A fitting finale, finally saw ‘Australia’, the movie, at the same place where it world-premiered. It’s the love story of Lady Ashey (Nicole Kidman) and the Drover (Hugh Jackman). It’s also about Aboriginal customs, including the Dreamtime and Walkabout (Sometimes when you get lost, you find yourself). In the movie, the Drover and Nullah, the half-caste boy, mention that when you die, you leave everything but your story. The intro also mentions the ‘lost generation’, when half-breed children (between white Australians and Aboriginal women) were forced to serve white communities, schooled by the churches, with science used as justification for genetic cleansing ‘to breed out the black’. According to PM Kevin Rudd in his apology to the Aborigines this year, the complex problems of post-reformation theology were resolved this way. Children were told to stand up in lines. Line 1: Methodist; Line 2: Baptist; Line 3: Catholic. (Some of the dialogues in the party scene were taken verbatim from the PM’s speech). Some nitpicking: - Perhaps the greatest ironic movie death: Nullah’s mother dies in a very dry place - nearly a desert - by, among other things, drowning, in a water tank several feet in the air. This is while trying to save her son from being taken by the coppers who would take him to the missions to be ‘civilised.’ - Too many deaths of the supporting characters. - I thought the movie peaked when the cattle were taken to the ship’s hold, but then the movie drags on just to show the Japanese bombing Darwin. === The apology was one of the greatest events I have witnessed. It counts as one score victory for progressive forces. Having imbibed an ethnic identity myself makes it significant, and I am proud to have been at the same time and place when it was sincerely offered. It is, of course, a product of the marches of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people fighting for recognition of rights, and is a testament to the power of collective struggle to change things. It gives hope that change can be achieved if people raise their voices enough. As said in the movie, just because it is, doesn’t mean it should be. Some other world-shaking events I have witnessed and participated in. - EDSA II for obvious reasons. - This economic nosedive at present confirms”ED’s” we had about booms and busts during college days. Then, it was just abstract, but now they come into realisation makes you wake up. That theory comes alive, and the conclusions from them are not only true, but imperative. If this is the best economic system we can have, woe to us indeed. If this is the optimal way we can organise society, at the immiseration of millions, while the rich few (who also caused the financial crisis) get suckled with public money, then stuff it. We can create a new way. The latest events offer a glimpse of other possibilities.