My fear of Banjo Paterson’s swagman is not merely one of beards and campfires and the inky black of the outback sky
Australia is haunted. Its colonial past, its rapacious present, its dissolving future. We spread our ghosts thin over a landscape of blood-flecked bluegums and greed-bleached coral. We carry within us a very particular otherness.
This weirdness first snuck up on me as a child of the 1990s, manifesting in some truly ghoulish spectres masquerading as entertainment: EC, the doll without a face from Lift Off; the Dingle Dangle Scarecrow from Play School; the title sequence of Rage and its perpetual screaming; Alexander Downer in fishnets. These tangled with the looming ghastlies of the past: the pan flute of Picnic at Hanging Rock, the deified dead at Gallipoli, the cheery sing-along of “tan me hide when I’m dead, Fred” (creepy) as sung by Rolf Harris (extra creepy.)
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