School of Culture and Communication - Research Publications

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Author: BIRCH, ANTHONY × End date: 2002 ×

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    This is a true story: Rabbit-proof fence, 'Mr. Devil' and the Desire to forget
    Birch, A. ( 2002)
    In February this year I attended a premiere of Rabbit-Proof Fence, a film directed by Phillip Noyce. The story deals with a journey, made in 1931, by three Aboriginal girls, sisters Molly (Everlyn Sampi) and Daisy Craig (Tianna Sansbury), and a cousin, Gracie Fields (Laura Monaghan). The girls escaped from the Moore River Aboriginal Settlement in the south of Western Australia and walked home, to their own community at Jigalong, some 1600 kilometres to the north, by following of the state’s three rabbit-proof fences. In telling the story of the children’s journey, Rabbit-Proof Fence addresses the history of the stolen generations, the historical experience of the removal of indigenous children from their families and communities, a history often subject to ridicule by those in white Australia unable to accept and own their story of oppression. The film also gives some attention to A.O. Neville (or ‘Mr Devil’ as he is referred to by one of the female inmates at Moore River), the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia from 1915 until 1940, a man obsessed with issues of miscegenation and the (literal) purity of skin.
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    Returning to country
    Birch, Tony (Scribe Publications, 2001)
    As this history began - with journeys - so it will end. In February 2001 Tony Birch, writer, historian and former senior curator with Museum Victoria, rode into Melbourne from the north west. His tram wound along a route once familiar to Wurundjeri people travelling to Mt William - traversing the plain just to the east of the Moonee Ponds Creek and Coonan’s Hill, before veering away towards the central city. Along the way, in Royal Park, still stand a few eucalypts old enough to bear witness to all these comings and goings.
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    The last refuge of the 'un-Australian'
    Birch, A. ( 2001)
    In 1860, with the establishment of the Board for the Protection of the Aborigines (BPA), the Victorian colonial government formalised, through the legislative process, the alienation of Aboriginal people from our country. To ensure that we would become non-citizens in our own land the government incorporated the independently established Christian missions with existing and proposed government stations into a system of centrally administered Aboriginal reserves.
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    A paperback education: Atticus Finch, Camus and Kenneth Cook's Wake in fright
    Birch, A. ( 2002)
    When I was a kid there wasn’t much that my older brother did not do better than me. He was good at almost everything, particularly sport. He won the school handball championships every year, captained the football team and never lost a game of marbles. He even excelled in business. When the school tuckshop was on its knees the headmaster put him in charge. Within a term the tuckshop was turning a profit, even after my brother had creamed a percentage so he could buy a friendship ring for his girlfriend. He was not quite as good at the books though.
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