AustLit

'This paper analyses several journeys of memory and ‘return’ that are derived from ethnographic filmmaker David MacDougall’s2 1987 feature-length documentary film, Link-Up Diary. The first section of the paper addresses the history and social issues that lie in the film’s content. The second section analyses the film further via the text of a conversation held about the film in 2007 and the third continues with my analysis of how the film and this conversation interact.' (Introduction)

'Cars and roads traverse the poetry of Samuel Wagan Watson, a self-identified Aboriginal man of Bundjalung, Birri Gubba, German and Irish ancestry. The narrator/s of the poems in Smoke Encrypted Whispers are repeatedly on the road or beside it, and driving is employed as a metaphor for everything from addiction and memory to the search for love. Road kill litters the poems, while roads come to life, cars become men, and men have ‘gas tanks that can’t see empty’. Watson’s poetry has received significant critical attention and acclaim: his ‘haunting, uncanny, layered poetics of history’ and depiction of ‘colonial degradation’ have been explored, and his poems—including those featuring cars and roads—have been analysed in relation to such themes as the sacred, locatedness, and creative processes. Given the extent to which cars and roads dominate Watson’s poetry, it is notable, however, that his use of both to explore and resist ‘colonial degradation’ has not received sustained attention.' (Introduction)