Talk:Annette Hamilton

Chronology for article expansion

"a rebel against the conservative fifties, a woman with husbands and children but also a woman with thoughts and ideas and a deep intellectual commitment to writing and art, who against all odds developed an apparently successful “career” and then came to regret it."

Biographical details

Mother Isabelle Arnold died at age of 93 years, in 2008

First husband Peter Hamilton died, 2008

Son Daniel, grand-daughter Lily .. Peter Hamilton children Katherine, Kim, Daniel, Emma and Leahwyn, granddaughters Stephanie, Victoria, Lily and Laluka and sister Nola.

1962XXXX-1972XXXX:

From 1962 until 1970 I was a student at Sydney University, first an undergraduate who thought she was going to be a writer, later a postgraduate who turned into an anthropologist. This was the era of The Sydney Push, of early steps in the recognition of the Aboriginal presence in Australia and a time when I married a man twenty years older than myself, had two children, and did field work in Arnhem Land and Central Australia.

1973xxxx

brief time in the Southern Highlands of Papua New Guinea with my second partner and two young children in 1973.

Early Education

1957-1960: North Sydney Girls High School - English Honours, History Honours, German Honours (Third in State) French, Mathematics

University of Sydney aged 17

1966XXXX BA(Hons) University of Sydney [https://unsw.academia.edu/AnnetteHamilton/CurriculumVitae

worked as a research assistant to Strehlow over two summers while I was an undergraduate at Sydney University. I was employed to translate Missouri Synod newspaper reports from High German to English, a task which proved beyond me. Kindly, Mr Strehlow put me to work cataloguing Aboriginal materials. In spite of his unpopularity in academia and beyond I very much admired his writings which I regarded as exemplary, and still do so. see BEYOND ANTHROPOLOGY, TOWARDS ACTUALITY

Arhhem Land Fieldwork & Masters

1968XXXX : fieldwork in Northern Arnhem Land [1]

began research on the Anbarra at Maningrida in 1968 for her Master’s degree under the supervision of L. R. Hiatt, at the University of Sydney. Her fieldwork took place both on the settlement and off it, living on Anbarra territory on the nearby Blythe River

Pulapa song cycle: [Tapes] of Men's and women's side of Pulapa (buffalo) ceremony; excerpts from song cycle accompanying initiation Recorded at Maningrida, N.T.,

196811XX Field work at Maningrida, north-central Arnhem Land, June-November, 1968 [Report to A.I.A.S.] (AIATSIS Mura)

Study of socialization & child rearing among the Anbara community & Burara speakers at Maningrida; the role of women in north-central Arnhem Land society

1970XXXX MA (Hons with University Medal) [2]

Pitjantjatjara/Yankuntjatjara [3]

Western Desert Fieldwork & Doctorate

1970-71XXXX Annette Hamilton undertook long-term fieldwork at Everard Park Station (Mimili) in 1970–71 [4]

The main focus of her research was the implication of sex segregation in economic and ritual activities, especially from an Aboriginal woman’s perspective

fieldwork in the desert regions of north-west South Australia among the Janggundjara and Bidjandjara speakers[5]

In 1970, Hamilton and his wife, Annette, with their two young children, went to live for 18 months with Aboriginal people in the desert of Central Australia [6]

1972XXXX ' Language, dialect and spacing' Paper for Australian Association of Social Anthropologists Annual Conference; Monash University AIATSIS Mura]

Applies Birdsell's theories relating group size to language intelligibility to North Central Arnhem Land where multiple languages are spoken and Western Desert a large area of mutually intelligible dialects; compares Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara; sees components of territorial spacing as commonly understood language over large area group dialect identity and totemic relationship to land

1975XXXX Aboriginal women : the means of production:

Examines the effects of contact with white society on Aboriginal woman at Maningrida - According to Annette Hamilton. women are autonomous producers. but it is because of this. along with their reproductive capacities. that women. are "subject to control and manipulation by men. as objects of value" (Hamilton 1975:170). [7]

1979XXXX PhD University of Sydney [8] .. "Timeless Transformations: Women, men and history in the Australian Western Desert, unpublished PhD. Thesis. University of Sydney. NSW"

influenced D Bell Phd Daughters of dreaming .. When a woman lawyer came to discuss with Kaytej women some land rights issues, it was the ‘ring place’ which was chosen. Bell’s illumination of gendered politics is well described in this section, and she builds on Annette Hamilton Timeless Transformations: Women, men and history in the Australian Western Desert 1979 in her descriptions of meeting places, legal transactions and dance to ‘keep country up.’[file:///C:/Users/WorkVentures/Documents/Daughters_of_the_Dreaming.pdf]

Life in the Everard Ranges, eastern Western Desert, 1970-1; camp layouts; population movements; historical and present relations with white society; local organisation in the past; ownership of land; technology, artefacts and relations with objects; patterns of socialisation of children in relation to objects; physical reproduction and demography; economic activity; division of labour by sex; distribution of produce and consumption; secret life of women - initiation; cults and ceremonies; role of unconscious in the symbolic order of men &​ women; kinship system.[9]

never published due to secret business, also concept of long duree transformations in social organization was being ignored in the anthropology at the time, and anything “historical” was considered off topic and the idea of a 60,000 year Aboriginal history was unimaginable. Equally, wanting to respect the ontology of indigenous thought was considered bizarre when What mattered [at this time] was finding answers to questions originally posed for colonial African societies by British social anthropology in the 1920s and 30s [note Annette's 'friendship' with archaeologists Rhys Jones/ Betty Meehan et al.

from western desert Hamilton documents classical eastern Western Desert emphasis on deriving a country identity from one’s birth district [10]

1985-mid-1980's:

became aware of Government proposals to introduce broadcast television throughout the region in order to undercut the use of indigenous languages and provide a “model” of white society which the desert people were suppose to aspire to. Although recognition had been given to land rights by that time, assimilation pressures were being enforced ever more determinedly. The introduction of television in the remote regions and its effects on language and cultural understanding, was a part of the final colonization of indigenous life-worlds

realized Aboriginal society was still being undermined by the implementation of Australian power, one emblem of which was the introduction of satellite television across the last of the Aboriginal cultural strongholds in the mid-1980s.[11]

1987XXXX: 'Coming and going: Aboriginal mobility in northwest South Australia, 1970–71.' Records of the South Australian Museum 20:47–57.

Hamilton (1987) saw the intermittent nature of work and rations in the pastoral era [for South Australia de Rose area] as necessitating the development of patterns of mobility among a regional network of mutually supportive kin. She reinterpreted the era as an attempt by Aboriginal people to fit white settlers into their system of kinship and reciprocity, particularly the idea of a boss being the one who looks after subordinates [12]

Aboriginal Women's Business

1980XXXX: writes of gendered power in these societies. Hamilton investigates gender and power through marriage, ritual, kinship and the sexual division of labour, and, unlike most of her contemporaries, recognised that questions dealing with oppression, subordination and asymmetry are fundamentally concerned with power relations (Hamilton 1971; 1975; 1978; 1980). She notes that, in comparison with western white women and because of their social worth and economic freedom, "traditional" Indigenous women in Australia have captured the interest of feminist anthropologists. [13]

1981-82XXXX in the area of the eastern Western Desert Maningrida region where Hamilton worked. the organization of women's labor, both promoted and limited the dominance of men (Hamiltion 1980-81). Here. as elsewhere on the continent. women's labor supported men's ceremonial life: the appropriation of women, product. .. particularly provided men with leisure time required ,,[14]

Hamilton (1981) argues that regional variation in Indigenous Australia provides different models of gender relations. In Central Australia Indigenous men and women "constituted them-selves into exclusively homosocial associations" (1981:84) which allowed for autonomy and independence, in arnham land Indigenous women's sociality was confined to economic and domestic spheres of life. Female deference to men was reproduced through gerontocrafic polygyny and compulsory remarriage and Indigenous women were included in some ceremonies but on Indigenous men's terms.[15]

Her analysis of Indigenous women's sociality is located within the "traditional" sphere, but in her discussion of violence she juxtaposes the "traditional" and the "contemporary" to high-light the dilemma of finding "truths". However, this dilemma seems to occur only in her work on violence; her representation of Indigenous women's sociality masks colonisation because Hamilton's work is premised on a construct of culture that positions authoritative meanings as the a priori totality that de-fines and reproduces the essential integrity of Indigenous women's sociality. [16]

1982XXXX Published book Nature and Nurture: Child-rearing in North Central Arnhem Land. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies [17]

Studies on child-rearing and socialization in general have been absent among Aboriginal Australian societies .. The author of this work has had a vast amount of fieldwork and experience (more than a decade) among the Anbarra of north central Amhara Land. this work is the most succinct statement of the issues which are central to understanding what socialization means among the Anbarra.

Hamilton has provided us with a detailed set of verbal behaviour sets through which human interaction is ex-pressed. Thus, the nature of expressions of warning, instruction, command, crying, etc., is set forth in terms of how they are structured at any one time, and how this structure tends to change and is modified as a child expands his/her horizons by interacting with different sets of relatives and peers as they form into age sets and gang members.[18]

Hamilton demonstrates how certain virtues such as food sharing, emotional constraints and aggressive behaviour relate to the emergence of individuality. .. Throughout this volume. Hamilton attempts to show how the Anbarra ex-perience in socialization and child-rear-ing contrasts with Western notions of child socialization. Also many psycho-logical theories pertaining to childhood development are closely scrutinized and critically evaluated. Studies of innate-ness among children and the ethnological basis of childhood such as attachment are directly dealt with in a innovative and highly imaginative way [19]

"..first published book Nature and Nurture (1981) was based on research for my Masters thesis in 1967-8. It has long been out of print although Australian academic and public libraries have copies. A reprint was issued by Humanities Press. It is one of the only books ever written on the way Aboriginal people raised their children traditionally and although it is still widely cited it was never given much credence in the academic world. A book by a woman about child-rearing? What is there to say about that? It was published in a weird format, many referring to it as a kind of “cook book”.[20]

Lake Amadeus Land Claim

1981 - 1987

Hamilton began work on the Lake Amadeus Land Claim as a consultant to the Central Land Council in 1981, along with Daniel Vachon. For six months in 1982/3 she took leave from Macquarie University and worked as the Research Coordinator for the Central Land Council in Alice Springs and also continued working on the claim over several years until the hearings of the claim under then Land Commissioner Maurice, J.

1982XXXX; ‘Descended from the father, belonging to country: rights to land in the Australian Western Desert’, in Politics and History in Band Societies. Edited by E. Leacock and R. Lee, pp. 83–108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hamilton .. inquired into the social use of dialect names. I would summarise her account as saying that her informants used dialect names in different contexts to expand or contract inclusiveness—that is, to emphasize commonality of identity or alternatively to emphasise difference. From this observation, she derives the notion of there being only a de facto relationship between a tract of land and resident people who grew up learning and identifying with one dialect

... a move to patrifiliation is a pre-emptive attempt by men to block the potentially disruptive economic power of women: ‘There is the possibility that the shift to an ideology of patrifiliation is a de facto, although covert, method of removing any ambiguities regarding the father–son transmission of identity which might be introduced by the mother’s choice of birth-site for her child’ (1982b:102)

One of the interesting features of Hamilton’s contribution to the local organisation debate was her challenge to the utility of Stanner’s distinction between religious and economic groups, in his attempted resolution of the debate in terms of estate (religious) and range (economic). She suggested that, in tribal societies, it is better to consider the religious sphere to be all encompassing and determining of other spheres of activity, and, thus, it is more profitable to consider differentiations within the religious sphere rather than make global, categorical distinctions between religious and economic spheres

from western desert Hamilton documents classical eastern Western Desert emphasis on deriving a country identity from one’s birth district [21]

(1982:101–102), working with south eastern western Desert people east of Ernabella, in the early 1970s, flatly denied a principle of patrilineal descent for land rights and stressed birthplace instead.

1984XXXX

Annette Hamilton and! Daniel Vachon (1984:15–19) working on the Lake Amadeus land claim in the north east Western Desert, in the Lake Amadeus region, found that affiliations to country were based on links to parents, grandparents, spouses, inlaws and! birthplaces, among which people made choices.

1985XXXX: Hamilton,A. and D. Vachon 1985 Lake Amadeus/Luritja Land Claim: ClaimBook. Alice Springs: Central Land Council.

from western desert Hamilton documents classical eastern Western Desert emphasis on deriving a country identity from one’s birth district [22]

preparing one Land Claim (Lake Amadeus) which substantially failed (after a negative report by an ex- PhD student from own department)[23]

2006XXXX: Jango v Northern Territory of Australia [2006] FCA 318 (31 March 2006), para. 494.

the judge dismisses Hamilton. Her discussion of tension between the centrality of place of birth and a patrilineal system (‘the system as it was straining to become’) he characterises as denying the existence of any settled system of land tenure and hence as being outside the mainstream of anthropology, as construed by him [24]

The Maralinga Inquiry

1983-84XXXX

Hamilton gave evidence on the effects of the nuclear testing program on the Yankuntjatjara and other indigenous inhabitants.[25]

1984XXXX

Annette Hamilton acted as one of two anthropological advisors to His Honour Mr Justice McClelland in the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Testing in Australia (commonly referred to as “the Maralinga enquiry” BOB ELLIS, MARALINGA, ME: FACT, FICTION AND NUKING THE DESERT also [26]

"at Maralinga, at the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Testing, 1984. I had been asked to act as the Royal Commission’s anthropological advisor, reporting directly to the Commissioner. “Diamond Jim” McLelland was an august and controversial legal figure with his dapper suits and air of absolute superiority... n the remote flyblown deserts of Northwest South Australia Diamond Jim fitted in with grace and good temper, sitting under flimsy shades among the Aboriginal witnesses, squatting around campfires, and walking unconcernedly through the plutonium fields. I went wherever he went and listened to all the evidence. I pointed out where translations to and from English seemed inadequate or wrong ..Hamilton sought to pursuade the Commissioner there was no reason to question claims people had died from the nuclear testing where "Aboriginal people had told each other stories which had passed along the chain of communication to the north and west and right around the desert. The criteria of “truth” in a legal case depends on a certain kind of evidence: this, but not that; here but not there. That’s not the way Aboriginal people think, nor is it the way their world is constructed. Even the “black cloud” evidence was not fully convincing to the judge and the legal team. The “missing relatives” story was even less so. The Australian legal process when applied to non-English speaking Aboriginal people is so totally misplaced and unable to penetrate into the “truth” of any situation. I was so completely disaffected and infuriated by the way the Royal Commission proceeded, and the minimal impact of its findings.

I was the Consultant Anthropologist on the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Testing in Australia in 1984. This was a traumatic experience for almost everyone involved and although the Aboriginal owners of the Maralinga lands did eventually obtain rights over it, the damage done to the Aboriginal peoples of the desert has in my opinion never been fully acknowledged. [27]

"I became completely disillusioned with the relationship between academic anthropology, the legal system and the indigenous world. I felt I could not go on contributing to the developing tragedy of indigenous aspirations as the Australian government and its agents continued to pervert the hopes and dreams behind the legal recognition of Aboriginal land ownership. Aboriginal society was still being undermined by the implementation of Australian power" [28]

Australianist Anthropology

1980-81XXXX see: (2009) Monuments and memory ..

began research on the British settler colonies of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in 1980, largely out of a concern to understand the development of different policies towards indigenous people and land rights in the nineteenth century. Interested in the mythologising of national history, in 1981 I visited South Africa to work in the archives in Capetown. I also began to research and photograph the wide variety of monuments through which South African colonies memorialise sites of significance to the prior inhabitants and aspects of the different racepolicies in the three colonies

1983-2001 Professor of Anthropology and Head of Discipline, School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University [29]

1990XXXX

For many reasons Hamilton was profoundly disappointed in and angry about what was happening in Australian studies. She decided to change her research focus to Thailand, and began a study of cultural change in Thailand. The intent of the study was to examine a modern media system which had developed in its own terms, since Thailand had never been colonized. From the 1990s onwards her work focused exclusively on southeast

1990XXXX: published 'Fear and Desire: Aborigines, Asians, and the National Imaginary'. Australian Cultural History 9: 14-35.

Annette Hamilton's use of the term national imaginary. Drawing on ideas from Benedict Anderson, Edward Said, and Jacques Lacan, Hamilton uses the term to describe how contemporary nation-states use visual mass media to constitute imagined communities. She uses Lacan's idea of the imaginary as the mirror-phase in human development when the child sees its own reflection as an "other": "Imaginary relations at the social, collective level can thus be seen as ourselves looking at ourselves while we think we are seeing others" (Hamilton 1990:17). As examples, she cites the current popularity of Aboriginal art and popular music, as well as films such as Crocodile Dundee, in which the outback and Aboriginal knowledge play a critical role, as if Australian appropriation of Aboriginal culture can justify "the settler presence in the country, and indeed . .. the presence of Australia as part of a world cultural scene" (Hamilton 1990: 18). Given current world conditions, representations of the Australian nation must take account of what Hamilton calls an increasingly "internationalised image-environment," in which images of indigenous peoples now carry a heavy semiotic load (1990).[30]

1993XXXX 'Foreword'. In Well, I Heard It on the Radio and I Saw It on the Television. By Marcia Langton. Pp. 5-7. Sydney: Australian Film Commission.

quoting Annette: 'The closing years of the twentieth century are witnessing a radical re-orientation of thought in the human sciences which defies conventional disciplinary boundaries and demands anew 'turning': away from the rationalising modes of modernity and towards a different grasp of the nature of knowing itself. . .. The power of visual media as a means of knowledge-creation is only hesitantly grasped by many in public life. . . . But, from the viewpoint of the emergent visual-aural culture of the twenty-first century, "what's on" creates the context for what is known and hence finally for what "is." [31]

2002XXXX: Key Note speech to the Australian Anthrpology conference

In a keynote address delivered to the Australian Anthropological Society's annual conference in 2002, Annette Hamilton considered where anthro-pology is heading in the twenty-first century, arguing that in Australia the discipline was in something of a crisis. One basis for her argument was the diminishing enrollments in the discipline and the attrition in the number of academic positions Australia-wide (cf. Geer.. 200 , to). Hamilton thus ar-gued that anthropologists had to make a better case for how and why their knowledge is relevant today:"Above all, anthropology should demystify itself and its practices.... People quite rightly want to know: where is your data? What is your methodology?"

2003XXXX: Beyond anthropology, towards actuality. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 14:160–70.

Australianist anthropology has a low public profile and uncertain public support. From the high point of the establishment of the Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies in 1964–65 and the invitation to W. E. H. Stanner to deliver the nationally broadcast Boyer Lectures in 1968, the situation has become more fraught (cf. Hamilton 2003)

on the relation between textuality and the empirical world. I (Hamilton) certainly do not see them as opposed, or consider that “the real world” is a place which is not also at the same time textual: but the insistence that a thorough analysis of “culture” (of anybody’s life-world, one might better express it) can emerge solely from a scholarly engagement with textuality seems problematic, to say the least .. this is precisely what the historians, armed now with concepts such as “culture” and a probing technical understanding of “sources” and their use, have been able to achieve

the extreme ethnocentric bias of most conventional Western Cultural Studies (anthropology lite), it has been proposed that there should be a Thai Cultural Studies, a Latino Cultural Studies, a Greek Cultural Studies: and you can see where this would lead. Yet clearly the ethnocentrism embedded in a Cultural Studies which has failed to understand the very fact of cultural difference – even while fetishising différance a la Derrida – is a fundamental weakness when compared with the close encounters required by anthropology .. the necessary transformations in subjectivity to accommodate “difference” as well as “sameness” – yes, it is the issue of alterity and identity again

2009XXXX Annette Hamilton (1990) Monuments and memory, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 3:1, 101-114

Social Transformations in Southern Thailand

1985XXXX: commenced carrying out research in Thailand, (south of Bankok, Prachuarb Khiri Khan province) focusing on the impacts of media, technological change .. and social transformations occurring at local & national levels [32]

I turned my attention to the impacts of mass media, and this led me to many years of research in Thailand, one of the only nations in the world which had developed its own media systems and did not permit foreign media onto its airwaves[33].

1986XXXX-1987XXXX

Brief periods were spent in Burma in 1986 and 1987

1986XXXX-1990XXXX: The mediascape of modern Southeast Asia

Research on media and popular culture in Thailand was carried out for a total of sixteen months between 1986 and 1990, with the support of Macquari University Research Grants and the Australian Research Council

1987XXXX-88XXXX

I carried out research in Hua Hin in 1987-88 for several periods, the longest of which was six months. Subsequently I returned to the town for two- or three-month visits until date, and again for several weeks in date. Acknowledgements appear at the end of this paper. For the aspect of the research discussed here, I interviewed around 3o older residents and their families with the assistance of an educated Bangkok woman who was working in the local council at the time. Interviews were taped and some notes were taken. I also collected a wide cross-section of documents

1990XXXX

Singapore in 1990

1993XXXX: Video Crackdown, or The Sacrificial Pirate: Censorship and Cultural Consequences in Thailand

essay is based on extensive fieldwork in Hua Hin town and surrounding rural villages in Prachuab Khiri Khan province, south of Bangkok, and on discussions with people at all levels of Thai society. It also draws on newspapers and magazine reports (both Thai and English) and on observations and interviews in Bangkok

teaches anthropology and comparative sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia .. preparing a book on media and modernity in Thailand and is starting research on transborder media flows between Thailand and Laos in the north, and Thailand and Malaysia in the south

1997XXXX

Edited with Chris Berry and Laleen Jayamanne The Film-Maker and the Prostitute: Dennis O’Rourke’s The Good Woman of Bangkok. Sydney: the Power Institute

"Primal Dream: Masculism, Sin and Salvation in Thailand's Sex Trade." In Manderson and Jolly, Sites of Desire, Economies of Pleasure, PI, M5-65

2001 - 2013 Professor of Anthropology and Film Studies, University of New South Wales:

2002-2006: Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (2002-2006, University of New South Wales

2006XXXX: Reflections on the disappearing Sakai': A Tribal Minority in Southern Thailand [34]

The minority tribal groups in the border zones of Southern Thailand (the 'Sakai') are often described as 'disappearing demographically while the inability to 'know' them at first hand by successive interested parties (the colonial explorer, the naturalist, the government official) has been attributed to their ability to disappear into the jungle, seemingly without a trace. This paper discusses the way the 'Sakai' have faded in and out of ethnology and Thai public consciousness, due in part to their own survival imperatives, and in part to the character of Thai state and society.

2007XXXX Chapter 6 in Southeast Asian lives: personal narratives and historical experience

Annette Hamilton, recording personal narratives from the southern Thai town of Hua Hin, shows how the lives of rural villagers or provincial townsfolk are revealing of their own particular interpretations of history, time and social circumstances. She found that the views of the past, of Thai politics, and of the intrusions of modern technology, which these narratives contained, were different from those of dwellers in the capital, and in many ways defied her own expectations. Ultimately, Hamilton is concerned to trace the outlines of a distinctive historical consciousness and experience of time in Thailand. Her project aims to displace persistently Eurocentric notions underpinning what she argues tend to be overly systematised and simplified interpretations of modernity, and of global social transformations under capitalism.

Cambodian Imaginaries

From the mid-2000s I began research on the little known history of Cambodian cinema. I have published several papers on this subject [35]

2011XXXX:[36]

Annette Hamilton is researching the history of cinema in the ex-socialist states (Vietnam, Cambodia and the Lao PDR) in the light of theories of trauma and memory, and the impact of European socialist cinematic vision on local filmmakers many of whom were trained in East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. She is also writing on globalisation and the transnational aspects of popular cinema and visual cultures including the impact of the internet on contemporary art practices in Bali.

2012XXXX Witness and Recuperation: Cambodia’s New Documentary Cinema. Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 39.1 March 2013: 7-30

has worked on media and culture in Southeast Asia, especially Thailand, and on questions of representation of Asia in Australia; recent publications are concerned with cinema and the ethics of memory in Cambodia

Artist and Writer

2014XXXX Advanced Diploma in Visual Arts (Painting) Western Sydney Institute [37]

2016XXXX: [38]

Annette was a well-known anthropologist in her early career, living with remote indigenous communities in northern and central Australia. She later wrote on film and culture in Thailand and Cambodia. She taught at Macquarie University and the University of New South Wales. Now an artist and writer, she lives near Sydney with her partner Michael

2017XXXX

Juvenile Fiction ..The Priceless Princess: From the Land of Hullabaloo [39]

In the Land of Hullabaloo, the King keeps his strong-minded daughter Sophronia confined to his castle high on Mount Solitary. Her mother is dead and the King fears his enemies will try to harm his daughter too. But Sophie longs to experience the outside world. Inside the castle she has power over the King due to her magical ring. The King hires a wizard who can help him take it from her finger. But he hires the wrong wizard. The wizard turns her to ice and carries her away to his horrible son Mr Bobby and his greedy wife Barbaraba, who lock her in the basement and make duplicates of her to sell all over the Kingdom. But the evil twins McFrugal steal her for themselves and take her across the Deadly Mountains to the Empire of the Blue-Bellied Black Snakes. She is held captive along with many animals and birds. From her pedestal in the Throne Room, surrounded by sllithery snakes and a moat full of crocodiles, the Princess discovers she is braver and cleverer than she ever imagined. She can talk to the animals, and makes friends with the Green Tree Snakes.

By chance the young Wizard of Spume learns of her fate from the old cart-horse, who is really a flying pony, descendent of Pegasus. They rescue the Princess and the other captives but flying across the Deadly Mountains they are brought down by a high wind and stranded in the dense forest. A squadron of military owls arrive to assist them, and soon they are on their way back to the Castle. The Princess has learnt so much during this adventure and begs her father to allow her the freedom she longs for, so she can help look after the other wild creatures in the Kingdom.

Suburban gigolo : bad boy round town

Bacchi, a charming young feline, lives with his human mother in a gritty inner Sydney suburb. She is very busy with her work and when she comes home she writes novels. Her employers put her on the night shift, and although Bacchi loves her very much he starts feeling neglected, cross and confused. Still, there are plenty of places for a cat to go exploring, and it's a nice warm summer so he finds lots of open windows and curtains to peek through. Then his mother meets a new man, and starts spending whole nights away from home. Bacchi decides to take matters into his own paws, and starts to visit the ladies in their apartments, where he enjoys many a tasty supper. His mother can't understand why he is getting so fat. Bacchi is pleased with his new secret life, but he gets more than he bargained for when he meets gigantic Bondi surfer girl and photographer, Lorelei. Ruthless and remorseless, she steals him away from home and turns him into a Facebook phenomenon - dressed in silly clothes! Is he destined for depression by the seaside? Will he ever find his way home? Thanks to a lucky break he is rescued by his mother and her boyfriend, but he realises he can't be sure of anything in this modern world, least of all his own future. A philosophical tale for those involved in complicated relations with Felis Catus.

2018XXXX[40]

I was sixteen once (above left) and spent all my time writing. From that day to this (right) it’s been the same. I have written letters, postcards, memos, shopping lists, reminder notes and requests. I produced thousands of pages of essays and theses at High School and at University which finally gave me access to an academic career where I had to write articles for journals and chapters for books.

All the time I was also writing my own stories, fictional narratives and a daily journal. I kept almost complete day by day journals during my teenage years and again from my mid thirties at various times, including now. I was also fascinated by painting and loved engaging with work from the coasts of Arnhem Land and the Australian deserts to the great galleries of Europe and the United States.

From the start I had wanted to be a writer and an artist. Many things stopped me, not least the need to support three children. So the academic career was a godsend and although it took me away from what I felt I should be doing it gave me a range of extraordinary and unique experiences. All the same as a writer I was trapped in the learned journal.

A couple of years ago that life came to an end. “Retiring” they called it, but for me it was the beginning of the work I had been wanting to do. I enrolled in a diploma in visual arts at TAFE which I completed after two years of hard slog and enlightening confrontation with reality. It led me to begin writing about art, at first for assessments and then because I wanted to. My art-writing site partners this one, you can visit it at Art Writing from Australia. And then I took up the writing career which had been on hold for so long.

Bruceanthro (talk) 03:40, 16 February 2019 (UTC)