Star Trek and Captain Cook

Captain Kirk of Star Trek is based on Captain James Cook, the explorer.

Furthermore, the USS Enterprise was named after Cook's ship, the HMS Endeavour. 

The mission of the Starship Enterprise was “to boldly go where no man has gone before”. These words were inspired by Cook’s journal entry, “ambition leads me … farther than any other man has been before me”. 

The original television series creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry, a great admirer of James Cook, also based Spock on Cook's scientist companion, Sir Joseph Banks. 

However, whilst Spook was rational and emotionless, Banks became one of England's wealthiest men and was described in 1776 as "a wild eccentric character" who obviously, still dreamed of his "voyage to Otaheite" (Tahiti). 

It was in Tahiti that Banks gained his reputation as a libertine. Cook is known as a responsible man of laconic understatement.

Captain James Cook, Public Domain

Groundbreaking Australian Soap Operas

A soap opera is usually defined as a long-running radio or television serial with the same cast of characters.

Australia's first successful soap opera was Bellbird, which ran on the ABC from 1967 to 1977.

Set in the small fictional Victorian rural town of Bellbird, the script editor of the show, Barbara Vernon, who lived some of her life in Inverell, N.S.W., said that Bellbird was an amalgam of every small town she and the other writers had known. 

Watching Bellbird today shows us how much time has changed the "typical" country town of Australia.

Number 96, TV series ran from 1972–1977, set in Paddington, NSW, was raunchy, with frontal nudity and exploration of taboo subject matters. 

Gay lawyer Don Finlayson, played by Joe Hasham in Number 96, had the first gay kiss between two men on primetime TV. 

 In 1974, an average of 2.4 million Australians watched each episode (1.).

While today Number 96 is regarded as trailblazing. In 1977, an article in the Tribune wrote:

Number 96, TV's soppiest
soap opera, is finally to die.
Some of us would question
whether it was ever alive, but
that's another issue.

I found its solution in ultra cheap tele for the masses. Cheap
scripts, cheap sets, cheap filming schedules . And just
enough cheap thrills to keep the ratings up.

Another soap with adult content was The Box, which ran from 1974 to 1977, exploring the lives of the people in a fictitious television station, Channel 12. Notably, the scheming bisexual Vicki Stafford (Judy Nunn) kissies a teenager Felicity (Helen Hemingway). 

The Sullivans, which ran from 1976 to 1983, was a quality, critically acclaimed production about a fictional family from Melbourne and the effects of the Second World War.

A 1978 newspaper article wrote: 

For a picture of war trodden Australia,
"The Sullivans" is a must for viewing. It
presents a unique quality of realism both
in setting and dialogue. The characters
grow and while there is much "soapiness"
in this soap opera, it manages to
generate a warm communication between
the cast and the audience. The trouble is
that the programme risks becoming boring. (2.)

A Country Practice screening from 1981 to 1994 followed a medical practice in the fictional regional town of Wandin Valley. 

The series was shown in Britain, Eire, Italy, West Germany, the USA, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malta and Hong Kong. (3.) 

Social, medical and moral issues were explored. For example, nurse Jenny Austin is found HIV positive in a staff health check, and she confronts her fiancé.

Other soaps to develop storylines around gay, lesbian characters, and HIV were The Flying Doctors, Blue Heelers, Neighbours and Home and Away.

Neighbours began in 1985 revolving around the domestic lives of people who live and work in fictional Erinsborough.

A newspaper article in 1988 said:

Australian television soap opera Neigh
bours has doubled its daily audience to
14 million in three weeks and is now the
third most popular program on British
TV...... (4.)

Another article wrote:

The show operates
on two levels - establishing a social
ideal to be strived for, while
simultaneously appealing to
viewers' sense of their own world.
Some sociologists have seen the
programs 'realism' as a source of
success. Yet the scenario it portrays
is far from real.
A 'perfect' world
Neighbours is set in an exclusively
Anglo-Celtic world, the mythical
suburb of Erinsborough. It tells the
continuing story of a handful of
lower middle class families in
Ramsay Street,
The Neighbours community is
idealised and self contained. (5.)

Feminist Germaine Greer has said on a discussion of Shakespeare: “He exists to call into question all our certainties. He’s not writing scripts for (UK soap) EastEnders or Neighbours. He’s actually making you think”.

Neighbours helped launch the careers of Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Natalie Imbruglia, Alan Dale, Margot Robbie, Russell Crowe, The Hemsworth brothers, and Holly Valance.

Uncouth Louts: Larrikins, Mug Lairs and Yahoos

Older generations of Australians generally didn't approve of waste, showoffs and vulgar flamboyance.

Virtues such as temperance, modesty, perseverance and constraint were necessary due to factors such as economic depression, wars, hardship and lack of birth control.

During the convict era, young men associated with jauntily wearing fashionable hats made from the cabbage tree palm (Livistona australis) were labelled Cabbage Tree Mobs.

Colonial Observer (Sydney, NSW : 1841 - 1844), Saturday 29 October 1842

Australian writer Marcus Clarke wearing a cabbage tree hat, 1866

In Melbourne, the word larrikin became popular after police sergeant John Staunton described youths to the magistrate in his Galway brogue, larking about in the street ('larrr a kin').

Ned Kelly, in his 1879 Jerilderie letter, wrote: "It takes eight or eleven of the biggest mud crushers in Melbourne to take one poor little half-starved larrakin [sic] to a watch house".

LARRIKINS. Mr. Longmore.—" QUITE A TREAT—AIN'T IT, YALE?—TO SEE Mr. Vale.—"YES, INDEED; IT MAKES ONE ALMOST WISH TO BOYS ENJOYING THEMSELVES IN THAT HARMLESS MANNER?"BE YOUNG AGAIN." Melbourne Punch (Vic. : 1855 - 1900), Thursday 18 May 1871

Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser (Grafton, NSW : 1859 - 1889), Saturday 23 November 1878

The British-English term "lout" was first recorded in 1596 in the writing of James Dalrymple.

Mug lair also seems to be derived from the British slang word lairy (or leery), meaning "knowingly conceited" for a flashily, showy, rude and socially inappropriate young person (usually male).

Balonne Beacon (St. George, Qld. : 1909 - 1954), Thursday 18 March 1948

In the 1950s, there was a new group of louts. Males were called bodgies, and the females were called widgies. Dressing in a similar way to the British Rocker, an article in the Perth Sunday Times of 1952 claimed that "......bodgies originated in America, but it's only in Australia where they're called bodgies. The word is a term that originated in Sydney, to describe anything "lairy".

Daily Advertiser (Wagga Wagga, NSW : 1911 - 1954), Monday 10 December 1951

Truth (Sydney, NSW : 1894 - 1954), Sunday 18 May 1952,

A hoon, is generally a term of derision for a young bloke who drives too fast. The word originated from rhyming slang, "silver spoon", for someone who lived off immoral earnings.

Crude, loud, or stupid, the word yahoo was coined by Jonathan Swift in "Gulliver's Travels", for an imaginary race of brutish creatures.

Sun (Kalgoorlie, WA : 1939), Sunday 15 October 1939,

A Whole Generation Scarred

Before the the Wall Street crash of 1929 led to a worldwide economic depression, Australia was suffering from falling wheat and wool prices and had borrowed vast sums of money from overseas banks, which needed to be paid back.

Miss Goldstein and Miss John collecting parcels at' Flinders-stree for workless women, Woman Voter (Melbourne, Vic. : 1911 - 1919), Tuesday 23 February 1915

Following the 1929 federal election in Australia, James Scullin's Labor Government, assumed power. 

Not long afterwards, "Black Thursday" (Oct. 24, 1929), the day of the largest sell-off of shares in U.S. history occurred, marking the onset of the Great Depression.

Australia was soon plunged into an era of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, falling wages and lost opportunities for many.

Strikes and labour unrest increased dramatically.

The big cities were depopulated, with thousands of unemployed men taking to the road looking for work on farms.

Other men walked the "Hungry Mile" along the wharves near Darling Harbour in search of a day’s work. Many faced constant rejection by employers.

Psychological stress increased, resulting in depression, hopelessness, humiliation, domestic violence and child abuse.

The Premier (Mr. P. Collier) returned from the Eastern States yesterday, and the unemployed held a demonstration outside the Perth station. The Premier, however, had left the train at Mt. Lawley, where he lives. The police made three arrests before the demonstration cleared.West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), Thursday 14 March 1929

Children experienced malnutrition, ill-health, and many lived in over-crowded housing,

Renters faced eviction if they could not pay their rent. And if they had no where else to go, the police might be sent.

Shanty towns developed in various places like: Sydney’s Domain and La Perouse, Melbourne’s Dudley Flats and the banks of the River Torrens in Adelaide.

People lived in tents, makeshift shelters made from flour sacks and scavenged materials. 

In December 1929, the government allocated £1 000 000 from the Federal Aid Roads Agreement for the provision of relief work for the unemployed.

 The result of cutting lawns in Macquarie-street yesterday by men engaged through the Labour Exchange.Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Tuesday 15 July 1930

Aboriginal people who had been living independently and were now unemployed, were forced to move to government reserves and accept rations.

Unemployed procession, Melbourne, VIC, Newcastle Sun (NSW : 1918 - 1954), Saturday 7 March 1931

In May 1931, the federal Labor government and six state Premiers agreed to a 20% reduction in government expenditure, cuts to wages and pensions, and increased taxation.

In 1932, the Australian economy collapsed, and unemployment reached a peak of 32 per cent. Harship affected many communities.

In late 1933, “sustenance” and “food relief” expanded, as did work for dole schemes. Unemployed women were often denied public assistance.

Scene in Fttzrov, Melbourne), outside a terrace from which 95 unemployed single men were evicted by a sudden coup, planned on military lines, by the police .Their belongings are shown in the street, which they blocked for about 150 yards Sun (Sydney, NSW : 1910 - 1954), Wednesday 9 August 1933

The- inhabitants of Brisbane's - shanty town are nearly all pensioners, QLD. Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 - 1947), Friday 13 January 1933,

On the River Bank, below the Government Buildings in William Street, City, NSW, unemployed have made their homes of bags, slicks, and iron. Telegraph (Brisbane, Qld. : 1872 - 1947), Wednesday 28 February 1934

Many depended on charity or the dole.

A whole generation were scarred by their experiences during the Great Depression.

A CONTRAST. — Above are shown types of dwellings occupied by South Australian natives at a camp at Oodnadatta. Below — Houses such as these and community bathrooms are provided for natives at La Perouse by the New South Wales Government.Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 - 1954), Saturday 15 August 1936

Shanty town, Port Kembla, NSW, Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954), Friday 21 January 1938

The 1808 Australian Coup D'Etat

On 26th January 1808, 400 officers and men of the New South Wales Corps marched to Government House in Sydney to arrest Governor William Bligh.

Watercolour drawing of First Government House, Sydney, ca. 1809, John William Lewin (1770-1819) 

Bligh was arrested, and the colony was placed under military rule.

This revolt, the Rum Rebellion, remains Australia's only coup d'état.

With a lack of actual money in the colony, rum had become the medium of trade and for goods and services from 1793.

The New South Wales Corps controlled all the trade and paid the farmers in rum for their produce.

Attempts by Governor Hunter to stop the NSW Corp buying all the imported rum, failed.

The Corps' officers simply chartered a Danish ship to bring in a large shipment of rum from India.

Governor William Bligh was appointed in 1805 to break the rum monopoly of the NSW Corps. 

Bligh clashed with Major George Johnston and  the former Lieutenant, now grazier and businessman, John Macarthur. 

The NSW Corp arrived at Government House and supposedly found Bligh under his bed. His daughter, Mary, however, attempted to fight the coup armed with her parasol.

A propaganda cartoon exhibited in Sydney within hours of William Bligh's arrest, portraying him as a coward. The arrest of Governor Bligh, 1808, artist unknown, watercolour drawing, attached to the left hand wall in the image is a sheet with text, "O what can the matter be", Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Safe 4/5

Bligh remained under house arrest until January 1809.

The military stayed in power for two years until Lachlan Macquarie arrived in Sydney in January 1810, becoming the fifth Governor of NSW.

Lachlan Macquarie attributed to John Opie (1761-1807)

A Walking Tour of O’Connell Town & parts of Bligh’s Terrace, (now all now called Newtown), in the inner-west of Sydney, New South Wales. Here

Anna Bligh, former Queensland Premier, is a descendant of William Bligh, who is famous for the Mutiny on the Bounty and being the 4th Governor of New South Wales.

Read 

That Bligh Girl, by Sue Williams

1791: Fifty Convicts Try to Walk to China From Parramatta

Twenty-one convicts escaped from Port Jackson, who had limited knowledge about Australia and attempted to walk to China. Some died in the bush, and others were recaptured.

Cairns Post (Qld. : 1909 - 1954), Monday 27 April 1936

World's News (Sydney, NSW : 1901 - 1955), Wednesday 22 April 1936

Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers Advocate (Parramatta, NSW : 1888 - 1950), Wednesday 4 October 1899

Tenterfield Intercolonial Courier and Fairfield and Wallangarra Advocate (NSW : 1900 - 1914), Tuesday 7 November 1905

1788: The British and Aboriginals Dance Together

Lieutenant William Bradley, a British naval officer and cartographer, compiled a journal which begins in 1786 with the organisation of the First Fleet from Deptford, England, and records the voyage to Australia.

Botany Bay. Sirius & convoy going in: Supply & Agent's Division in the Bay. 21 Janry 1788', Lieutenant William Bradley

Three days after the First Fleet landed in Port Jackson, Sydney Cove, carrying British sailors and convicts, the sailors met Aboriginal people on the beach and Lieutenant Bradley reported, “these people mixed with ours and all hands danced together”.

'View in Broken Bay New South Wales, March 1788', Lieutenant William Bradley (note the dancing figures)

Below are excepts from Lieutenant William Bradley's journal.

29 January 1788

Tuesday, 29th. Landed on a point forming the NW or middle branch, to which we were followed by several of the natives, along the rocks, having only their sticks which they use in throwing the lance, with them. A man followed at some distance with a bundle of lances. They pointed with their sticks to the best landing place and met us in the most cheerful manner, shouting and dancing. The women kept at a distance near the man with the spears. This mark of attention to the women in showing us that, although they met us unarmed, they had arms ready to protect them, increased my favourable opinion of them very much. Some of these people, having pieces of tape and other things tied about them, we conclude them to be some of those people whom the Governor had met here before. These people mixed with ours and all hands danced together.

Our people and these mixed together and were quite sociable, dancing and otherwise amusing them. One of our people combed their hair, with which they were much pleased. Several women appeared at a distance, but we could not prevail on the men to bring them near us.

We had here an opportunity of examining their canoes and weapons. The canoe is made of the bark taken off a large tree of the length they want to make the canoe, which is gathered up at each end and secured by a lashing of strong vine which runs amongst the underbrush. One was secured by small line. They fix spreaders in the inside. The paddles are about 2 feet long in shape like a pudding stirrer. These they use, one in each hand, and go along very fast, setting with their legs under them and their bodies erect and, although they do not use outriggers, I have seen them paddle through a large surf without oversetting or taking in more water than if rowing in smooth water. From their construction they are apt to leak when any weight is in them.

Read the diary here: William Bradley's Voyage to New South Wales edited by Colin Choat

Read, Dancing with Strangers by Inga Clendinnen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005)