The Colony

Clip 1: A world away

Taken from the TV program The Colony (2005)

Original title classification PG – this clip chosen to be PG

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

It’s a period of eager anticipation. John Stephenson from South Yorkshire and his 12-year-old son Tyler are learning survival skills that they hope to apply when they are living in the Australian bush. The Irish and English families are asked to divest themselves of all modern objects including jewellery, mobile phones and clothing before they begin the boat trip to Australia, a world away and century past. Meanwhile, Sharon from Stradbroke Island is eager to understand what life was like for her Aboriginal ancestors along the Hawkesbury River at the time of the first European settlement.

Curator’s notes

Australian history is brought alive as these 21st century European families prepare to emulate their ancestors who came to Australia over 200 years ago. Settling white Australia was one of the most extraordinary experiments in social engineering the world had ever seen. Britain sent hundreds of convicts, their jailers and a handful of free settlers to populate a virtually unknown continent eight hard months sailing from ‘home’.

Janet Bell, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows three families preparing to participate in a ‘living history’ television project to explore and present aspects of life in early-19th-century colonial Australia along the Hawkesbury River (New South Wales). The participants are shown preparing for their life on the Hawkesbury while revealing their reasons for joining and their concerns and fears about the project. The clip includes narration by actor Jack Thompson.

Educational value points

This clip, from the television series The Colony, introduces some of the family groups in the series and the issues they face as participants in a living history project. Their participation requires them to give up the accoutrements of 21st-century life and prepare themselves for the practical challenges of re-creating colonial activities, such as learning survival skills and wearing colonial clothing.

Chris Hilton, producer of The Colony, conceived it as an educational living history project that would seek to create ‘a microcosm of our history in present time’ (www.australiantelevision.net). Three years’ pre-production research into living conditions in NSW between 1795 and 1815 informed the project, which involved several families and singles from the UK and Australia, including Aboriginal families, living in ways approximating the lives of the early settlers for 4 months.

The production of The Colony involved an intense selection process, including psychological testing, to decide which of about 500 Australian and 2,000 UK applicants would be accepted to participate in the project. Although the producers planned the project over many years, the participants stayed for 4 months and footage filmed during that period was in post-production for only a few months before airing, allowing very little time for analysis before editing.

The participants are shown confronting the realities of everyday life posed by their journey back into the 19th century. While this project was supported by sound historical research and high production values there are limits to the authentic re-creation of history. The temporary nature of the experience, the necessary avoidance of physical and psychological risks and the demands involved in being filmed for television contributed to the artifice of the project.

While other participants in this clip are involved with practical considerations, Noonuccal (Nunukal) woman Sharon Costelloe from Stradbroke Island, Queensland, explains her desire to understand how her Indigenous forebears lived in colonial days as European settlers moved into their country, describing her interest as cultural and related to her ancestral Dreaming.

This clip was taken from an episode of a six-part series of 1-hour programs, The Colony, which was produced for television by Hilton Cordell Productions and was nominated for a Logie for Most Outstanding Documentary Series in 2006.

The Colony belongs to the genre of historical reality programs, which differ from other popular reality programs in that they offer some analysis of the historical period being ‘relived’. The Colony adds to the viewer’s understanding of what it might have been like to live in colonial Australia. Historical reality programs are often expensive productions, which attempt to reproduce aspects of historical reality in an authentic way.

The acclaimed Australian actor Jack Thompson (1940–) narrated The Colony. Thompson is well known for his roles in many Australian feature films and television series. For his role in Breaker Morant he won the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Actor in a Lead Role in 1980, as well as a Cannes Film Festival Best Supporting Actor Award. In 1995 Thompson received the Raymond Longford Award.