Cirrus@Austlit

'It is a dialogue between two women, a saint and a sinner, who are both scorned and condemned in different ways, in a world ruled by men. By realising that they are bonded by a spiritual sisterhood, the two women are able to over-ride the divisions of their social and moral positioning to become equals.'

Source:

'Women in Shorts', Tharunka, 20 May 1997, p.32.

'Melbourne author  Oriel Gray has used the skills she developed as a playwright and radio and television writer to good effect in her first novel, The Animal Shop (Penguin, 235pp., S)2.99). It is a heart-warming story full of incident and lively characters and a good deal of humour. The eponymous animal shop is actually an opportunity shop established to raise money to help abandoned animals. Most of those concerned are West Heidelberg battlers, some helping in the shop, others regular customers looking for bargains. The main characters, Pat and Louise. come from different backgrounds. but they have in common broken manages and compassion for others. Among their concerns are Mrs Collins, who is regularly bashed up by her psychotic son; Man-n. mother of three by different fathers and about to have a fourth; Cherry. a deserted wife whose handsome blue-eyed son manages to pull the wool over most people's eyes, and Dorothy Halstrom, faced with the agonising prospect of having to sell her once stately home. In many ways this is an old-fashioned book, with Just enough over-dramatisation of life to maintain interest without ever degenerating into a soapie. ' (Stan Barkley review : The Canberra Times 17 June 1990, 18)

'Tranquility is not the point at all in Oriel Cray's `Exit Left' (Penguin, 227pp., $7.95). With keen intelligence and wry humour her 'Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman' open the world of Australian bohemia in the '30s and '40s. Innocent though it all seems now, Gray's socialist upbringing, immersion in the theatre of the Left and the Communist Party — as well as her stealing of her sister's husband? — definitely won disapprobation in her day. She depicts the passionate commitment, fun and guilty failures of her youth with detachment and amused calm. Now I know who popularised the songs that were still around in my university days; what 'James McAuley was like in his wild youth; and how the coming of World War 11 interrupted some of the processes that would have cured the cultural cringe years before Australians finally stood tall. I enjoyed this crisply written and unsentimental book. ' (Veronica Sen review : The Canberra Times 24 February 1985 p8)

One of Australia's earliest television dramatisations of its gold-rush era, Rush is, as Don Storey points out in his Classic Australian Television, in many ways two entirely separate programs: between series one and series two, the setting shifts from the Victorian goldfields to a New South Wales mining town, and jumps forward from the 1850s to the early 1860s. However, both series take place in the same universe, use the same chronology, and have a clear internal coherence, centred on the continuing character of Sergeant Robert McKellar. Therefore, they are generally treated as two separate series of a single program.

(The differences in cast, crew, writers, and directors between the two series are given in detail in the film details section below.)

With its enormous, intricate, expensive, and accurate sets, costumes, and props, Rush proved extremely popular with viewers, despite series one airing in an awkward weeknight 8pm slot (which, as Storey notes, put it against the second half of the highly successful Homicide in Melbourne). Series one did, however, attract some criticism for being filmed in black-and-white when colour programming was only a matter of months away in Australia.

Series two (which drew on foreign financing to cover its cost, an extremely high--for a domestically produced program--$24,000 an episode) was made in colour. Following Sergeant McKellar (the only character to carry over from series one), series two pushed the character forward through two disillusioning events (the Eureka Stockade, which prompted McKellar's resignation from the Victoria Police, and the death of his wife Sarah) and dropped him into the conflicts of a small New South Wales mining town.

Series two was also extremely popular but, according to Storey, plans for series three were shelved when the new Fraser government instituted (among other things) a hefty budget cut to the ABC.

Series one gained renewed prominence in the 1990s when, like police procedural Bluey, it was re-dubbed and sent up on The Late Show (as The Olden Days).

An anthology series produced at the ABC studios in Melbourne. Ten episodes aired in 1972.

The intersection of Margaret (just released from a life of caring for a sick father by his death), Mark (successful actor and ladies' man), Kevin (Mark's friend and assistant, who has fallen in love with him), and 'the Man' (an amorphous figure).

The film 'covers the interaction between staff and patients of a mental institution when they are accidentally locked in an underground bunker after the start of atomic warfare.'

Source: Australian Screen (http://aso.gov.au/people/Giorgio_Mangiamele/portrait/). (Sighted: 29/9/2014)

A contemporary television guide offers the following synopsis:

Toby Cambell [sic], the darling of the teenagers, loves both wife and brass guitar, but the idol of success demands that one be sacrificed.'

Source

[Television guide], The Canberra Times, 4 September 1967, p.17.

Australia's first successful television soap opera, Bellbird was devised by writer Barbara Vernon and telecast by ABC Television between 1967 and 1977. The serial is set in a rural farming community, with the storylines examining the lives of various people from in and around the fictional township of Bellbird. Among the long list of characters introduced during the course of the series were the crusty farmer Jim 'The Colonel' Emerson and his glamorous wife Maggie, the local mechanic Joe Turner and his wife Olive, local policeman Constable Des Davies and his wife Fiona, the unpleasant stock and station agent John Quinney, and Jim and Marge Bacom, proprietors of the local pub that served as a central meeting place.

'A group of men, trapped in an Antarctic hut, fight a nightmare of fantasy and insanity.'

Source:

[Television guide], The Canberra Times, 13 June 1966, p.15.