The Blainey View – Footprints
Clip 2: Bush medicine
1 min 58 sec
Taken from the TV program The Blainey View – Footprints (1982)
Original title classification PG – this clip chosen to be PG
Availability of the complete title
Please be aware that this clip may contain the names, images and voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may now be deceased.
Curator’s clip description
Wandjuk Marika is visiting Melbourne from his home in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory. He shows Geoffrey Blainey some of the plants and leaves that Aboriginals use to keep colds and other ailments at bay. Geoffrey Blainey recalls the all but forgotten story of how Aboriginal medicine was taken by the Allied forces on D-Day as a protection against air and seasickness. The Allies had run out of manufactured sea and airsick tablets so this traditional medicine was used instead.
Curator’s notes
Wandjuk Marika, the great Aboriginal artist and poet of his people, speaks nine languages besides English and is clearly proud of the Aboriginal lore he grew up with. Blainey talks to him in Melbourne, although one can’t help wishing Wandjuk was taking Blainey on a wander around his own country in Arnhem Land. Still, the director effectively brings out both Wandjuk Marika’s expertise, and Blainey’s own fascination with the subject. Blainey telling the story of the seasickness drug to camera with Wandjuk posed in the background is particularly effective.
Janet Bell, curator
have teachers’ notes.
