The Making of Modern Australia

PROVIDED BY:

Len MASSON & MA Sujie
Marriages by Appointment
Wagga Wagga NSW 2650
02 6971 7600

I am looking after publicity for the upcoming ABCTV series Making of Modern Australia in which you took part.

Attached is a press kit that I sent out to media this week with information on the series and details of episodes 1 and 2 ( Australian Childhood and The Great Australian Dream).

More detail on episodes three and four will follow with second sendout to media next week.

You might care to read this and can you please send it on to anyone you know who would be interested in watching the series. Don’t forget to pass on to  your local newspaper, who could well  be interested in doing a piece on a “star’’ in their midst.

MOMA screens over four Thursdays,  from  July 22 at 8.30pm and will also be available on iView.

Many thanks,

Julie Thomson
Publicist
P: 07 3377 5421
M: 0427 723 198
E: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
http://abc.net.au/tv

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The Making of Modern Australia
New Series
Starts Thursday July 23, 8.30pm

Under the themes of Child, Home, Heart and Soul, this series contains rich personal and family stories, photographs and home movie footage that examine the social and cultural shifts of Australia over the past 60 years.

It explores key themes that are part of our day to day social life – parenting, relationships, the family home and faith and religion.

The series will investigate some of the historical triggers for change in Australian society. Archival footage and narration is used to illustrate the big picture changes while rich personal and family stories, photographs and home movie footage provides a fresh perspective and imbue familiar history with a new emotional power.
The Making of Modern Australia will provide a place for communities to develop, share information and resources whilst at the same time allowing the synthesis of fresh material to become an archival record for the national scrapbook.

Episode 1: THE AUSTRALIAN CHILD July 22, 8.30pm

Australia celebrated the end of World War II with an enthusiastic urge to procreate. Between 1946 and 1966, the population exploded from 7.5 million to 11.5 million.

This was the era of the Baby Boomers, a generation of children whose rock’n’roll rebellion would sweep aside pre war conservatism and change things forever.

Evocative film and home movie archive footage recalls a much simpler time when kids roamed free in the great outdoors and swore an oath at school to “cheerfully obey their parents, teachers and the laws”. But there are also cruel memories: a Scottish orphan recalls years of neglect in the care of the Catholic Sisters of Mercy – “with no mercy”; a Brisbane couple remembers classrooms with harsh discipline and antiquated gender roles; an Aboriginal girl is taken from her family and culture and “assimilated’’ into white society.

But when the Baby Boomers started having children of their own, childhood was transformed. Girls stayed at school longer, mothers went to work and alternative methods of child-rearing were explored.

The physical, outdoor childhoods of 1940s and 50s are fading memories. Today’s kids are “digital natives’’, plugged into a world awash with instant information and entertainment.

But in the rapid change and a more sophisticated urban lifestyle, has something been lost? This episode of The Making of Modern Australia explores what has happened to our childhood.

Episode 2: THE AUSTRALIAN HOME July 29, 8.30pm

The Australian obsession to own your own home is so entrenched in our culture, there’s even a phrase for it ... The Great Australian Dream.

It began immediately after World War II and continues to this day. At first “the dream’’ was modest – a two-bedroom dwelling in the suburbs just like everyone else’s, with enough land for a vegie patch and a spot for the kids to play.

But then the population exploded, the suburbs sprawled, the fashions changed, and “the dream’’ did too. Today a “modest’’ Australian home is at least twice the size of the post-War model. It used to be possible to buy a house for three times your annual salary, now it’s nine times. And where once “home” was about shelter and security, now it’s also a means of accumulating wealth and status for which many find it impossible to pay.
In this episode, a cross-section of Australians tell stories of the Great Australian Dream; Olive and Roger still live in the tiny home Roger built with hand tools when the war ended 65 years ago; Carol has lived in a succession of renovated houses before finding her “dream home’’, but a life-long contact with asbestos building materials has resulted in a life-threatening illness; Kevin in outback New South Wales tells us he was the first aborigine to receive funding to build a house, a tiny weatherboard cottage which has been “home’’ for him and his wife, their eight kids and a plethora of relatives and friends; Sophia and Joe reflect on how their dream to profit from owning multiple properties turned into a nightmare in which they lost everything; and 90-year-old Dolly, who’s rented all her life, reminds us that you don’t have to own it, to live in your “dream home’’.

Remarkably, no matter how high the prices go, the Great Australian Dream endures. Successive Australian Governments have kept it alive by providing special grants to first home buyers and generous tax incentives to new investors. But there are 22 million people in Australian today and we’re struggling to accommodate them. Predictions are that in 2050, there will be close to 40 million, and no doubt most of them will have ambitions to own their own home.

Or is that just a dream?

Production details: written and directed by Steve Westh; executive producer Chris Hilton; series producer Ian Collie Essential Media & Entertainment made in association with Screen Australia for the ABC
or more information: Julie Thomson 07 3377 5421 M 0427 723 198; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Pictures available on abc.net.au/tv publicity

Statement from Ian Collie, series producer
The genesis of The Making of Modern Australia was a previous Essential Media social history documentary called Ten Pound Poms for the ABC and BBC.

Ten Pound Poms succeeded without a celebrity presenter and expensive recreations – simply a combination of personal and family archive, intimate interviews and narration; albeit the personal photographs were beautifully animated in 3D.

With the success of Poms, executive producer Chris Hilton, was convinced that there was still an appetite for classic social history artfully told through great characters, and came up with the idea of broadening the concept to explore social changes in Australia since World War II.

We then brainstormed what broad political and social themes to cover. Although war, sport and immigration were initially discussed it was felt that in many ways they had either had been previously covered (for example the ABC /Film Australia series Australians at War) or simply too big to do justice in a one-hour program. In the end we chose parenting, romance, faith and the home because they are all fundamental elements of our daily social life and likely to have been recorded as photos or home movie footage – think weddings, your first home, family snaps, and so.

The project has been a gift for me as the series producer but it has not been without its challenges. On reflection we probably made a rod for our back with its very title. The Making of Modern Australia makes no pretensions to be a definitive social history of modern Australia or to provide answers to the challenges of contemporary social life.

It’s a portrait at best, a snapshot of who we were and who we are today. A national scrapbook so to speak which we trust will stir emotions, memories and reflections of what it is to be Australian.

And if it excites discussion and gets individuals and families to reflect on their own recent history – and ideally to post their stories on our web site for others to read and appreciate -- then I believe we will have achieved something important.

Ideally this website will continue to be a dynamic platform that continues far beyond the transmission of our TV series. We hope the TV program will encourage others to tell us their story in the making of modern Australia.
Finally, there are many to thank for their contribution to The Making of Modern Australia but most important are the subjects of both our TV series and web site who have given up their time to share their stories of living and growing up in Australia. It is from these stories that a nation’s history comes to life.

Executive producer: Chris Hilton
Series producer: Ian Collie
Writer/director : Susan Lambert (SOUL and HEART) & Steve Westh (DREAM and CHILD)
Editor: Denise Haslem (SOUL, HEART, DREAM)
Editor: Tim Woodhouse (CHILD)
DOP: Kathryn Millis