Dispossession and the Making of Jedda

Catherine Kevin

Description

A personal account of coming to terms with a history of dispossession and colonial power relations

'Dispossession and the Making of Jedda (1955)' newly locates the story of the genesis of the iconic 1955 film ‘Jedda’ (dir. Chauvel) and, in turn, ‘Jedda’ becomes a cultural context and point of reference for the history of race relations it tells. It spans the period 1930–1960 but is focused on the 1950s, the decade when Charles Chauvel looked to the ample resources of his friends in the rich pastoral Ngunnawal country of the Yass Valley to make his film. This book has four locations. The homesteads of the wealthy graziers in the Yass Valley and the Hollywood Mission in Yass town are its primary sites. Also relevant are the Sydney of the cultural and moneyed elites, and the Northern Territory where ‘Jedda’ was made. Its narrative weaves together stories of race relations at these four sites, illuminating the film’s motifs as they are played out in the Yass Valley, against a backdrop of Sydney and looking North towards the Territory. It is a reflection on family history and the ways in which the intricacies of race relations can be revealed and concealed by family memory, identity and myth-making. The story of the author, as the great granddaughter, great-niece and cousin of some of those who poured resources into the film, both disrupts and elaborates previously ingrained versions of her family history.

Prologue: ‘Jedda’ (1955): Cultural Icon and Shared Artefact of Mid-Twentieth Century Colonialism; 1. Making ‘Jedda’; 2. ‘Hollywood’ in the ‘Fine Wool Hub’; 3. Looking North: Mrs Toby Browne’s Colonial Nostalgia, ‘Jedda’ and the ‘Opening of the Territory’; 4. Memories of ‘Jedda’ after the National Apology; Epilogue: ‘Bogolong’ Memories: The Vagaries of Family History; Index.

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Modern history
• 20th century
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 31 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785273520
• Langue: English

Extrait

Dispossession and the Making of Jedda
Dispossession and the Making of Jedda
Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country
Catherine Kevin
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
by ANTHEM PRESS
75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA
Copyright © Catherine Kevin 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020940671
ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-350-6 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1-78527-350-7 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.
This book is dedicated to Julie Mackey and to the memory of Eric Bell.
CONTENTS
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Jedda (1955): Cultural Icon and Shared Artefact of Mid-Twentieth-Century Colonialism
1. Financing Jedda
2. Hollywood in the ‘Fine Wool Hub’
3. Making Jedda
4. Viewing Jedda
Epilogue: Bogolong Memories and the Conceit of Family History
Index
Figures
1 Jedda . Image of poster daybell
2 Still from Jedda . Betty Suttor (Sarah McMann) bandages the hand of George Simpson-Lyttle (Doug McMann)
3 Scene from The Birth of White Australia (dir. Phillip Walsh, 1928)
4 John Julian at the wedding of his sister Patricia Julian and Kevin Fagan. St Columbas Catholic Church, Bogolong, Bookham, New South Wales, 1935
5 Woollenwealth street parade, Comur Street, c. 1960
6 Queen Nellie Hamilton, 1893
7 Queen Lucy (née Hamilton) and King Ned Carroll of North Yass, 1912
8 Hollywood Mission, Yass. Christmas 1952, published with permission of Loretta Halloran Bell (pictured) and Jude Barlow and Caroline Hughes, descendants of the Bell, Shea and Freeman families
9 Hollywood Mission, Christmas 1952, published with permission of Loretta Halloran Bell. Bishop Young with residents of Hollywood Mission including Lorraine Bell, Ossie (Son) Brown and Kenny Simpson
10 Still from Jedda . ‘Ngarla’ Rosalie Kunoth ( Jedda ) and Paul Reynell (Joe)
11 Charles Chauvel discusses scenes with cinematographer Carl Kayser and Bill Harney, circa 1953
12 During pre-production tour for Jedda , circa 1950
13 On location at Kangra Walls, Blue Mountains, circa 1954
14 Jedda premiere, Star Theatre, Darwin, 1955
15 Liberty Theatre, Yass New South Wales, 1970
16 Bogolong, circa 1958
17 Mary Julian (senior) with John, baby Richard and Patricia, 1912
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Without Eric Bell and Julie Mackey Dispossession and the Making of Jedda: Hollywood in Ngunnawal Country would not have been written. Their friendship created the context for the dialogue at its centre: between Ngunnawal and white residents of the Yass Valley, and between past and present. I thank them both for their rich conversations with me over a number of years. I have often felt the absence of the gentle, quick-witted and insightful Eric Bell since he died, too soon, in December 2015.
A decade ago, at the National Library café, Ann Curthoys and John Docker convinced me that this was a story worth telling. Over lunch I began to see the shape it could take. After I’d left the project languishing for some years, Ann then re-engaged and offered to read every chapter in draft form. This commitment was an essential ingredient to the process of completion. I can’t think of a greater privilege than to have had Ann bring her extraordinary expertise as a historian and writer to this project.
This is, in part, a history of my mother’s family. Margie Kevin, two of her sisters, Julie Mackey and Tishie Fagan, and their cousin Tess Julian have been on hand to provide support and to encourage me to keep writing the story of our part in the dispossession of Ngunnawal people. I am grateful for the trust they placed in me and their willingness to know.
Thanks to the Dymphna Clark Fellowship, which gave me a number of opportunities to spend weeks at a time in Canberra and Yass. Thanks to the series editors Nicole Moore and Kath Bode, whose enthusiasm and advice for the book proposal were crucial in the initial stages of the project. In addition to the recommendation from Sue Sheridan, it is the quality of Nicole’s and Kath’s scholarship that attracted me to Anthem Press. Thanks also to the peer reviewers who read the manuscript and made excellent suggestions.
Ric Chauvel Carlsson always returned my calls and e-mails and readily gave permission to use materials in the book. I appreciate his commitment to maintaining and sharing a significant collection of family records. Staff at the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia and volunteers at the Yass Historical Society provided crucial assistance. Tim Bonyhady and John Snell generously shared their wonderful photographs with me, and Basia Zagala gave her time and research acumen to follow threads and chase up loose ends in Canberra.
Studies in Australasian Cinema published two articles related to this project, sections of which I have repurposed for this book. Thanks to Anthony Lambert, the journal’s editor.
There are many friends and colleagues who encouraged me to keep this project alive over a long period of being pulled away from it by other research, teaching and children – thank you all. I was pregnant with my eldest child when I met Eric Bell for the first time, and I brought my second child to Yass as a newborn to continue the research. Paddy and Eliza are now 11 and 8 and have been astounded by how overdue something can be. I thank them, and John Lattin, for keeping me company from beginning to end.
As well as those in existing oral history records, this book brings together the stories of the people who agreed to talk to me. While Eric’s and Julie’s stories form its backbone, I am also grateful to Loretta Halloran Bell, Sister Frances Browne, June Cummins, Dorothy Dickson, John Garry, Ronnie Henderson, Mary Julian, Tess Julian, Mandy Reed, Patricia Wallis Smith and Russell Whitehurst for their important contributions.
INTRODUCTION
JEDDA (1955): CULTURAL ICON AND SHARED ARTEFACT OF MID-TWENTIETH-CENTURY COLONIALISM
In 1955 Jedda was launched in Australian cinemas and around the world, starring the young Arrernte Alyawarre woman Rosalie Kunoth, and Melville Islander Robert Tudawali. That year Eric Bell watched the film in the cinema in Yass, New South Wales, while local graziers drove to Sydney’s celebrated first screening. The name of the Yass cinema was the Liberty Theatre and the reserve where Eric lived was called Hollywood. These names, evocative of freedom and glamour, belied the racial segregation of the cinema and the discomforts and controls on the reserve that was set on the side of a windy, arid hill and managed by the New South Wales Aborigines Protection and Welfare Boards. Fourteen years after seeing Jedda , Eric was dismayed to read a newly erected plaque in the main street of the Yass Valley village of Bowning, not far from Binalong or Bookham. It plainly stated that the Ngunnawal people, on whose country these villages stood, had been wiped out by an epidemic of influenza in 1846. The local Goodradigbee Shire Council was responsible for the plaque; they also employed Eric’s father. The Bells were Ngunnawal people.
The central paradox of this book is the enthusiasm of a pastoral community for a film that directly addressed the continuing legacy of settler-colonialism – a legacy that was playing out in their own relationships with the local Ngunnawal people at the time of their investment in the film. While the local Goodradigbee and Yass Shire councils and state government agencies collaborated to minimize the visibility of Indigenous peoples and the memory of the colonial violence at the heart of European prosperity, a number of wealthy and high-profile wool farmers actively sought involvement in a film that would bring into focus the aftermath of colonial violence, the visibility of its survivors and the tensions inherent in policies of assimilation and segregation that had characterized the treatment of Ngunnawal people in their lifetimes. Jedda was a five-year project that culminated in the first film starring Aboriginal actors in Aboriginal roles, the first Australian film to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival and the first Australian feature film in colour ( Figure 1 ). 1 This was made possible, in part, by the financial backing of Yass Valley pastoralists who had made their wealth on Ngunnawal country.
Figure 1. Jedda . Image of poster daybell
Source : National Film and Sound Archive Australia. Courtesy of Ric Chauvel Carlsson
In recent decades historians of Australian race relations have pointed out that the intricacies of Indigenous–settler contact are much more visible and detailed in localized histories than in histories of national policymaking and the broad shifts in ideology that shaped their development over time. For example, Victoria Haskins has drawn attention to the value of family histo