Zen and the Art of Locating The Real Australia
Around fifty-two years ago, a couple of undergraduate History students living on the same corridor of a residential college at JCU started fantasising about a film about The Real Australia.
Late-night caffeine-enhanced discussions of various Problems in Australian History suggested a scenario that could be filmed in Ravenswood with a cast drawn of campus identities.
Many years later, with Dirty Work at The Crossroads more or less in the bag, its author turned his attention to a long-neglected scenario.
It was subsequently reworked into a double-stranded narrative dealing with significant Australian historiography issues.
The result(hopefully) manages to deliver on three fronts.
First, it transforms the original film scenario, which lacked a definite conclusion, into a sequence of dreams with a reasonably tidy end.
Second, given a need to spin the dream sequence across a succession of nights, it aims to deliver a mildly satirical look at campus life somewhere like Townsville in the early seventies.
Third, it offers a commentary on how historians have presented Australia's national story since that narrative contains many details that many writers would prefer to omit.
This site currently lacks a final version since a few loose ends must be resolved. The result also needs to be approved by its co-originator.
