"Austraila" - The Movie

I asked two friends in Australia, what they thought of the movie. They were not overly impressed. Incredibly...both of them reported that their fathers were in Darwin during the first Japanese air-raid.

My friend in Adelaide offered superficial criticism:

"The movie wasn't about Australia...only about the Northern Territory."

"Look...I've seen lots of cowboy movies made in the USA, but I've never seen a cowboy actually shown brushing his teeth. I can't imagine what in the world the Australian director of this movie was thinking when he had Hugh Jackman, "The Drover", brush his teeth...was it to tell the world that OZ cowboys practice oral hygiene and have sweet smelling breath?"

He also said..."Then there was the camp-site bathing scene, where Jackman gives himself an upper body lathering, then pours a bucket of water over himself, failing miserably to rinse himself, but succeding only in wetting his pants...in which he presumably slept...if he was a cowboy. Who actually showers with his pants on? If they wanted to show what a stud Jackman really is they should have done the job right."

My friend the reporter in Melbourne had a more political point:

"Forgot to warn you that film Australia was a crock historically re this stolen generations/super racist theme. Someone finally found two Northern Territory aborigines who wanted compo for having been stolen. There was a court case. The judge eventually found:
a. there was NO policy in the Northern Territory to steal kids for racist reasons (as distinct from rescuing them from life-threatening squalor) and
b. one of the two 'stolen' kids as a baby had been left on an ant-heap by the mother (no kidding).
At highest level, the ex-governor of South Australia, Lowidja ODonohue, (aborigine) claimed to be a member of this 'stolen generation' and eventually admitted that her white father had taken her to a mission boarding school for an education (which obviously worked for her). And would you believe, there are MORE ab kids being removed from their parents by the govt now (for welfare reasons) than there were during the so-called 'stolen generation' period."