The ABC’s once admired ‘Back Roads’ program has taken another deep dive to the bottom with their latest offering, being the South East South Australian seaside town of Port MacDonnell.
Rather than the congenial host Heather Ewart, this time we have the prominently featured Tom Forrest, a ‘Yorta Yorta man from the Kimberley’ who annoyingly and repeatedly mispronounces the town’s name as “Port MickDonnell”.
Immediately we’re told that ‘people have been living in the area for thousands of years’, and whilst true, the undercurrent throughout the program is to demean Australia’s settler heritage. From the start Forrest repeats his and Uncle Ken Jones’s indigeneity. Far from being ‘indigenous’ (or ‘Aboriginal’ as would be more correct) the thoroughly westernised Forrest and ‘Uncle Ken’ appear to owe far more to their British heritage than to their claimed Aboriginality.
Viewers are shown precious little, if any footage of Port MacDonnell town itself, instead focusing on the surrounding region. And we only meet seven people: Cray fisherman Jeremy Ievins and son Kai, Uncle Ken Jones, Bec Hall, Jeremy the painter, and the two divers Jason Wallace and Toby Riley. Where’s the rest of the population of 860?
In talking of the district’s ‘Indigenous history’ Uncle Ken says that the local Boandik peoples’ past was “dumbed down very efficiently” and “Nup, we don’t want to talk about that, a family shame”. Forrest says that “The awful truth is that the Boandik were the victims of massacres by the colonialists and many eventually fled the area.” This clear falsehood is not at all consistent with known history.
Even the anti-colonial website ‘Adelaide A-Z’ states that Governor George Grey’s 1844 expedition into Boandik country “reported encountering very few Aboriginal people; no more than groups of two or three. The many signs of previous land use with few sighted Aboriginal people was explained as due to the smallpox, introduced by Europeans in the north” 1. It’s worth noting that smallpox was introduced by Macassans and other traders well before the British even arrived, and clearly had already arrived in the Port MacDonnell area well before Governor Grey.
Mt Gambier to the north was not even settled until 1854 and Port MacDonnell not until 1860, by which time there would have been very few Aborigines left in the area at all. This would explain why even the highly suspect and exaggerated ‘Massacre Map’2 lists no massacres whatsoever of Aboriginal people in South Eastern South Australia – indeed, no massacres at all are listed in the entire region of Boandik country, giving the lie to Forrest’s claim. And as for claiming that the “Boandik peoples were not spoken about”, what about Boandik Terrace, a main road in nearby Mt Gambier, or the celebrated ‘Boandik Lodge’, an impressive aged-care facility commenced in 1949 and in 1959 “re-named ‘Boandik Lodge’ in honour of the Boandik people who lived in the district at the time of European settlement” 3. More falsehoods, more propaganda, more deceit.
Then, for almost five minutes (a long time in programming), we’re lectured in Aboriginal mythology by Uncle Ken and Forrest about “the sea level rise of 12,000 years ago” (in fact, 8,000 years ago). Forrest talks of Aborigines ‘being witness to climate change’ again, the undercurrent message being about so-called ‘climate change’ today.
After more minutes wasted on Forrest’s gratuitous surfing adventures, we’re back to Uncle Ken again for some more Aboriginal propaganda. Uncle Ken claims the Boandik peoples ‘stood by and watched’ as the Mt Schank volcano erupted some 5,000 years ago. Probably not; they would have either fled in terror or been killed by it, and ‘culturally’, someone would have likely had to pay with their life for the ‘sorcery’ involved.
Sadly, without even a view of the actual town, we learn nothing about the origins of Port MacDonnell, its early settlers, its key contemporary figures or its modern day life. Instead, we’re dished up another serving of ABC propaganda, misinformation and lies. Unfortunately, the ‘Go woke Go broke’ mantra does not apply to the ABC, as they seem to have an endless supply of taxpayer funds to mislead and accuse Australians. Like 7.30 and Q&A, viewers must be switching off Back Roads in droves.
Language is important and the way it’s manipulated by the ABC to create impressions, especially false impressions, is deeply disturbing. What was once a great family show is now a clapped-out vehicle for woke propaganda and socialist agendas. This sort of Aboriginal (and often ‘migrant’) mash-up has become par for the course with Back Roads, totally ruining what was once a worthwhile and informative series. Once again, shame on you ABC.
This Port MacDonnell offering was not only a totally embarrassing production but also a thoroughly puerile assessment. To top it all off, the program concludes with a bunch of unknown people sitting on the beach in a campfire circle with Forrest singing a cringeworthy ‘Kumbayah’ song … Gag … Retch.
I’m sure ABC viewers would rather have learnt more about the town of Port MacDonnell and its wider community rather than Forrest’s self-absorbed adventures and being force-fed Aboriginal and climate change propaganda! Oh, and a final message to the ABC producers – yes, we really are sick to death of this stuff!
2 https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/map.php
3 http://boandiklodge.org.au/about-us/history
