Stories from Australia's unfinished land war
details = Frontier: Stories from White Australia's Forgotten War
CD-ROM
ABC through Dataworks Educational Software
$49.95
By Andy Gianniotis
Frontier, shown recently on the ABC, is a documentary of the history Howard wants us to forget: the bloody, murderous history of white Australia's unfinished land war against Aboriginal nations of this continent. This CD-ROM is an excellent accompanying source that allows the viewer to delve inter-actively into this land's real history.
Frontier has a very professional look about it. The capabilities of multi-media are used to impressive effect. Extensive menus, printing and sound options and search indexes are available. Most importantly easy-to-digest graphics utilising high quality slides and quick-time movies make this CD-ROM a good research source for students. Some may discover a lack of extensive data, but lists of titles from which the information was gathered point the way to further study.
The CDs were reviewed on a 486 computer with 20 Mb of RAM and a quad-speed CD-ROM and the results were near perfect, with only a few instances of audio and video jumps. Loading time was quick but I suspect that 386s with only 4Mb of RAM may experience long delays.
The first CD, entitled "War", has around 600 Mb of data and covers the first 150 years of contact between Aborigines and settlers. The title is an apt description. Sections include: First Contact, War, Aboriginal Resistance, Land Rights, White Dissent and Remorse and Settler Fear. Once a chapter is chosen, you then have a choice of viewing an overview, official documents, still images, journal entries, letters, newspaper articles and suggestions of further reading.
The second CD, entitled "Policy and Attitudes", contains a further 450Mb of slides, movies and audio. This CD covers the role of government in Aboriginal affairs and the attitudes of whites and blacks towards each other. Sections include attempts at reform, labour, racial philosophies, controlling Aboriginal lives, sexual violence, and impact on aborigines.
Some of the accounts are quite disturbing, especially the section on sexual violence where we are told of the frequency that Aboriginal women were captured and raped on cattle stations. While the CD-ROM does not have a separate section on the stolen generations, there are numerous references to the forcible removal of Aboriginal children sanctioned by the government's assimilation policy.
Marnie Kennedy and Peter Prior give accounts of Palm Island, the notorious Aboriginal reserve which is Australia's forgotten concentration camp, where Kennedy was sent as a young child.
"People from mixed marriages were sent to Palm, people who talked back to the boss, people from the fringes of the towns and stations, people the police simply thought should be sent were sent to Palm."
"There was a bell to wake up, work, eat and sleep. The dormitories had wire netting all around and the doors huge padlocks. If you were caught sneaking out, you had your head shaved, you were sent to jail for a few weeks on bread and water, and you were paraded down the main street."
Frontier ably backs up the TV documentary series and presents an accurate account of Australia's past. The stories and videos are an honest attempt to undo the sterile education most of us received in school regarding the black history of Australia.
However, in parts it still holds back. While some of the graphics shock and provide a glimpse of what life must have been like, the language used is rather apolitical. For instance, "The government began to take a firm hand" is supposed to describe how the violent dispossession of Aboriginal lands of the 1830s was legitimised by the policies of Governor King.
Frontier, the CD-ROM, is a valuable addition to any school or library. With the Liberal government careering down the autobahn of economic rationalism, side-swiping at any working class gains it can and treating progressive reforms such as native title and the Wik decision like they're unwanted speed humps, projects like Frontier wield one of the last weapons we have left — the truth.