Tim Slee's Blog: How's the Serenity? - Posts Tagged "feminism"
Themes in Taking Tom Murray Home: Gender and Revolution
Uprising: noun: An act of resistance or rebellion; a revolt. (Oxford English Dictionary)
In my basement I have a lockable wooden 'treasure chest' I bought in Tassie, where I stick all the stuff I don't want to lose as I move from continent to continent. Tickets from my first rock concert (Springsteen), photo of my first teenage love, (Denise), my one and only best and fairest medal etc etc
Stuck to the bottom, is a quote from my favourite Henry Lawson poem. It's a rebel poem.
Do you think, you slaves of a thousand years to poverty, wealth and pride,
You can crush the spirit that has been free in a land that's new and wide?
When you've scattered the last of the farmer bands, and the war for a while is over,
You will hold the land – ay, you'll hold the land – the land that your rifles cover.
I've never been able to find out what inspired Lawson to write this one so perhaps a Lawson scholar out there can enlighten me. He was writing 70 years after the Bathhurst uprising, 50 years after the Eureka rebellion. He could, I suppose, have been harking back to the Castle Hill rebellion of the early 1800s, which was led by convict farm hands. He lived in NZ for a time, and perhaps was inspired by the Maori resistance, but they could hardly be described as 'farmer bands'. I don't know, I just love the cadence but most of all, I love the rebel sentiment.
I'd like to say we have a proud history of rebellion in Australia, but perhaps that's taking it too far. We've had a few notable rebellions, like Castle Hill, Bathurst, Eureka and our fair share of rebellious individuals, such as Ned Kelly, Breaker Morant, Peter Lalor, Dawn Fraser, Wilhelmena Wiley, Edith Cowan, Evelyn Scott, Faith Thomas and Louise Black. It's perhaps not as long a list as we'd like to think.
What we do have though is an ethos of questioning authority - we do not blindly respect doctors, politicians, or even police officers, just because of their title or the stripes on their shoulders. They have to earn our respect, and they do that with actions and opinions that can pass the 'fair go' test. And where they don't, they are brought to heel.
I think we can safely call the recent vote on marriage equality an example of this. Politicians hamstrung by party factional politics unable to make an obvious decision and pass an obvious law, with people power taking over and forcing it upon a paralysed parliament. The current push by a few Independent politicians to force obviously needed humanitarian changes to our refugee policies are another.
Taking Tom Murray Home is a story about a family of battlers and a segment of society (in this case, farming families) whose treatment fails the 'fair go' test. And they don't just sit there and take it, they fight back, sparking a broader uprising.
When I was building up the character of Dawn Murray, the hero of the story, I did consider whether the hero should be Dawn, or her husband (the roles could easily have been reversed, with Dawn dying in a fire and her widowed husband leading the protest). But when I look at the truly revolutionary leaders of societies today, I see women, not men:
- Female crossbench senators leading the debate on refugee policy change in Australia
- A female American student, Emma Gonzalez, leading the campaign for gun control
- A 15 year old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, leading a global student climate action movement
- A French single mother of two children, Ingrid Lavavasseur, at the head of the Yellow Vest protest movement in France
- Malala Yousafzai, a 21 year old Pakistani girl, winning a nobel prize for her stand on equal rights in education and
- Young dairy farmer Casey Treloar breaking the internet and breaking down doors in Canberra with her heartfelt story about walking off her farm in South Australia for the last time.
Sorry guys, but you/we are busier defending the world of yesterday (fossil fuels, closed borders, and 'traditional' values including patriachy), than shaping the world of the future. The next true revolution(s) will not be led by men.
So it was only natural for me that the hero in Taking Tom Murray Home had to be Dawn Murray, and she would embody that no BS, quiet resolve, and determination to see a 'fair go' that lies just under the skin of all Australian rebels.
Rise ye! Rise ye!
In my basement I have a lockable wooden 'treasure chest' I bought in Tassie, where I stick all the stuff I don't want to lose as I move from continent to continent. Tickets from my first rock concert (Springsteen), photo of my first teenage love, (Denise), my one and only best and fairest medal etc etc
Stuck to the bottom, is a quote from my favourite Henry Lawson poem. It's a rebel poem.
Do you think, you slaves of a thousand years to poverty, wealth and pride,
You can crush the spirit that has been free in a land that's new and wide?
When you've scattered the last of the farmer bands, and the war for a while is over,
You will hold the land – ay, you'll hold the land – the land that your rifles cover.
I've never been able to find out what inspired Lawson to write this one so perhaps a Lawson scholar out there can enlighten me. He was writing 70 years after the Bathhurst uprising, 50 years after the Eureka rebellion. He could, I suppose, have been harking back to the Castle Hill rebellion of the early 1800s, which was led by convict farm hands. He lived in NZ for a time, and perhaps was inspired by the Maori resistance, but they could hardly be described as 'farmer bands'. I don't know, I just love the cadence but most of all, I love the rebel sentiment.
I'd like to say we have a proud history of rebellion in Australia, but perhaps that's taking it too far. We've had a few notable rebellions, like Castle Hill, Bathurst, Eureka and our fair share of rebellious individuals, such as Ned Kelly, Breaker Morant, Peter Lalor, Dawn Fraser, Wilhelmena Wiley, Edith Cowan, Evelyn Scott, Faith Thomas and Louise Black. It's perhaps not as long a list as we'd like to think.
What we do have though is an ethos of questioning authority - we do not blindly respect doctors, politicians, or even police officers, just because of their title or the stripes on their shoulders. They have to earn our respect, and they do that with actions and opinions that can pass the 'fair go' test. And where they don't, they are brought to heel.
I think we can safely call the recent vote on marriage equality an example of this. Politicians hamstrung by party factional politics unable to make an obvious decision and pass an obvious law, with people power taking over and forcing it upon a paralysed parliament. The current push by a few Independent politicians to force obviously needed humanitarian changes to our refugee policies are another.
Taking Tom Murray Home is a story about a family of battlers and a segment of society (in this case, farming families) whose treatment fails the 'fair go' test. And they don't just sit there and take it, they fight back, sparking a broader uprising.
When I was building up the character of Dawn Murray, the hero of the story, I did consider whether the hero should be Dawn, or her husband (the roles could easily have been reversed, with Dawn dying in a fire and her widowed husband leading the protest). But when I look at the truly revolutionary leaders of societies today, I see women, not men:
- Female crossbench senators leading the debate on refugee policy change in Australia
- A female American student, Emma Gonzalez, leading the campaign for gun control
- A 15 year old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, leading a global student climate action movement
- A French single mother of two children, Ingrid Lavavasseur, at the head of the Yellow Vest protest movement in France
- Malala Yousafzai, a 21 year old Pakistani girl, winning a nobel prize for her stand on equal rights in education and
- Young dairy farmer Casey Treloar breaking the internet and breaking down doors in Canberra with her heartfelt story about walking off her farm in South Australia for the last time.
Sorry guys, but you/we are busier defending the world of yesterday (fossil fuels, closed borders, and 'traditional' values including patriachy), than shaping the world of the future. The next true revolution(s) will not be led by men.
So it was only natural for me that the hero in Taking Tom Murray Home had to be Dawn Murray, and she would embody that no BS, quiet resolve, and determination to see a 'fair go' that lies just under the skin of all Australian rebels.
Rise ye! Rise ye!
How's the Serenity?
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