena, C. (2005) David Bradbury: Blowin' the Seeds of Dissent. Metro, 146/147, 62-65.

Keen, S. (1999) Associations in Australian History: Their Contribution to Social Capital. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 29 , 639-659.

Kipnis, J. (2004) Buyers Demand More Documentary DVDs. Billboard, 116:8, VNU eMedia, Inc. 42. Accessed 3.5.08. http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=afh&an=12281302

Krauth, N. (2002) The Preface as Exegesis. Linq, 29:2. Accessed 10.9.07. http://search.informit.com.au.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/fullText;dn=20030173 6;res=APAFT

Laughren, P. (2008) Debating Australian documentary production Policy: Some Practitioner Perspectives. Media International Australia, Incorporating Culture and Policy , 129, University of Queensland, 116-128.

Lowenstein, R. (2008) Response to the Screen Australia Draft Guidelines. IN Screen Australia (Ed.). Accessed 3.11.08. www.screenaustralia.gov.au/new_directions/DPG/DPG_081103.asp

Maddox, G. (2006) Luhrmann's never, never epic begins to take shape. Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney. Accessed 24.12.06. http://newsstore.smh.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac?multiview=true&sy=sm h&page=1&kw=Luhrmann%27s+never%2C+never+epic+begins+to+take+sh ape&pb=smh&dt=selectRange&dr=5years&so=relevance&sf=article&rc=10 &rm=200&sp=nrm&clsPage=1&hids=&sids=SMH061123OV5AU2764VJ

Marcus, C. (2008) The Future of TV is Online. Home Entertainment: Digital Life, The Age Online , Melbourne. Accessed 4.11.08. www.theage.com.au/news/digital-life/home-entertainment/articles/the-future- of-tv-is-online/2008/11/03/1225560692891.html

Mayer, S. (2007) Films: Shut Up and Sing. Sight and Sound, 17:8, 78. Accessed 4.11.07. IIPA Full Text International Index of Performing Arts

McDougall, R. (2000a) Xavier Herbert: Prince of Australian Writers? Notes and Furphies, 43, Oct 2000, 24.

McDougall, R. (2000b) Capricornia: The Bastard Son. Notes and Furphies, 43, Oct 2000, 25-27.

McDougall, R. (2002) Preface to 'The Ape Men of Mobongo'. Papers (Victoria Park, WA) , 12:3, 5-18.

McLaren, J. (1981) Xavier Herbert's 'Capricornia' and 'Poor Fellow My Country' , Essays in Australian Literature, Melbourne, Shillington House.

Mason, M. S. (1998) The Difficult Genius of Frank Lloyd Wright. Christian Science Monitor, 90:241, B6. Accessed 5.9.07. http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=afh&AN=1244431&site=ehost-live

Moore, S. (2008) Comments received Sunday 21 September - Draft Statement of Intent 2008/09. IN Screen Australia (Ed.), Statement of Intent - Comments. Accessed 28.9.08. www.screenaustralia.gov.au/about_us/corp_info/DSOI_080921.asp

Moran, A., Shoesmith, B. and O'Regan, T. (1987) On "the Back of Beyond" Interview with Ross Gibson. The Australian Journal of Media and Culture, 1:1.

Nichols, B. (2001) Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.

Nichols, B. (2003) The memory of loss. Film Quarterly, 56:4, 2. Accessed 6.4.08. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=982931211&Fmt=7&clientId=14394& RQT=309&VName=PQD

North, M. (2001) Yarn Spinners: A Story in Letters - Dymphna Cusack, Florence James, Miles Franklin, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press.

Paatsch, L. (2006) Unfolding Florence. Herald Sun, Melbourne. Accessed 4.9. 2007. http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?d irect=true&db=anh&AN=200608241I06991212&site=ehost-live

Paget, D. (1990) True stories? documentary drama on radio, screen, and stage, Manchester, Manchester University Press.

Reid, R. (1982) Playboy Interview Xavier Herbert. Playboy Magazine , 33-39, 129- 135.

Richards, D. (1984) Herbert returns to his beloved Territory. Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 18.9.84, 2.

Richards, D. (1985) Me and My Shadow. The National Times, Fairfax, Melbourne, 25-31 January, 20-22.

Rosenthal, A. (1999.) Why docudrama?: fact-fiction on film and TV, Carbondale, Ill., Southern Illinois University Press.

Ross, R. L. (1989) Xavier Herbert's Poor Fellow My Country: In Search of an American Audience. Journal of Popular Culture, 23, 55 - 62. Accessed 23.4.07. http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb? did=1692017&Fmt=7&clientId=14394&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Rothwell, N. (2008) PM seizes vision of social renaissance. The Australian online. Accessed 24.7.2008. http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/yoursay/index.php/theaustralian/comm ents/pm_seizes_vision_of_social_renaissance/

Rubbo, M. (1999) The Man Behind the Picture: An Interview with Mike Rubbo. IN Burton and Caputo (Eds), second take - australian film-makers talk, 1st ed., St Leonards, NSW, Allen & Unwin, 193-214.

Rubbo, M. (2001) A Bard in the Hand? - An Interview with Mike Rubbo. IN Frontline , PBS. Accessed 9.7.05. www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/muchado/

Said, E. (1978) Orientalism, London, Vintage Books.

Sansom, B. (2006) Looter of the Dreamings: Xavier Herbert and the Taking of Kaijek's Newsong Story. Oceania, 76, 83-104. Accessed 7.8.07. http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=anh&AN=20817073&site=ehost-live

Saunders, S. (1999) Another Dimension: Xavier Herbert in the Northern Territory. Journal of Australian Studies, 26, 52-65.

Shore, H. (2008) Audiences Prove It: Docos Put Bums on Seats. Encore , Chatswood, NSW, Reed Business Information P/L, 28:11 .

Stephensen, P. R. (1961) "How I Edited 'Capricornia'". The Bulletin , March 15, 33-4.

Stephenson, P. (2002) Billy, Melbourne, Harper Collins Publishers, Compass Press Large Print Book Series; an imprint of ISIS Publishing Ltd.

Stephenson, P. (2003) Brave Mouth: Living with Billy Connolly, London, Headline Book Publishing.

Stone, S. (2003) Interview: Errol Morris discusses his directing effort, "The Fog of War". All Things Considered , 1. Accessed 19.3.07. http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=51 9394111&Fmt=7&clientId=14394&RQT=309&VName=PQD

Trezise, P. J. (1969) Quinkan Country - Adventures in Search of Aboriginal Cave Paintings in Cape York, Sydney, Melbourne, Wellington, Auckland, A. H. & A. W. Reed.

Walker, R. and Walker, H. (1986) Curtin's Cowboys, North Sydney, Allen & Unwin.

Walker, S. (2003) Romancer and Anatomist: Sean Monahan - a long and winding road. Australian Book Review. Accessed 13.6.06. http://home.vicnet.net.au/~abr/Sept03/Walker.htm

Willey, K. (1974) Assignment New Guinea, Brisbane, Jacaranda Press Pty Ltd.

Williams, L. (2005) Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary. IN Rosenthal, A. & Corner, J. (Eds), New Challenges for Documentary, Second Ed., Manchester, Manchester University Press, 59-75.

Winton, T. (1994) According to Tim Winton. Eureka Street, 4:7, 20-25. Accessed 23.4.07. http://search.informit.com.au.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/fullText;dn=95010055 9;res=APAFT

Yu, U. (2007) Xavier Herbert. IN Birns, Nicholas and McNeer (Eds), A Companion to Australian Literature, New York, Boydell & Brewer Inc., 335-345.

Zetlin, L. and Carroll, C. (2008) Interview about Gulliver Media. IN Rogers, W. (Ed.), Brisbane, unpublished.

Films and Television and Radio Programs

ABC (2008) Screen Australia hopes to revitalise Australian film industry. 7.30 Report (ABC), Australia, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 11.6.09. Accessed 12.6.09. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url,cookie, uid&an=P6S225538570508&db=anh&scope=site&site=ehost

Burns, K. (2004) Unforgivable Blackness: the Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson , USA, PBS Home Video.

Connolly, B. (1996) Billy Connolly's World Tour of Australia , London, Harper Collins Audio Books.

Cutler, R.J. (2009) September Issue , US, Madman.

Dahan, O. (2007) La Vie en Rose , France, Icon Film Distribution.

Fontaine, A. (2009) Coco Avant Chanel , France, Roadshow.

Gabrielsson, J. and Thornton, W. (2007) Dark Science , Australia, FFC, SBS.

Gallacher, L. (2009) Australian Classics: Xavier Herbert's Capricornia. IN Koval, R. (Ed.), The Book Show, Sydney, Australian Broadcasting Corporation - Radio National. Accessed 7.9.2009. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2010/2782846.htm

Greenfield-Sanders, L. (2005) Ghosts of Grey Gardens , Distinction Series, USA, Shock.

Kahn, L. (2003) My Architect. USA, Louis Khan Projects Inc, Hopscotch.

Kotow, J. W. (2002) Xavier Herbert Letters - a Review. The Book Show , ABC Radio National. Accessed 2.4.06. http://www.abc.net.au/farnorth/stories/s706169.htm

Maysles, D., Maysles, A., Hodve, E., Meyer, M. (1976) Grey Gardens , Distinction Series, USA, Shock.

Miller, B. (2005 ) Capote , USA, Sony Pictures.

Rubbo, M. (1999) The Man Who's Still Going , Australia, ABCTV.

Rubbo, M. (2001b) Much Ado About Something , Australia, ABCTV.

Tyrnauer, M. (2009) Valentino, The Last Emperor , Italy, Acolyte Films.

Van Splunteren, Bram (2008) Iggy Pop: Lust for Life , Holland, Other Cinema.

Creative Component: Script

Xavier Herbert

My Own Road

71 131

Appendix A

Permissions and Ethical Clearances

Bluett, Mike Chapman, Mark Clothier, Sue Hamlyn, Mark Laughren, Pat Lloyd James, Andy MacKinnon, Susan Rubbo, Michael Thomson, Katherine Curtis Brown RE: Herbert Estate

132

"Xavier Herbert"

Statement of consent

By signing below, you are indicating that you: have read and understood the information document regarding this project have had any questions answered to your satisfaction understand that if you have any additional questions you can contact the research team understand that you can contact the Research Ethics Officer on 3138 2340 or [email protected] if you have concerns about the ethical conduct of the project agree to participate in the project with the right to view and have input into your comments Name_g~~£g-_Tt ...... Sign•:: .tt~~;:;.- 133

"Xavier Herbert"

Statement of consent

Name _ Tri\./f1 _ Signature --~- ~ -h-"----- Date __j-4:

134

-L...... =-C~O=N=S~EN=T=F=O~R~M=f=o=r=Q-U~T=R=E=S=E=A=R=C=H=P_R=O=J=E=C=T====:I "Xavier Herbert"

c:a~tem nt -of consent

By signing below, you are indicating that you: have read and understood the information document regarding this project have had any questions answered to your satisfaction understand that if you have any additional questions you can contact the research team understand that you can contact the Research Ethics Officer on 3138 2340 or [email protected] if you hffiLe concem5_ about the ethical conduct of the proj~ct agree to participate in the project with the right to view and have input into your comments

Sign::: ===~~:~-:_r:-~-::;~:-:-··--·-----=-(]_o,....:::..-=:...:_rn_.!._ _:__._ _:__rq=+·-·--=------_-_-_-_- _-_-_-_-_-.. -.----·------···~~~------~~~-·- Date I __ _f.______I -·_q_f_ ___ ·-··-···--

135

QUT CONSENT FORM for QUT RESEARCH PROJECT

"Xavier Herbert"

Statement of consent

By signing below, you are indicating that you : have read and understood the information document regarding this project have had any questions answered to your satisfaction understand that if you have any additional questions you can contact the research team understand that you can contact the Research Ethics Officer on 3138 2340 or eth [email protected] if you have concerns about the ethical conduct of the project agree to participate in the project 136

. _...... """-'-= c~o_N_S_E_N_T~F..;....;O_R.....:.IVI_, ·_f.o_r ;.:..Q~lJ...;.T_. R_E..;....;S..;....;E_A_;.R~C..;....;H_.;P..;....;, R..;....;O_;..;J'"'-E'-C...;.T_.•·,•· = ,__.;;j<: I

"Xavier Herbert"

Statement of consent

By signing below, you are indicating that you: have read and understood the information document regarding this project have had any questions answered to your satisfaction understand that if you have· any additional questions you can contact the research team understand that you can contact the Research Ethics Officer on 3138 2340 or [email protected] if you have concerns about the ethical conduct of the project "::~:~_:x~;· :r.. :.~F?,_,..-...__ _ Signature J___ --'1-·-tH- -"\Y------"-'------·------ Date ___.::1 ____ I ---~--- I -~?_LQ __ 137

Statement of consent

By signing below, you are indicating that you: have read and understood the information document regarding this project have had any quest1ons answered to your satisfaction / understand that if you have any additional questions you .,an contact the research team

·~·. understand that you can contact the Research Ethics Officer on 3138 2340 or,@[email protected]~.al!jf . you have concerns about the ethical condi.Jct of the project · agree to pficipate in the project .J' Name Signature ······-········ ·······-·--· .. ···------t-- Date 138

CONSENT FORM for QUT RESEARCH PROJECT

"Xavier Herbert"

Statement of consent

Name _S~slr~t ...... ~~~ - ~~~~-···· ··-- ·-····--· -·- Signature ___

_ii-.___ _CONSENT__ FORM for QUT RESEARCH PROJECT "Xavier Herbert"

Statement of consent

By signing below, you are indicating that you:

have read and understood the information document regarding this project

have had any questions answered to your satisfaction

understand that if you have any additional questions you can contact the research team

understand that you can contact the Research Ethics Officer on 3138 2340 or [email protected] if you have concerns about the ethical conduct of the project

Name

Signature

Date 140

"Xavier Herbert"

Statement of consent

By signing below, you are indicating that you : have read and understood the information document regarding this project have had any questions answered to your satisfaction understand that if you have any additional questions you can contact the research team understand that you can contact the Research Ethics Officer on 3138 2340 or [email protected] if you have concerns about the ethical conduct of the project

agree to participate in the project _ . • .. , - 1 ~ • ~ -+o ~ .. ~•,..r-A:.. ~ ~.,..,___~ Name ...... ~~l - - ~ ---~ -~~ --- Signature ...... ~ ~ - ~<2. - ~ ... C..... ~ ---·· ········ ·········· Date --····-- -'- - ~ ____ _Q_~ .. _Q _ · -~---- 141

Agreement

between

FranMoore

Acting for Curds Brown (Australia) Pty Ltd of

Paddington,

Sydney,

New South Wales,

Literary Agents for Robyn Pill

and

Wendy Rogers of

2n.2 Daventry St

West End

Brisbane,

Queensland, 4101.

142

Agreement

This agreement recognises that the Herbert Estate contains materials written under the names of Xavier Herbert, Alfred Herbert and Herbert Astor it also contains sound recordings of Xavier Herbert and Sadie Herbert and letters written by Sadie Herbert. These materials are owned by Robyn Pill and managed by Curtis Brown (Australia) Pty Ltd.

This written agreement is to grant permission for the use of materials in the Herbert Estate to Wendy Rogers for educational purposes pursuant to her study at Queensland University of Technology.

The study involves a written documentary film script on the life ofXavier Herbert and an academic piece which contextualises the script.

The materials from the Herbert Estate that will be used for this study include excerpts from: • Letters written by Xavier Herbert and Sadie Herbert Creative works, published and unpublished • Articles published in journals, magazines and newspapers • Unpublished Articles.

Wendy Rogers undertakes to use these materials exclusively for the study and to not publish the results of the study containing materials in the Herbert Estate without further agreement.

Wendy Rogers will deliver a copy of the documentary film script and the academic piece which contextualises the script on completion of the work to Curtis Brown (Aust) Pty Ltd, P 0 Box 19, Paddington NSW 2021.

The parties hereto have executed this Agreement on the day first hereinbefore written. ~A#J~ Fran Moore, Date Acting for Curtis Brown (Australia) Pty Ltd '/.:?.·

143

Appendix B

Pitch Document (By the author for Mark Hamlyn, then Executive Producer for Film Australia, November, 2004.) 144

Writer’s Statement (By the author for documentary Producer, Mark Chapman, March, 2006.) 148

Proposal for Billy Connolly (By the author, March, 2007.) 151

Proposal (By the author for Sue Clothier, Head of TV Factual, Screenworld, August, 2007.) 161

Four-part Series Idea (By the author for Sue Clothier, December, 2007.) 165

Story Arc (By the author for Sue Clothier, December, 2007.) 175

Final Journey Structure: Points of intersection between this journey and earlier parts of Herbert’s life. (By the author for Mike Bluett, February, 2008.) 178 144

Xavier Herbert An Inner Biography Documentary, 52 mins.

Xavier Herbert is the most controversial figure of Australian literature. Twenty years after his death in 1984, experts are still arguing the merits of his work. Strong terms are used from botcher to genius. People who knew him are also still at odds. He is a compassionate man or an outright bully. This documentary looks inside the writer of Australia's Magnum Opus, Poor Fellow My Country , to discover what drove him to write the hairs off his arms.

Born Alfred Jackson in 1901 in Geraldton on the Northwestern outskirts of Australia, Herbert is the illegitimate son of a steam engine driver, his mother, the daughter of a goldminer. Alfred grows up in the shadow of two beautiful older half-siblings, the runt with uncertain paternity. He is straining to be noticed within his family, a recurring theme throughout his life as a writer. His mother, Amy Herbert (she marries Ben Herbert 17 years after Alfred's birth) is also the granddaughter of a convict, a fact well hidden by her own snobbish pretensions to being 'descended from a gentleman'. He paints her on the one hand as rarely being loving toward him yet on the other as inspiring him with her highly dramatic, self-aggrandised and humorous personal style. And the diminutive Alfred is so different to his father, the excellent horseman, the man's man, the heroic engine driver, that his own suspicions of another, absent father, fed by rumours of his illegitimacy, are ground deep within his psyche.

145

Until he is ten years old Alfred spends his childhood in a very remote part of Western Australia, Geraldton, and near the railway siding of Middle Junction, just east of Perth. In the pale, sandy scrub surrounding their dirt-floor house, Herbert grows up half wild with few social boundaries. With his deep-seated low self-image, a growing hatred of a family that gives mainly negative attention (for his 'making up stories') and seriously missing a father figure, he creates a world of his own. He explores wide- eyed the bush and spies on the camps of dislocated Indigenous people.

He finally attains recognition from his family by successfully qualifying as a chemist. However, it is not long before he leaves that path to become a professional writer. His family follows him to the East but by 1927, Herbert escapes to the Far North to claim his fate, which, he decides, is to become the Great Australian Writer. This is his first test of physical endurance. He walks across arid West Queensland through to the Northern Territory, sleeping under bushes in the heat of the day, jumps trains and some say he jumps a plane, to reach his destination: the virgin story lands of Australia's Deep North, the lawless edge of society. Here he gathers experience that feeds his work for decades.

Throughout his life as a writer, he demonstrates again and again how permanently patterns were imprinted on him in childhood. He is self-deprecating, insulting and hilarious. His dramatic sense of humour, rough and from the bush, is often misunderstood. His books are dotted with the boy searching for a missing father and women who are controlling and harsh. In his life he has been described as mistrustful, socially shy, charming, witty and very needy. And as he takes up this fateful role he throws himself deeply into friendships with people who help him along the way like Inky (P. R.) Stephenson, Nugget Coombs, Percy Trezise, Arthur Dibley, Ian Mudie to name a few and often falls out with them just as deeply - everything heart-felt and relating to his great task (of writing the Great Australian Novel).

Undoubtedly, the most constant and important person for Herbert is his life-partner of forty-seven years, Sadie Norden. Although Sadie is not highly educated she is integral to Xavier achieving his goal. His books are her children. In 1930, Sadie, a Jewish cockney returning to London after leaving a failed marriage is sailing on the Esperance Bay. Alfred is also leaving Australia with a swag of short stories he has 146 written and a manuscript of a never-to-be-published novel, Black Velvet . They have a wild shipboard romance and Sadie decides that this writer, this Colonial Lair will be hers to love and nourish (and manage) for the rest of her life. Alfred (now writing short stories as A. X. Herbert) is less convinced of the importance of their relationship, yet he returns to her again and again while in England where he lives poorly, trying to attract a publisher for his work. She assists him in rewriting his original, providing him with a garret and food and guarding his door from intruders.

In London, as his first novel develops, along with his relationship with Sadie, she convinces him to change the style of his writing. "If you could only write the way you talk, the way you tell me stories," she says to Herbert who is in the habit of telling his tall stories as a meal ticket.

By the time he returns to Australia in 1932, Xavier Herbert has recreated himself. In London he has refused an offer to publish Black Velvet . The publisher wants to edit out 'what was considered to be offensively Australian'. This is not what Xavier has in mind for his work. He is surprisingly adamant about that. The book isn't published, but is rewritten to become Capricornia , which is finally published six years later.

Throughout his rocky career, Xavier Herbert has many obstacles to overcome. Capricornia (1938) is his first great success, winning the Australian Sesquicentennial Prize for writing and the Australia Literature Society's Gold Medal (1940). But it has a mixed reception. H. G. Wells sees it as a masterpiece, propelling it on to the world's bookshelves, while Brian Penton calls it a botch-up. Two extreme points of view reflecting Herbert's own extremes in his work and in his life. Success goes to his head and he starts on another life-long career of seducing women. At the same time he is writhing in torment, trying to write his next great book.

He produces a number of lesser works, which also take many years to complete and publish. He is developing new writing techniques during this period and also developing his resistance to the editing of his work. It becomes a publicised passion during his infamous brawl with P. R. Stephenson, the publisher of Capricornia , in the pages of the Bulletin in 1961. Stephenson has claimed editorship of Capricornia, a claim that Herbert energetically denies: "He didn't put a pencil to my manuscript. … 147 an author who does not strive to become independent of editorship is a hack." And Herbert is a " … professional imaginator," Stephenson replies.

It is his early training in successfully overcoming failure and ridicule and the nurturing role of Sadie that assists him through the years of struggle until the publication of Poor Fellow My Country in 1975, the largest book ever written in the English language. He wins the Miles Franklin Award, receives two Honorary Doctorates and attains great personal influence.

Herbert is a dramatist and an enigma to the end. After a lifetime of public performance to the cameras (he appears many times on television) he constructs his own funeral service to take place in Alice Springs. At his behest, only close friends attend and cameras are banned. Xavier is buried with the tribal ceremony of friends from Darwin so long ago, with the ashes of his precious Sadie and in the heart of his country quietly and for the first time without drama.

 Wendy Rogers, 2004.

148

Writer's Statement Xavier Herbert (1901 – 1984) Documentary, 52 Min

It has been over twenty years since Xavier Herbert's death in 1984 yet he is still on the cultural map. Australian writer, self-confessed “wild colonial lair”, genius and botcher, Herbert's well-documented and controversial life spanned the 20 th Century. Since 1998 three books have been published on Herbert: • Xavier Herbert by Francis Degroen (1998), a biography, • Xavier Herbert: letters edited by Francis Degroen and Laurie Hergenhen (2002), an expansive collection of his letters dating from 1929 to 1979, • a long and winding road by Sean Monahan (2003), a critique of Herbert's work reviewing its place in Australian literature. These books represent a resurgence of interest in Herbert and the significance of his work, as the 1970s Australian cultural renaissance is reviewed.

This increase in the perceived importance of his work makes this documentary on Xavier Herbert timely and pertinent to Australian audiences. Furthermore, Herbert’s estate, the largest collection of manuscripts of any Australian writer, holds significant research opportunities. But most the most important aspect to this story is the investigation into Xavier Herbert himself - the extreme anomalies of his personality. Herbert is hilarious, indignant, bullying, sexist, loving, revered and hated. He lives mostly as a hermit in the latter part of his life and has little contact with the mainstream, yet he comes out of seclusion to promote his works with a fully- constructed public persona. He has an uncompromising personal style which puts him outside the norms and niceties of society, revealing a side of human nature that is fascinating, absorbing and unusually well-documented in his own journals and letters.

In this documentary we investigate Herbert’s life, visiting his stormy relationships with his family and almost everybody he encounters, and the deep dependency he has on his life partner, Sadie. He ‘writes out’ the fascination he has with his uncertain origins, something he has been vaguely aware of since childhood. Xavier was not officially recognized by his father, Ben Herbert. On his birth certificate he is Alfred 149

Jackson, and his father is the mysterious John Jackson, presumably, a previous partner of his mother, Amy Scammell. The search for belonging drives the narrative of the bookends of his works, Capricornia and Poor Fellow My Country ( PFMC ) and engulfs his life with a crippling effect.

As a result he is fascinated with the human condition, especially his own, and goes to great lengths to examine his own species through endless self-reflection and analysis. His journal, which he starts in 1940, and a profusion of letters provide insight into his motivations and in particular, for this documentary, the motivation to write his later work, Poor Fellow My Country , the ‘Great Australian Novel’ and the longest book ever written in a European language.

The examination of Xavier Herbert’s internal struggles with life parallels that of other successful documentary subjects, most notably, Robert McNamara, in Fog of War . Director, Errol Morris elaborates: “What I find fascinating is his struggle. Here is a man who is clearly struggling with himself and trying to understand who he was, who he is today, the nature of what he did and why he did it. And that is a noble inquiry – certainly a fascinating and powerful inquiry.” Morris’ emphasis is not on the truth of what McNamara said, but in the human endeavour to search for some truth. This is what Herbert looks for in his public and his private writing: what makes the world go round and what is my part in this?

The huge amount of material written by Herbert about Herbert makes the use of his testimonials an obvious device. Nobody writes as well about Herbert as Herbert himself. This is what Dayton Duncan, co-writer and co-producer, also found when researching the life of Mark Twain for the documentary, Mark Twain : “Twain crowded everybody else out. He crowded out the wonderful narrations, sometimes, that I had written …. just because his voice, once it kicks in, sucks the oxygen out of the room.”

Herbert’s words are equally powerful.

150

He has many first-hand experiences of life, similar to Twain in America, and takes on the themes of life on the Australian frontier as his own, spending many years as a young adult mixing with the hoy-poloy on the fringes. It is a safe place for him to be. Herbert is a rough character, a stranger to the literary debates and social conventions. He is often nasty, embarrassingly overweening and treacherous. It is a wonder that he produces these classic books at all. He goes to great lengths to reach a place from where he can do that. He runs and writes for days on end. He abstains from society and sex. All that is left is his passion for his country and his need to belong. It is this passion, his most successful theme, that propels Xavier to rise above his own existence to create some of the most vivid and compelling reflections ever written. For Herbert, writing is not a profession it is “the means of outlet for the full blood of his peculiar imagination.”

151

152

153

Quotes from Xavier Herbert

Writers are all bums. Writing, after all, is just a neurotic form of expression.

I don't believe in any political party but I do believe in my species. I think we're the wonder of the universe as far as we know and if there's anything more wonderful we'll get hold of it and take it off them. We are very clever people. I do love being a human being. I'm glad I wasn't born a donkey. And I shall die in the joy of being a human being even if humanity is in chaos.{Herbert, 1975 #82}

Until we give back to the black man just a bit of the land that was his, and give it without provisos, without strings to snatch it back, without anything but complete generosity of spirit in concession for the evil we have done him - until we do that, we shall remain what we have always been so far, a people without integrity, not a nation, but a community of thieves.

I'm suspicious of everybody and especially myself. {Herbert, 1975 #82}

Xavier Herbert, Darwin, 1980 154

Xavier Herbert (1 90 1- 1984) Documentary

From humble beginnings on an outpost ofNorth-western Australia to international literary figure: haunted by his past, controversial writer, Xavier Herbert, grapples with his inner demons Xavier and life partner, Sadie at the launch of Poor Fellow My Country, 1975. to write the Great Australian Novel.

Xavier Herbert is the most controversial writer in Australian history. He is hilarious, indignant, bullying, sexist, loving, revered and hated. He has an uncompromising personal style which puts him outside the social norms and splits the opinions of critics. Yet he contributed to Australian culture for most of the Twentieth Century. This documentary looks inside·the writer of two prize-winning classics, Poor Fellow My Country (1975) and Capricornia (1937), to discover what drove him to 'write the 1 hairs off his arms' •

The documentary follows Herbert's footsteps from where he is born in Geraldton in Western Australia to the Eastern states, to Darwin, England, Far North Queensland and A lice Springs. Throughout his life Herbert has intriguing modes of travel: he jumps the rattler (where your eo-travellers might be a mob of sheep), hitches rides, travels by sea and eventually sets up a solar-powered camping vehicle. This is a cultural travelogue offering the audience the opportunity to examine the places he loved, the landscapes he wrote and his relationships with the people in his life, in particular his troubled relationship with his father.

Sadie Herbert, Xavier's life partner, is ever present in this story. She meets Herbert on his way to England ('you had to go to England if you had any talent') when she is returning home from a failed marriage. After a great shipboard romance with Xavier,

1 While writing his unpublished manuscript, Black Velvet, in London in 1931, Herbert says he wrote so furiously he wore the hairs off his arms.

155

the self confessed wild colonial lair, Sadie puts him in a London garret and makes sure he is fed while he writes the first draft of Capricornia. Without her, he would never have produced this prize-winning work or any others.

Another key person in Herbert' s life is Percy Trezise, adventurer and pilot. Percy has everything Herbert could want in a friendship: a love of the bush, of flying and a dramatic sense of humour. By the late 1950s, Herbert has not matched the success of Capricornia, producing only a slow trickle of less successful novels. Their relationship is the catalyst that inspires Herbert to write The Great Australian Novel. Through scrutinising this rockY. friendship (all Herbert's relationships are rocky) the story dips back to a similar, earlier relationship Herbert has in the 1930s with P. R. Stephensen, fellow ratbag and publisher of Capricornia. A pattern emerges. Herbert is volatile and demanding, and when his idealised vision of these men is threatened, Herbert turns on them with stinging spite. To find the source of this flaw, the story dips back further into Xavier's past.

Xavier is a critic of Australian society. This is his main and most successful theme. But when he is in his fifties he acknowledges that a lot of his writing comes out of his uncertain feelings toward his own father and toward fatherhood in general. In his autobiographical novel, Disturbing Element, Xavier portrays himself as an unwanted child whose birth forces the involuntary union of his parents. He is born under a cloud of confusion and innuendo. His parents do not marry until little Alfred, as he is named, is 16 years old, but that is not the only Xavier Herbert pearl diving, 1927. reason he is labelled a bastard and not the only source of confusion. Xavier has two fathers - Ben Herbert, with whom Xavier could never relate, and another, very mysterious, shadowy man, John Jackson, named on his birth certificate.

At the end of his career Herbert writes Australia's Magnum Opus, the longest book ever written in a European language, Poor Fellow My Country (half as long again as

156 the Old and New Testament and much longer than War and Peace ). PFMC and his other classic, Capricornia are highly innovative. They depart from traditional notions of form and style and come from what Herbert calls his “deep purpose”. Xavier’s work comes out of and is part of his life. It is a way of making sense of life for himself and for his audience.

In writing about Australia, a country that clings to England while misusing its Indigenous custodians, Herbert’s interpretation of his world is heightened by his early personal experience. The story teases out the interplay between childhood experience and creative sensitivity – what it is to be human. This documentary is not only an investigation of Xavier Herbert; it is a journey of discovery, often hilarious and sometimes confronting, into what connects us to Herbert’s passion.

 Wendy Rogers, 2007. 157

Quotes from Xavier Herbert

While it is the ‘Land of your Destiny’, as a place to live in & to write in, its mass is the very substance of my being. Letter: Xavier Herbert to Patrick White, 11.2.79.

I'm suspicious of everybody and especially myself.

Xavier Herbert, Darwin, 1980 158

Xavier Herbert

Documentary Series 4 x 26 min

This documentary series is a trip around Australia following the footsteps of the most controversial public figure of the 20 th Century: the irascible writer, Xavier Herbert. It investigates what drove Herbert to write his two Australian Classics: Capricornia (1937/8) and Poor Fellow My Country (1975), the largest book ever written in a European language. Well known republican, Greg Barnes, sets out on a trek that spans the country from Geraldton, WA, to Darwin, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Redlynch and London and finally to Alice Springs. The documentary uses reflections from the presenter, readings from Herbert’s work and letters, images and textures of the places Herbert loved and interviews with the people who knew him and his work to recreate Herbert’s life. Throughout the series Herbert’s reconstructed voice pushes its way through to the foreground to give his opinions and thoughts. The passion and force of his words is unparalleled with his well-honed literary talent drawing us in to his story.

The backbone of the story is a journey lead by a presenter, someone like Greg Barnes, republican and journalist, as he inquires into Herbert’s life: how and why did Herbert write such a huge book, his Magnum Opus, Poor Fellow My Country ? The presenter brings the historical content of the story into the present. Barnes has a long association with the republican movement and a particular interest in Herbert’s work. He could bring a contemporary understanding to Herbert and how his writing and passion relates to us. The quest spans most of the 20th Century, both World Wars, the Great Depression, the literary world, Indigenous Land Rights, the republican movement and the ‘Spirit of the Land’.

Each of the four parts is preceded with a collage: Dancing feet raise red dust, statements of Herbert’s achievements according to Herbert and his many commentators including Professor Laurie Hergenhan, friend and academic, Frances Degroen, biographer, Sean Monahan, biographer, Professor Harry Heseltine, academic and biographer, Dr Russell McDougall, biographer, Speedy McGinness and Mim Morely, members of Herbert’s adoptive Aboriginal family and our presenter, 159 republican and writer, Greg Barnes. Xavier Herbert won the Sesqui-Centenary Prize for Literature in 1938, the Gold Medal for Literature in 1940, the Miles Franklin Award in 1976 and two doctorates.

‘There has never been a book like Poor Fellow My Country that conveys such a complex and illuminating picture of a whole culture.’

‘It places Herbert as the greatest writer of landscape Australia has produced, his narrative passages of imaginative force and vividness rarely equalled in Australian literature.’

The opening sequence ends with the dancing feet and a woman’s voice saying, “We came to say ‘mummuk’ to our uncle’s brother.”

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Part 1: The Writer Part one starts during Xavier Herbert’s unfruitful years between the two big books. It is 1950. At this time he was suffering from writers block and a frustrating form of cultural alienation. Herbert had a writing camp on Black Mountain, near his home in Redlynch, North Queensland. At a similar, recreated camp the presenter reads from Herbert’s journals and letters, sitting on a folding chair at a table with a loaded typewriter, under an awning stretching out from the 4wheel drive vehicle in a scrubby paddock. A horse looks on. Photographs of Sadie and Herbert. The camp tells a lot about Herbert: his need for solitude and love of the bush, and it was just a half-hour run to Sadie, his life partner, manager and confidant. Feet running through the bush: Herbert runs for inspiration – to clear his head. He also abstains from sex (while he is writing) believing this energy to be a vital ingredient for his creativity.

Herbert loved the horse which listened without complaint to everything he had to say. Herbert was known for his ability to talk unceasingly for long periods. His voice starts one such monologue that will resurface throughout the documentary as if he hasn’t taken a breath. The horse listens to his theory of life’s destiny, particularly that his mother treated him badly because he needed that experience to reach his full potential.

The story dips back into the past to Herbert’s childhood. The presenter is in Western Australia: a long beach with a jetty jutting into the sea. Xavier was named Alfred, he was from a working class family, his father a train driver, his mother a goldminer’s daughter. The presenter takes us on to Melbourne, where Herbert first decides to write about the frontiers of Australian life, and re-enacts parts of Herbert’s first great overland trek to Darwin. On his way the presenter meets with people who knew Xavier. There is a wide range of opinions about Herbert from sceptical to loving, focussed, intelligent, inspiring, funny and scathing.

Using interviews and newspaper reports, the presenter creates a picture of Darwin, 1927, where Herbert gathers material from the pulsating, multicultural community that will feed his first Great Australian Novel. A ship is ploughing through deep seas. He leaves Australia for England with his growing manuscript under his arm and meets Sadie Norden on the ship. They have a great shipboard romance.

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The plot of our story returns to the fifties. The presenter introduces Ansett pilot, Percy Trezise. An interview with Trezise: it is 1955 when the young Trezise wakes Herbert from his cultural doldrums. They head off to the bush to uncover a rich collection of Aboriginal rock art dotted throughout Cape York. The presenter is thrashing through scrub. He is with Percy’s sons and local Aboriginal elders who guide him to the places the two men found. It’s hot and hard going – they must have been fit. These ancient paintings are entrancing. They had been there so long that the pigment is 7mm deep in the rock.

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Part 2: Capricornia and Aboriginal Rights At the writer’s camp: There was a renaissance in Herbert’s writing in the late fifties- early sixties, but he doesn’t repeat his success with Capricornia . Pages of a manuscript feed a fire as Harry Heseltine talks: the books he wrote at that time, Seven Emus (1959) and Soldiers Women (1963), were exercises - practise for the next Great Australian Novel that Xavier had been dreaming of since Capricornia . Herbert’s voice: That bastard book, Capricornia .

The presenter is in a small garret in London. It is a place like this where Sadie put him up to write the first draft of Capricornia. It’s freezing. Herbert recounts ‘How I wrote Capricornia ’. Photographs of the Sadie and Herbert, a typewriter and the original manuscript of Capricornia: It is 1932 and Sadie has coaxed Herbert to write in the same way he tells his stories, and he does. It is unanimous amongst the experts: Herbert would never have published his books if Sadie (or someone like Sadie) wasn’t behind him.

The presenter introduces another character to the story: former-Communist-turned- nationalist Inky (P. R.) Stephensen, publisher. Photographs of Stephensen: the presenter visits the offices in Bond Street, Sydney, where P. R. Stephensen established his publishing company. He interviews Craig Monro about this period when Capricornia is prepared for publication the first time. Herbert and Stephensen have a notoriously stormy relationship resulting in the melting down of tons of galleys being prepared for the printing of Capricornia. Herbert flees the skulduggery he has instigated against Stephenson and his ailing company, again to the north. He jumps the rattler (and so does the presenter), hitches lifts, walks overland and catches a plane toward the end of this second epic journey north.

In Darwin Aboriginal people talk about Herbert’s stint as Acting Supervisor of the Khalin Compound, an institution integral to the dismantling of Aboriginal communities, housing the stolen generations. Visiting the site reveals that it is now an exclusive housing development, contrasting with the photographs of Sadie and Xavier and Val McGinness standing before the poorly-built wooden buildings of the compound. Herbert’s letters of the time testify to the terrible conditions of the place.

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The land surrounding Darwin is on screen. It is 1936. Herbert is outspoken, criticising government policies that have lead to such suffering. He is out of favour with authorities and spends two years eking out a living, working on the docks and mining the Lucy claim, a patch of land belonging to the McGinness family. Photographs of Xavier, Sadie and Val McGinness dissolve to the presenter visiting the area with Mim Morely, Val’s niece. Mim talks about the relationship her uncle and her family had with Xavier that would last all of his life.

Photographs and newspaper articles: the publication of Capricornia has finally gone ahead with Stephensen, now backed by the nationalist businessman, W. J. Miles. The book wins the Sesqui-Centenary Prize for Literature. Friends of Herbert’s recount the party he threw. The book is published in desperation, and at a great cost to Herbert who loses his rights to Capricornia forever.

Photographs: Dymphna Cusack, Xavier and Sadie. Fame goes to his head. When they move to Sydney, Herbert tries to leave Sadie for Cusack. Sadie knows Dymphna doesn’t have what it takes to ‘keep him’ and eventually takes him back. It is not the last time Herbert has a ‘fling’ but it’s the last time he tries to leave Sadie.

The presenter is at the camp at Black Mountain. He talks about the role P. R. Stephensen played in Herbert’s emotional life. Herbert needed more than Sadie to succeed, he needed a close male in his life as well; a total rebuilding of parental relationships. Photographs of Trezise and Herbert, Herbert in a plane with Sadie: Percy Trezise also had this role. Not only do he and Xavier have a common interest in the bush and the Indigenous heritage of the country, Trezise gives Herbert access to a passion for aviation. He lowers his age and learns to fly.

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Part 3: The Family, Masculinity, Identity and the Republic The presenter reads a story about flying that Herbert wrote in the early 60s. He heads off in a Tiger Moth as the story unfolds: it is not only about flying, it is about Herbert’s father, Ben Herbert. A man whose talents Xavier could never live up to. Ben Herbert was a master horseman. Xavier was not. “Then and there, a man's manhood was largely measured by his horsemanship.” His identity as a man is restored by learning to fly at the age of sixty: “I resolved it with mastery of that mount of all mounts for a modern man - the horse with wings, the aeroplane.”

Interviews with Degroen, Hergenhan, McDougall and Heseltine: Herbert had a lot of unstable personality traits. He was a chameleon, socially and politically. His childhood illness and family background pulled the rug from under the young Herbert’s feet and his identity was compromised.

In W. A. Degroen talks about finding Herbert’s birth certificate. Interview with West Australian researcher: Eddy Acklan has identified Jackson who was implicated in a huge goldmining scandal in 1892-3. Photographs of the Londonderry Gold Mine, newspaper articles, government records: an interview with Degroen and Acklan about Herbert’s illegitimacy and the amnesty for paternal recognition when Herbert would have found out something about his faked origins. How could Ben Herbert adopt the younger David Herbert without doing the same for Xavier?

Images of the gold rush era, newspaper headlines, photograph of Amy: This piece of legislation reflected a widespread tendency in the 19 th Century gold fields for couples not to marry.

The presenter reads from Capricornia where Norman finds out about his Aboriginal mother and his father-uncle. It is a hugely emotional and violent piece and could well be a reference to Xavier’s own confusion. But why would he keep the secret all of his life?

Archival footage of the Inauguration of the Federal Government plays over Herbert’s voice: he is born in the same year as the birth of the Commonwealth of Australia. The presenter asks a psychologist about Herbert. His strong feeling of destiny and 165 identification with the country was a replacement for the family in which he didn’t feel welcome.

Percy Trezise: “I lived seven years with that book.” Herbert is writing Poor Fellow My Country . Feet running: This time Herbert is more careful. He courts the nurturing support of Laurie Hergenhan to develop the attention of the mainstream academic world.

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Part 4: The Spirit of the Land Interview: In 1971 Percy receives the poison pen letter from Herbert. Xavier has cut him off for accepting a Churchill Scholarship. “He hated Churchill and anything British.” The presenter reads the letter. It is full of anger and heart-break. An interview with Laurie Hergenhan reveals that Herbert dealt with many of his disappointments with people in the same way. Like Stephensen when his publishing company started to fail and later, Sir Zelman Cowan when he took the knighthood, Trezise had let Xavier down.

Photographs of Xavier and Sadie at the launch of PFMC , Ken Wilder, Herbert with Billy Collins. Ken Wilder: After Collins published PFMC they wanted to enter it into the Miles Franklin Award. Sadie gives the go-ahead but ‘don’t tell him. He’ll be thrilled if it wins.’ And it does. Wilder is astounded when Herbert, at the award ceremony, abuses the ‘bunyip knights’ granting the award and the literary establishment gathered for the event, as snobs, prigs and exploiters, all in front of the whirring cameras and tape recorders. On leaving the ceremony he declared it to have been the best night he’d ever had.

Monahan: Xavier was at his best when he wrote about what he loved most: Australia and what he called the ‘Spirit of the Land’. The presenter reads from PFMC . It is a passage where Delacy, travelling overland on foot by night, sleeping under bushes by day, is returning home. He dreams of his Yalmaru. At his property near Laura, FNQ, Percy tells the story of how Xavier dreamt that a huge Aboriginal man was his Yalmaru, his spirit guide, it was so important to him that his unconscious had sent an image of an Aboriginal man to be his guide. He felt a part of the country on the one hand but knew he would never have the sense of belonging that his Aboriginal friends had.

A small baby is lying in a cot: Xavier talks about his childhood illness. He would like to think that the Aboriginal man who looked after him had ‘sung’ the ‘Spirit of the Land’ into him.

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Percy Trezise: When Sadie died Herbert paid a huge price. They had kept themselves secluded for years. Herbert was isolated. He couldn’t believe Sadie had died before him.

Mim Morley talks about Herbert’s support for their land claim in Darwin, 1980.

Feet dance in the red dust. Herbert left all of his belongings except for his 4WD which he drove to Alice Springs ‘to die in the centre of my beloved country.’ Speedy McGinness talks about visiting Xavier at his writer’s camp outside of Alice Springs. His hands are arthritic and Speedy massages them and does some typing for Xavier. Herbert dies at the home of Dr Charles Butcher. Geraldton is the place of birth on the death certificate. Dr Charles Butcher, Mim Morely, Speedy McGinness, John McHugh, Pat Dodson and a handful of others attend the funeral. No cameras and no press are present. Ti- tree leaves and paperbark are used for ceremony. The house of Dr Butcher is smoked to let Herbert’s spirit free.

 Wendy Rogers, 2007. 168

Story Arc

Great Australian writer, Xavier Herbert, overcomes life’s obstacles to write the Great Australian Novel, twice.

Throughout his working life Herbert has a preoccupation with his own inner workings as a creative genius. His thoughts are documented through his letters, his creative writing and a journal which he commenced writing at the age of thirty-nine.

His early short stories and first novel, Capricornia , often follow the search of the male character for his father and his identity. This is in direct parallel to Herbert’s life: an obsession. Herbert has basic and tragic insecurities resulting from his early childhood illness, the absence of proof of paternity of a birth certificate, rumours of his illegitimacy and his father’s later inability to legally claim Xavier as his own child.

Herbert develops a ‘need’ theory to explain life, particularly his own. In this theory he states that everybody unconsciously recognises the needs of others and treats them accordingly. He sees that his family treated him as they did (in not appreciating his genius). For example he writes: “my brother would be compelled to drive me away because my love for him isn't good for me.” He ponders life as a matter of destiny. Likewise he writes to Sadie that his ‘horsing about’ (with women) ‘meant nothing except experience for my wisdom to be.’ A little like the biographical subject of My Architect (2006), Herbert is incapable of living within the strictures of society. However, his theory of destiny is later tempered with a more responsible approach to life.

Herbert is the irascible, unfaithful, chameleon unable to negotiate society without the assistance of his wife and manager, Sadie Norden. Yet, by the time he writes his second great classic, Poor Fellow My Country , the main character, Prindy, is self- assured and following his own road. The book is deemed to be ‘a complex and illuminating picture of a whole culture’: an Australian Classic. It is also criticised as being a didactic vehicle for Herbert’s own pet themes. 169

His major leap in self development seemed to be between 1959 and 1964. In that time Herbert had become close to Percy Trezise, fellow ratbag and artist, in North Queensland. It was through this relationship that Herbert learnt to fly and learning to fly released Herbert from his own self image as a failure. is written up in the short story, The Black Beast . In this incident Xavier comes up against his bete noir, the flying instructor, who, in a way, represents his father. The flying experience is parallelled with handling a horse of which he was a failure and his father an expert. Xavier directly points to his attainment of flying skills as his way to conquer a lifetime of self-doubt and shame to finally become his father’s equal.

Another epiphany he experienced was through his writing his autobiographical novel, Disturbing Element (1963), not only by way of writing out the demons of the past, but by visiting his childhood home in Western Australia while promoting the book. It was on this journey that he wrote to Sadie (8 April 1964) saying he was shocked, exhausted, depressed and excited to see the place again. ‘I have deep feelings about this place - sheer hatred mixed up with love.’ In the same letter he tells her of his ‘victories in the female line ..... the victories being not getting into bed with them, but not getting taken in by any.’ After years of philandering, this was a major breakthrough for Herbert no matter how temporary (he sees one of his romantic attachments, Nancy Wills, on the way back to Redlynch).

Also while in WA, Herbert is invited by Dame Mary Durack to a dinner party. Also at the dinner party is Paul Hasluck, then a Federal Minister, and other writers. This is enough to set off his old demons and the larrikin arrives very late and drunk at his host’s event. Not only drunk, but riding his motorbike up the ramp and nosing it into the dining room. Herbert proceeds to berate a number of the guests and climbs a tree in the back yard. He only comes down at the behest of Durack’s daughter. This is a typical reaction of Herbert’s to what he perceives to be high society. Not only does he feel insecure in this landscape, he spurns everything it represents: the social-climbing mother figure and the authority represented, in this case, by Hasluck.

This documentary examines the strengths Herbert develops to overcome his fatalistic approach to life and weighs up his personal limitations against the immense 170 contribution that his two main works provided to our society. It seems to be no coincidence that he commences the drafting of Poor Fellow My Country in 1964, soon after these events. The Australian Arts and society awareness are also developing toward the seventies renaissance of which Herbert would be very aware.

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Xavier Herbert the Documentary

Final-Journey Structure

Points of intersection between this journey and earlier parts of Herbert’s life.

In January, 1984, Xavier Herbert decides to travel overland from Cairns to Alice Springs in his 4WD. He declares he is making a final journey to the heart of his country to die. This story follows Herbert on that trip through his last months in the Centre and his funeral in Alice Springs.

• During his preparations for leaving Cairns, he says good-bye to his friends, Percy Trezise (deceased but he has two sons who might have witnessed the event), Robin Pill-Sinclair, John and Margaret McHugh, Robert Reid, etc. These witnesses could give us some inside information about the man by describing his farewell. They can be called on throughout the story to give frank accounts of Herbert as we dip back into his life.

• On a previous journey (1935) overland to Darwin, after P. R. Stephensen’s failure to publish Capricornia , “Herbert walked both to find himself and to outstrip failure.” His final journey joins the same road he travelled in 1935 at Cloncurry. He follows his own steps along the Flinders, then Barkly, Highway from Cloncurry to Mary Kathleen, Mt Isa, Kalkadoon, Camooweal, Avon Downs until, on his previous journey, he turned north onto the Tablelands Hwy to Darwin. On this 1984 journey, Herbert turns south onto the Stuart Hwy to travel to Ross River Station, 80 kms east of Alice Springs.

Via these geographical coincidences our story has the potential to go anywhere in the Capricornia saga and his growing commitment to Indigenous and nationalist issues.

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Map: http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Charters+Towers&sll=- 19.963023,144.486694&sspn=2.070338,3.702393&ie=UTF8&ll=- 20.13847,134.593506&spn=4.135538,11.008301&z=7&pw=2

(NB. Another previous journey to Darwin was from Cairns overland and by sea in 1927. On this occasion he went a route further to the north from Mareeba, jumping the rattler and nearly losing his life crossing the flooded continent to Burktown alone. This was the initial journey to Darwin to research what would become Capricornia and the beginning of his involvement both with the McGinness family and Indigenous issues. On crossing the border to the NT, he creates the name, Xavier Herbert, “finally ready for his career of self-discovery, the true voice and discoverer of the Nation.” The journey is written up after the writing of Capricornia . It may not suit our purposes to depict anything of this journey but he could refer to it.)

At Ross River Station: Herbert’s last days as a writer

• Speedy McGinness, Val McGinness’ nephew (see list of main informants), is working in the area and visits Herbert often while he is at his writing camp at Ross River. Herbert’s arthritic hands are very painful and Speedy often massages them and types for him. Herbert is still writing 6 hours a day working on his never to be published autobiography, Me and My Shadow . Their relationship is indicative of that which Herbert had with Val McGinness who adopted him into the family as his brother. (Following carpal tunnel surgery on his hands that Herbert’s health deteriorates and he moves in to Alice Springs and stays with his doctor.)

• Also visiting Herbert at his camp at Ross River is Dave Richards, journalist. Dave has a three hour interview with Herbert at Ross River after contacting Herbert through the Alice Springs library. Dave Richards is still in Alice Springs and would probably agree to an interview and a reconstruction of the 173

Herbert interview. The resulting articles Dave wrote cover various opinions of Herbert’s and biographical details.

• Closer to the funeral our story might jump to members of the McGinness family (and other Kungarakan tribal members) in Darwin, preparing to take a bus to Alice for Herbert’s funeral. Mim Morely, Val McGinness’ niece, and others would probably consent to be interviewed about the ensuing funeral ceremony and their ongoing relationship with Herbert over the decades.

(NB. In 1980, Herbert had given witness to the land claim the family were involved in, establishing their presence on that land in the 1920s and 30s. “and in illustrating the way officialdom had inhibited Aborigines from maintaining their traditional cultural links with "country" by breaking up families and forcibly removing them into government institutions.” Parts of his testimony were included in Bringing them home: The 'Stolen Children' report (1997).

(There is currently another documentary being made about the McGinness family’s enforced removal to South Australia during WWII.)