SUSAN CARLAND: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this series
may contain images, voices or names of deceased persons.
SUSAN CARLAND: Imagine the world’s island continent ringed by the rolling seas of three
separate oceans.
BRUCE SCATES: Imagine a coastline that stretches twenty thousand kilometres
a great windswept land that spans the Antarctic to the tropics.
SUSAN CARLAND: Imagine a country so old that the arid centre at its heart was once an immense inland sea.
Imagine one of the driest continents on earth.
BRUCE SCATES: And yet this is a land edged north, south, east and west by lush green rainforests and wide-open woodland.
SUSAN CARLAND: Consider the oldest continuous civilisation in the world
and a knowledge of the land built up over thousands of generations.
BRUCE SCATES: And remember that this new nation is home to people from all across the globe, and different
languages, different cultures, different religions.
SUSAN CARLAND: The country you’re imagining is Australia, and this is where all its myriad stories begin.
BRUCE SCATES: Welcome to Australian Journey, your map to Australia’s past, its present and our future.
SUSAN CARLAND: These are the Twelve Apostles and they stand battered by the sea on the
southern coast of Victoria. They remind us again of the ancient character of the
Australian landmass – the limestone bed of each sentinel was set in place some
20 million years ago.
BRUCE SCATES: But the stone you can actually see now is much more recent –
sedimentary layers of rock that are just a few thousand years old.
So, in a way, the Twelve Apostles embody the paradox of this continent. We are immeasurably ancient
but we are stridently modern, a land continuously making and remaking itself,
isolated maybe, but those seas connect us to the many lands all around us
and we are shaped and reshaped by greater global forces.
SUSAN CARLAND: Like the Apostles, Australian Journey consists of 12 separate parts,
12 episodes you can view any time, anywhere, any way that suits you.
BRUCE SCATES: And we’ve organised those 12 episodes around three separate themes, themes that
straddle the concerns of ancient and modern Australia – Land and Nation and People.
SUSAN CARLAND: Each episode focuses on a single object, some familiar and iconic,
some obscure, even quirky.
BRUCE SCATES: But all have been chosen for what they say about Australia
– artefacts, objects, things, they have a life of their own and they reveal so
very much about the time and the place they come from.
SUSAN CARLAND: You can view Australian Journey in your own time, at your own pace,
you can follow the episodes in chronological order or jump ahead to any story you want to.
BRUCE SCATES: And you can access a raft of supplementary interviews – 'Susan Carland: In Conversation’.
Sometimes Susan’s speaking with a leading scholar in the field, sometimes with a challenging
social commentator, and in Australian Journey you'll have the chance to join us
in the classroom.
SUSAN CARLAND: But always, Australian Journey invites you to challenge and engage.
Together we'll debate the big questions that define us as a people.
BRUCE SCATES: Learning is a shared endeavour. This series builds a
collaboration of cultural institutions right across the country and it involves
a working partnership with the National Museum of Australia. The objects we've
chosen in this series feature in the Museum’s world-class collection and they
have come from every corner of the continent.
SUSAN CARLAND: Some of those objects spring from the land, some made a long and complex journey here, and one was carried
far from our shores – acquired centuries ago by the British Museum.
BRUCE SCATES: The Gweagal Shield embodies one of the very first encounters between Aboriginal people and
European explorers. It was taken back to England in 1770 and briefly returned to
Australia some 200 years later. That shield, like all the objects in
Australian Journey, provides a platform for discussion. We chart the development
of the land rights movement, from ‘terra nullius’ to Mabo;
we explore the contested question of sovereignty in this country;
we meet with Peter Yu, former Chairperson of the Kimberley Land Council';
and we hear the many voices of Indigenous Australia.
SUSAN CARLAND: History involves a sense of place and Australian Journey
will carry you the length and breadth of this country.
BRUCE SCATES: We’ll stand in the place the Commonwealth of Australia was inaugurated and launch a discussion of
the way our country is governed; we’ll retrace the steps of white explorers
across the deserts of the inland; we’ll fly high above the wetlands of Western
Australia; we will gallop across the plains of Kelly country.
SUSAN CARLAND: The Kenya windmill from regional Queensland introduces the politics of water;
the ‘Endeavour’s’ Cannon, recovered from the coral waters of the Great Barrier Reef,
addresses the dangers of global warming. One moment we’re in the heart of
Canberra, exploring the pain and the loss embodied in the nation’s War Memorial –
the next, we’re in Tasmania in search of a species believed extinct for generations.
BRUCE SCATES: Let’s end this introduction with the
largest object you’ll encounter in this series – that breathtaking building, the Opera House.
SUSAN CARLAND: The Opera House is a building but it’s also an icon, a symbol
of Sydney and of the nation. And this series uses the Opera House as a kind of
metaphor. Those great waves set by the water symbolise wave after wave of
immigrants to our shores; they remind us of the multicultural vitality of modern Australia.
BRUCE SCATES: The National Museum integrated the Opera House into its very design,
these distinctive windows gaze out across the water of Lake Burley Griffin
to the great Australian landscape beyond, and in this series you and Susan and I
will walk that landscape together.
SUSAN CARLAND: In the course of making these documentaries we
have filmed on the traditional lands of many
Indigenous communities. We acknowledge their enduring custodianship of all the
places we have visited and we thank them for their welcome.
BRUCE SCATES: And we've been privileged to work with a host of cultural institutions –
the libraries and galleries, the museums and universities that also tell the story of the nation.
SUSAN CARLAND: Every journey has its beginning but not every journey finishes in the place you
might first expect.
BRUCE SCATES: But whoever you are, and whatever your destination, welcome to
Australian Journey! [Music]
[Applause] [Music]