If the following topics appeal, and you have:
• a sizeable potential audience (40+)
• a potential venue
then please email your interest and we will work wth you to arrange a time

Clive James Considers the Credits:
An Australian television wit in elegiac mood.

Clive James is best remembered for his funny, usually cutting verbal wit.  His satire and social commentary, both on television and words on the page, entertained audiences on several continents. This presentation will consider James’ final years, including his friendship with the Australian ex-pat poet, Peter Porter, touching upon a little of Porter’s work in elegiac mood. Facing the end of his own life and the passing of some of his friends - particularly the large group of Sydney University graduates who made their way to London in the 1960s – James committed his thoughts to paper. A smidgin of the humour and the satire remain in Nefertiti in the Flak Tower and the last two volumes of verse, Sentenced to Life and Injury Time.  We will also consider his posthumous critical verse anthology The Fire of Joy. No special knowledge or experience of verse is required, though being able to read will be advantageous. I would add, in passing, that I gave a lecture at Royal Holloway, University of London, a few years back in which I examined Charles and Elsa Chauvel’s Tarzan musical, Uncivilized.  I met Peter Porter afterwards in a college bar where he expressed interest in the Chauvels.  We talked about teaching his poem An Exequy and aligning it with the elegiac model he had chosen for it, The Exequy of the 17th century poet Bishop King. (‘Wrote most of that in Brisbane’, he said… not far from the Chauvel’s Stanthorpe, I thought.)  James who was close to Porter, did the elegiac honours for his friend and wrote a wonderful, moving verse obit called ‘Silent Sky’, which I commend unreservedly.   It’s one of James’ best, I reckon. And it’s probably time for a Clive James exhibition, somewhere. He is up there with the very finest television commentators of his time, was an excellent television presenter and while he was able to reflect with compassion and melancholy, he was mostly a masterly wit.

Jeff Brownrigg

Uncivilized and Jedda: 
The Charles and Elsa Chauvel consider the lives of First Australians

Uncivilized (1936) is a shameless aping of the successful jungle movies of Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan the Ape Man(1932) and Tarzan and his Mate (1934).  A star of vaudeville and film, Dennis Hoey, was imported from the UK to play the leading role of Mara, who becomes the ‘king’ of an Indigenous tribe in an unbelievable tropical paradise (unlike Cable Beach Resort). The film suggests that Mara’s nurturing by a caring, civilized village provides him with the necessary qualities to become a leader of that community. Hoey insisted on having a couple of good songs in the Chauvel’s film, so, curiously, Uncivilized became Australia’s Tarzan musical! It is all rather silly and stands in stark contrast to the Chauvel’s more mature work, especially Jedda, which explores the life of an Indigenous girl raised in a loving, white foster-family. Behind the Chauvel’s work are a number of novels from the early part of the 20th century, particularly Marooned in Australia (1896) and Secret of the Australian Desert (1896), children’s novels by Ernest Favenc (d.1908) and also works by G Firth-Scott and George Manville Fenn. Favenc’s short stories gathered together, usually from newspapers and periodicals, and published as Tales of the Austral Tropics (UNSW 1997), but all written and published before 1908, offer additional useful insights.

(Peter Porter, by a strange coincidence, came to the conference at Royal Holloway, University of London where I gave a lecture on Uncivilized (and Jedda) and I was able to have a drink with him afterwards. So, he will ‘crop up’ in two of these ‘possible’ presentations…I believe he is the finest recent Australian poet.)

Jeff Brownrigg

A Meeting at Murtoa:
Pioneers of filmmaking and sound recording meet at Murtoa (1909).

In 1909 Lottie Lyell and Raymond Longford and their touring theatrical company took a train from Melbourne and headed for Adeliade. At the same time bass-baritone Peter Dawson left Adelade bound for Melbourne, also by train.  Dawson was on his way to join the Amy Castles Concert party for the first concert of a national tour.  It was raining heavily as the two trains approached each other, one from the east the other from the west. The rain, however, caused creeks and rivers to flood and the rail line linking Melbourne and Adelaide was washed out just east of the small Victorian town of Murtoa.  The navies got to work, but it was clear that darkness and the weather would scotch any effort at repair they might make that night.  What to do. Dawson, Lyell and Longford decided to do what they did best; a show.  This presentation will investigate that show.  What did they perform? How was it all received?  What did the citizens of Murtoa feel when the stranded trains finally pulled out on their respective journeys the day after that grand ‘theatrical’ occasion at a local hall? In addition, how did Longford and Lyell develop their extraordinary filmmaking careers from these touring theatrical beginnings? And what happened after Peter Dawson missed his first 1909 concert at the Melbourne Town Hall? The tour with Amy Castles was a watershed in his career.  (The Tait Brothers, who arranged the Castles Tour, docked Dawson a day’s pay!) The talk will be illustrated with examples from the work of both Longford and Lyell, and Peter Dawson.  (And, their collective stories would certainly make a great film.)

I have meeting in Warrnambool in November and will arrange to visit Murtoa as I go past…might even do a dummy run for the museum or historical society. (Dimboola and Rainbow are always keen to have a presentation, too!  Life’s too short!)

Jeff Brownrigg