Comments on: No Strzelecki

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:01:20 +0000

Thanks, Joe — are you referring to the movie? or to the real Empire boats? If the former, I’m surprised as the (non-flying) boat in it definitely does have QANTAS EMPIRE AIRWAYS LTD written on it (which is the correct name for the Qantas overseas operation at the time). If the latter, you’re right about the handover at Singapore, but QEA used its own Empires for the Singapore to Sydney run. If you click on the photo at the top of this page you might be able to make out that it says QANTAS EMPIRE AIRWAYS on the side, with BRISBANE (I think) underneath.

By: joe j.

joe j. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:39:27 +0000

from what i can discern…..the flying boats all seam to have imperial airway written on the side of the plane…..not qantas ……but again i could be wrong…..i was a joint operation between imperal &qanyas as the planes were as far as singarpore then qantas pilots took over from there….i didn’t

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:31:19 +0000

I didn’t catch that, but I hope it’s not a Boomerang — still on the drawing board at this time! A Wirraway would be more likely, but as far as I know the only Allied fighters around were the USAAF’s P-40 Kittyhawks. The Harvard, like the related Boomerang and Wirraway, could be confused for a Zero so maybe they needed a real aeroplane for some scene? (Harvards stood in for Zeroes in Tora! Tora! Tora!) Or maybe the CG was so bad that it looked more like a Harvard than a Zero :)

By: Ian Evans

Ian Evans — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 13:10:27 +0000

There was a Harvard in one clip - real aircraft?
Could have been a cgi Boomerang perhaps.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:20:05 +0000

Thanks for that — the realism deficit is always a possibility but I wouldn’t be too worried about the lack of any mention of aeroplanes in that piece: the trailer features the raid on Darwin fairly prominently — some nice CG Zeroes and Kates, looks like. (Plus a shot of our Nic looking at clouds through a passenger window, presumably that’s on board the Empire.) The trailer I saw is, I think, the third from the top here, which is a different one to the one available at the official site (it’s got a bit more on the raid and aftermath, plus I notice the radio announcer has an Australian accent, not American!)

But that story makes me realise that the intended audience of Australia is not Australians — and it couldn’t be, with a reported $130 million budget, it’d never make it back. (Titantic made only $58 million here.) Which could mean that it can afford to take an interestingly different view of Australian history than if it was being made for Australians. Or, probably more likely if the BBC story is anything to go by, it’s going to sugarcoat the Darwin raid’s aftermath. Otherwise Marn Ferguson wouldn’t be so keen to use it for a tourism campaign. I guess that was always going to happen … oh well, at least the aircraft will be pretty.

By: Ian Evans

Ian Evans — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:22:24 +0000

Try this;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7458736.stm
Sounds as if there may be a realism deficit along with a lack of proper flying machines.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:02:50 +0000

Of course, but since when have movies offered anything else? The thing is that films are a hugely important way for people to pick up ideas about the past, much more so than even popular/populist history books (how many people have seen Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, compared with how many people read Les Carlyon’s Gallipoli?) So Australia has the potential to modify the way Australians remember our military history: adding an inglorious defeat to a glorious one. The film might flop, of course, or they might botch their version of history to emphasis the heroic bits, or our current myths are just too ingrained in our national consciousness to be modified at all. Probably the last one in fact …

By: cerebralmum

cerebralmum — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:32:50 +0000

“…the men who conquered it, the women who loved them,..” !?! God, we women really must be useless creatures if that is all we did.

Somehow I find myself not very interested in this film and after reading The Australian article, I think I need to hit something. Perhaps I’m a pessimist, but it sounds like mythology, not history or “truth”, to me.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:34:03 +0000

I suspect that nobody will be able to escapethe publicity machine for this flick when it premieres.

I’m sure you’re right … I’ll probably be sick of the thing before it even opens!

By: Bob Meade

Bob Meade — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:02:03 +0000

Thanks. Interesting. I suspect that nobody will be able to escapethe publicity machine for this flick when it premieres.

There’s some rich material in the National Archives of Australia on the bombing of Darwin too. Here’s a link to the NAA fact sheet, which thence in many cases links through to digitised images of the files:

http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/publications/fact-sheets/fs195.aspx