Cirrus@Austlit

"The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages. With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He is helped along the way by sympathetic strangers, each carrying their own unspoken history: stories of struggle and survival in a world of incomprehensible violence, upheaval and hope." (Source: Shaun Tan website)

At the beginning of World War II, Lady Sarah Ashley travels from her home in England to Northern Australia to confront her husband, whom she believes is having an affair. He is in the country to oversee the selling of his enormous cattle station, Faraway Downs. Her husband sends Drover, an independent stockman, to transport her to Faraway Downs. When Lady Sarah arrives at the station, however, she finds that her husband has been murdered (allegedly by King George, an Aboriginal elder) and that cattle station manager Neil Fletcher is trying to gain control of Faraway Downs, so that Lesley 'King' Carney will have a complete cattle monopoly in the Northern Territory.

Lady Sarah is captivated by Nullah (King George's grandson) son of an Aboriginal mother and an unknown white father. When Nullah tells her that he has seen her cattle being driven onto Carney's land, Fletcher beats him. Lady Sarah fires Fletcher, deciding to try to run the cattle station herself. To save the property from Carney, she enlists the aid of Drover; together, they drive 2,000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country's most unforgiving land. In the course of the journey, she falls in love with both Drover and the Australian landscape.

Lady Sarah, Nullah, and Drover live together happily at Faraway Downs for two years, while Fletcher (the actual murderer of Lady Sarah's husband and very likely the father of Nullah) kills Carney, marries his daughter, and takes over Carney's cattle empire. When the authorities send Nullah to live on Mission Island with the other half-Aboriginal children, Lady Sarah is devastated. In the meantime, she works as a radio operator in Darwin.

When the Japanese attack the island and Darwin in 1942, Lady Sarah fears that Nullah has been killed and Drover, who had quarrelled with Lady Sarah and left the station, believes Lady Sarah has been killed. Learning of Nullah's abduction to Mission Island, however, he sets out to rescue him. Lady Sarah decides to sell Faraway Downs to Fletcher and return to England. Drover and Nulla sail back into port at Darwin as Lady Sarah is about to depart, and the three are reunited. Fletcher, distraught at the death of his wife, attempts to shoot Nullah, but is speared by King George and dies.

In Prospect Bay, a remote fishing town in South Australian, the only thing that connects the two communities - the Goonyas (whites) and the Nungas (blacks) - is football. The underlying racism and class warfare threatens to make the team's greatest victories irrelevant, though. Two members of the team, Gary Black (the son of a white fisherman) and Dumby Red (the team's star player), are an exception, however, having been best friends since childhood despite their different cultural and family backgrounds. The jubilation that occurs when the team wins the local premiership is short-lived when Dumby is inexplicably overlooked for the 'best on ground' award. This incident subsequently sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy.

[Sources: Weekend Australian 22-23 December 2001 pp.14-15 and Australian Screen]

'He asked the water to lift him, to carry him, to avenge him. He made his muscles shape his fury, made every stroke declare his hate. And the water obeyed; the water would give him his revenge. No one could beat him, no one came close.

'His whole life Danny Kelly's only wanted one thing: to win Olympic gold. Everything he's ever done - every thought, every dream, every action - takes him closer to that moment of glory, of vindication, when the world will see him for what he is: the fastest, the strongest and the best. His life has been a preparation for that moment.

'His parents struggle to send him to the most prestigious private school with the finest swimming program; Danny loathes it there and is bullied and shunned as an outsider, but his coach is the best and knows Danny is, too, better than all those rich boys, those pretenders. Danny's win-at-all-cost ferocity gradually wins favour with the coolest boys - he's Barracuda, he's the psycho, he's everything they want to be but don't have the guts to get there. He's going to show them all.

'He would be first, everything would be alright when he came first, all would be put back in place. When he thought of being the best, only then did he feel calm.

'A searing and provocative novel by the acclaimed author of the international bestseller The Slap, Barracuda is an unflinching look at modern Australia, at our hopes and dreams, our friendships, and our families.

'Should we teach our children to win, or should we teach them to live? How do we make and remake our lives? Can we atone for our past? Can we overcome shame? And what does it mean to be a good person?

'Barracuda is about living in Australia right now, about class and sport and politics and migration and education. It contains everything a person is: family and friendship and love and work, the identities we inhabit and discard, the means by which we fill the holes at our centre. It's brutal and tender and blazingly brilliant; everything we have come to expect from this fearless vivisector of our lives and world. ' (Publisher's blurb)

'B.L.A.C.K. is a cypher scribed by independent and indigenous Hip Hop artist, Wire MC, which stands for Born Long Ago Creation's Keeper. Through interview and observation the song is visually and dialectically deconstructed to speak of contemporary issues around Aboriginal blackness, politics and culture. The filmmaker with his own roots in hip hop aligns himself with Wire and through a rapped narrative adds antoher layer of complexity to notions of blackness, by pulling apart his own identity. This is a musical documentary that exposes an authentic and empowering B.L.A.C.K. voice existing underneath the hype of 'bling-bling' hip hop.'

Source: http://www.cultureunplugged.com (Sighted 7/9/11)

'To some, black skin and country music may seem unlikely bedfellows. But from early stars like Jimmy Little and Herb Laughton through Dougie and Wilga Williams to Vic Sims, Bob 'Brown Skin baby' Randal, Bobby McLeod, Issac Yama and Roger Knox. Aboriginal country music is a very real phenomenon. A long rich tradition that's still alive today in Troy Cassar-Daley and Archie Roach.' (Source: On-line)

'Bush Studies is famous for its stark realism—for not romanticising bush life, instead showing all its bleakness and harshness.

'Economic of style, influenced by the great nineteenth-century Russian novelists, Barbara Baynton’s short-story collection presents the Australian bush as dangerous and isolating for the women who inhabit it.' (Publication summary : Text Classics)

'Here is Plum Coyle, on the threshold of adolescence, striving to be new. Her fourteenth birthday is approaching: her old life and her old body will fall away, and she will become graceful, powerful, at ease. The strength in the objects she stores in a briefcase under her bed - a crystal lamb, a yoyo, an antique watch, a penny - will make sure of it.

'Over the next couple of weeks, Plum's life will change. Her beautiful neighbour Maureen will begin to show her how she might fly. The older brothers she adores - the charismatic Justin, the enigmatic Cydar - will court catastrophe in worlds that she barely knows exist. And her friends - her worst enemies - will tease and test, smelling weakness. They will try to lead her on and take her down.

'Who ever forgets what happens when you're fourteen?' (Publisher's blurb)

'When Jimmie Blacksmith marries a white woman, the backlash from both Jimmie's tribe and white society initiates a series of dramatic events. As Jimmie tries to survive between two cultures, tensions reach a head when the Newbys, Jimmie's white employers, try to break up his marriage. The Newby women are murdered and Jimmie flees, pursued by police and vigilantes. The hunt intensifies as further murders are committed, and concludes with tragic results.'

Source: Publisher's blurb (HarperCollins ed.)

Athena and Dexter lead an enclosed family life, innocent of fashion and bound towards a disturbed child. Their comfortable rut is disrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth, a tough nut from Dexter's past. With her three charming, chaotic hangers-on, she draws the couple out into a world whose casual egotism they had barely dreamed of. How can they get home again? (Source: publisher's website)

"Set in Australia in the 1840s, A FRINGE OF LEAVES combines dramatic action with a finely distilled moral vision. Returning home to England from Van Diemen's land, the Bristol Maid is shipwrecked on the Queensland coast and Mrs Roxburgh is taken prisoner by a tribe of aborigines, along with the rest of the passengers and crew. In the course of her escape, she is torn by conflicting loyalties - to her dead husband, to her rescuer, to her own and to her adoptive class."

'Beneath the palm tree she'd perished like a stone fruit amongst the leaves and insects: her flesh bruised a variety of shades, from black through to yellow; her facial features, for all their lovely detail, completely indistinguishable. Look what happened to me, I could hear her say. This is what they did to me.

'In February 2005, German backpacker Simone Strobel went missing in Lismore, New South Wales. Six days later her naked body was discovered, crudely hidden beneath a palm tree. At the inquest into her death the police stated their belief that her boyfriend, Tobias Suckfuell, had killed her, although he has never been charged with any offence concerning Simone.

'Writer Virginia Peters was captivated by the case, and committed herself to uncovering the truth. With the agreement of the police, she analysed the evidence, uncovered new lines of investigation and travelled to Germany to interview the couple's families and friends. Ultimately, she tracked down and questioned Suckfuell himself, who remained the prime suspect.

'Having become intimately involved in the case, Peters came to understand that the story of Simone Strobel's murder was about much more than the crime itself or the investigation that followed. Written with great honesty and self-awareness, and with echoes of Joe Cinque's Consolation, Have You Seen Simone? explores grief and loss, truth and accountability, and asks whether justice in this case can ever be done.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.