Word: outback
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Some Australians berated the U S for what they considered a selfish attempt to protect Maine (pop. 1,085,000) while imperiling Perth (pop. 820,100). At the same time, however, souvenir hunters rushed into the outback by Jeep, Land Rover and even chartered aircraft. Some were quick to claim they had found debris from the fallen craft, including a large cylindrical object and several small fragments. Old-timers were reminded of the giddy days when Irishman Paddy Hannan found gold nuggets near Kalgoorlie just before the turn of the century, touching off a similar treasure hunt...
Most foreign images of Australia are formed around the outback, that monotonous expanse of brown grassland that stretches inlamd from the eastern mountain chain to the central desert, broken only by equally monotonous and enormous herds of sheep. The Australians' love-hate relationship with this inscrutable piece of earth is well-chronicled...
...lived not in the outback, but in the middle of the luxuriant cosatal forest between the mountains and Bass Strait. The woods were full of tree ferns; the trees were full of parrots. The topsoil was three feet thick. A welcoming kind of land, you would think...
...example, in Australia's Outback, the collision with civilization has turned many aborigines into drunkards. By 10 a.m. the main street of Alice Springs is littered with squatting aborigines waiting for the bars to open, their alcoholism bankrolled by government dole. Only a few years ago, the Cinta Largas tribe in Brazil was bombed and strafed from the air, and the survivors gunned down by hunting parties, all to permit loggers to clear the tribe's lands...
...quite a different plane is Last Wave Director Peter Weir's earlier Picnic at Hanging Rock. Though not scheduled for the New York festival, it is a haunting re-creation of a true incident in 19th century Australian history, in which some schoolgirls disappear from an outback outing, never to be seen again, and with no satisfactory explanation for their disappearance ever discovered. Weir creates an oppressive atmosphere, a compound of heat, isolation and sexual innuendo that is quite singular. His skill at wringing terror out of emptiness and silence, his sense of the fragility and smallness of Europeans cast...