Stories such as Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith helped me recognise the contradictions at the heart of our national identity
I was about 15 when I saw the film Picnic at Hanging Rock. My aunt – my dad’s sister – took me to the cinema in Griffith. I could probably have counted on one hand how many times I had been to a movie; there was never any money spare for luxuries like this. I don’t know why she took me and I don’t know why to this film. But it was a rare treat, Jaffas and all. Beyond that was the film itself, and how it reached inside me and left me pondering questions that I have spent a lifetime trying to answer.
It was the music that grabbed me first, those pan pipes eerily floating over that parched Australian landscape. The film seeped into my consciousness. It was as much a dream as a film; it unnerved me. I didn’t make the connection at the time – not intellectually at least – but I was left feeling as if the world itself had turned. This was about who we are as Australians; who we are in a place that is profoundly unsettled.
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