THE YEARS THAT MADE US © ATOM 2012 A STUDY GUIDE BY ROBERT LEWIS http://www.metromagazine.com.au ISBN: 978-1-74295-224-4 http://www.theeducationshop.com.au 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1: Merle Thommery, Chris Masters and Judy Barwise^ 2: Balgownie Public School+ 3: Roy Masters (L) and Chris Masters (R)+ 4: Drama Reconstruction – Pompey Elliot* 5: Roy Masters (L), Judy Barwise (middle) and Chris Masters (R)+ 6: Roy Masters (L) and Chris Masters (R) near Judy Masters Memorial + 7: Chris Masters – Presenter* 8: Drama Reconstruction – Pompey Elliot* All images © Beyond Screen Production. Photographers: *Andy Baker. +Jason Dirckze. •Edward Donovan. ^Gabriela S Vasilescu OVERVIEW The Years That Made Us (Andrew Saw and Stuart Goodman, 2012), is a documentary series of three 57-minute episodes written and presented by journalist and author Chris Masters, exploring the way the tumultuous 1920s and 1930s laid the foundation for Australia in the twenty-first century. In Australian mythology, nationhood was forged in the slaughter of Gallipoli in 1915. But in The Years That Made Us Chris Masters introduces a very different proposition. Far from bringing the nation together, the First World War tore the country apart and threatened to destroy the Federation Dream. The Great Depression wrecked a struggling recovery, and just when light appeared on the horizon, the gates of hell reopened with the Second World War. This is the story of how our parents, grandparents and great grandparents survived crisis after crisis and laid the groundwork for the nation we know today. Between 1919 and 1941 Australia turned from a rural backwater of the British Empire to a 2012 © ATOM SCREEN EDUCATION South-East Asian nation. Australians not only resisted chaos and revolution, they combined the best of the old world and the new to make a new society. In a personal journey that takes in big picture history and his own family’s story, Chris explores the idea that Australia’s response to the period between the end of the First World War and the start of the Pacific War was unlike any other country’s. Through the prism of his own working- class family, he gives life, light and shade to the politics and economics of rapid change. 2 1 2 3 ABOVE: Chris Masters – Presenter* CURRICULUM … alongside a further menace of BEFORE WATCHING APPLICABILITY fighting the war all over again. THE FILM But against turmoil, there is also The Years That Made Us is a resource renewal. The ’20s and ‘30s were a The film you are about to watch that can be used in the Australian really exciting era. is about Australian in the period Curriculum: History at Year 10 (The Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, 1919–1941. Modern World and Australia), and Australians continue to fight, often at Years 11–12 (Unit 3, The Rise with ideas, often with each other, Everybody will have some idea or of Modern Nations – Australia for a better life to be redeemed by image about that period, whether about 1916–1949). generations to come. what happened in Australia or in other This is that story of a 21-years nations of the world. The film is in three episodes: coming of age, about the quieter bravery of our own families who, in 1 As a class, brainstorm your main • Episode 1: Roaring Twenties the most punishing times, rescued ideas and knowledge about the periods • Episode 2: Survival (Depression) and remade Australia. covered in the three episodes. For ex- • Episode 3 Gathering Storm • (B) It can be used as a source ample, you might have ideas or images (Towards World War Two) of information and ideas about of the 1920s as the ‘Roaring Twenties’; various aspects of the Australian or the Depression period as the Great The film can be used in three ways in experience of the period – and in Depression; or the late 1930s as the the senior classroom: particular testing and challenging period when Hitler was exercising some of the standard narrations power in Germany. • (A) It can be used to test Masters’ and representations of the period idea that far from providing a na- in standard Australian history text List your main ideas and images in a tional binding, the war left Australia books. This can be done by having table like TABLE 1 (PAGE 4). more divided than before, and that individuals or small groups in the it was the ‘quiet bravery’ of families class compare text book accounts You will be able to use The Years That that, in the most punishing time, with the film’s views. This approach Made Us to test and refine these rescued and remade Australia. As is built into the table of questions initial ideas. Masters puts it: provided for each episode. This series is about the struggle • (C) It can be used in Film Studies to with loss and grief, with poverty … explore aspects of the documen- and a threat of revolution… tary film genre. Exploring ideas and issues in the film The information and tables on the following pages for the three episodes will enable you to gain key 2012 © ATOM SCREEN EDUCATION knowledge and understandings about Australia between the two wars. Read the episode summary, and refer to the timeline as a help to understand the chronology of the period. Then discuss and record the information and ideas in the film about each aspect of the period covered in the episode. Finally, you could divide up the aspects among the class, read the history texts and general reference history books available to you and summarise what they say about each aspect. In this way you will be able to compare and critically analyse both the film and the various text book accounts. 3 TABLE 1 PERIOD YOUR IDEAS AND IMAGES 1920S AND post– WORLD WAR ONE DEPRESSION OF THE 1930S TOWARDS WORLD WAR TWO IN THE LATE 1930S SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2012 © ATOM SCREEN EDUCATION 4 Timeline – EPISODE 1 1918 Australian troops return to Australia leaving 60,000 dead in European soil. The men return to 13 per cent unemployment and industrial turmoil. 1919 Strikes and political protests create the greatest period of industrial turmoil in Australian history. 1920 QANTAS founded in North East Queensland. Flight begins to shrink the vast desert nation. ABOVE: Drama Reconstruction – Pompey Elliot* 1920 The Prince of Wales tours Australia. 1921 Edith Cowan becomes the first woman elected to an Australian Judy Masters is Chris Masters’ great parliament. Suffering is politicised as Episode 1 uncle, and through his life story Chris soldiers’ widows and mothers fight for begins the journey of understanding pensions and political recognition. extraordinary change. ROARING 20s 1923 Stanley Melbourne Bruce elected Prime Minister as the first coalition Summary The big-picture history of political con- between conservative country and city flict, radical social and technological political parties takes power in Canberra. It’s 1919 and Australia is reeling. change and economic re-invention is The Country Party and Nationalists will Sixty thousand dead left in European set against the story of a shy coal miner eventually become the Nationals and Liberals. soil and a nation tearing itself apart. who starts a young family and, in a Stanley Bruce introduces ‘Men, Money and Industrial violence, political extrem- very personal way, seeks to recapture Markets’ policy and begins massive British ism, 12 per cent unemployment and the promise of the Federation Dream – immigration schemes and borrowing from a struggling rural economy are the a fair go nation with equality for all. British banks. backdrop for a new Federation fighting Responding to the film 1923 Work begins on construction of to survive. Parliament House in Canberra. Into this maelstrom come three war The theme of this episode is set by 1923 Australia’s first and only police heroes desperate for the peace they the narrator: strike leads to three days of looting and deserve. The first is a businessman, riots in Melbourne. Three people are Stanley Melbourne Bruce, the second For close to a hundred years, killed. Returned soldiers acting as special constables restore order. a famous general, Pompey Elliot, and Australians have travelled to Gallipoli to honour the birth of the nation. the third a coalminer from the south 1926 Stanley Bruce wins Australia’s first coast of New South Wales, James ‘Judy’ ‘red scare’ election. Masters. These three men, through It became the Australian Foundation events in their lives, help tell the story because there was a belief around 1926 44-hour week introduced in NSW story of the 1920s – a story of tumult, at that time blood and in sacrifice. 2012 © ATOM SCREEN EDUCATION conflict and change. Stanley Bruce will 1927 Canberra is opened by the future English King, the Duke of York. become Prime Minister, Pompey Elliot But Gallipoli was not only a begin- ning, it was an end to a vision of an a senator, and Judy Masters will return 1928 Iron and steel blast furnace opens in to the mines while leading Australia as advanced Australia already begun, fair Port Kembla, NSW. the captain of the national soccer team. and free of the mess of old Europe. 1929 The ‘talkies’ open in twenty Hoyts theatres in Melbourne. 5 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1–2: Drama Reconstruction – Called up for War* 3: Chris Masters – Presenter* 4: Roy Masters (left) and Chris Masters (Host on right) outside Judy Masters Memorial+ 5: Chris Masters – Judy Masters Oval^ 6–8: Drama Reconstruction – Wives, Mothers and Daughters at Memorial* And in the crucial years between that history texts. Summarise these find- Episode 2 war and the next, this dream was ings in Column C.