Documentary tells story of Australia’s last Aboriginal massacre

Almost 85 years after the Coniston Massacre in central Australia, a powerful film tells the story of the last known mass killings of Aboriginal people – for the first time from the perspective of the victims. Film review: Coniston, 2012. Dir: David Batty and Francis Jupurrurla Kelly. Producer: Jeni McMahon.

 By POUNEH HATAMI

Francis Jupurrurla Kelly, co-director and co-writer of Coniston, found himself deeply connected and “really sad” during the making of his latest film. Not only because the story centred on the 1928 massacre of Aboriginal people in central Australia but because the filmmaker chanced on the discovery that members of his own family were among those murdered.

Kelly (Bush Mechanics, Aboriginal Rules) and co-director David Batty (The Wedding Makers, Desert Heart) brought together a tapestry of oral history, drama  and interviews in this cleverly-constructed film, which worked seamlessly as the film bounced back and forth through time.

This important film, released almost 85 years after the last known massacre in Australia of its Aboriginal people, is told purely from the Aboriginal perspective – the first time the victims of this bloody episode have had to tell their side of the story.

According to the Aboriginal oral history accounts, at least 170 people were indiscriminately murdered during two separate reprisals – between August 16 and October 18 1928 – led by Mounted Constable George Murray.

The killing of white settler Fred Brooks by Warlpiri man Bullfrog Japanangka, and a subsequent attack on another by disgruntled Aboriginal men, was the catalyst behind the massacres that ensued. The two men’s sexual exploitation of Aboriginal women spurred the attacks on them. 

Jeni McMahon, the film’s producer, says: “The whole point of the film is that Aboriginal people speak with authority about their own history.” The film never even pretends to consider the ‘whitefella’ version, and clearly that’s the point – it is setting the record straight after details were “white-washed” by investigating authorities at the time.

The ubiquitous David Field (Chopper, Two Hands), was the film’s only professional actor, the rest were amateur actors from various Central Australian communities. These actors managed to do what even the most seasoned actors struggle to do – be in the moment and be totally natural. The ease in which first-time actor Fiona Nungarrayi Kitson played Bullfrog’s wife was remarkable, as was her real-life husband’s portrayal of Bullfrog.

It must be noted that at times the film does have a tendency to make a non-Indigenous audience feel a little lost. This is because there are hundreds of different recollections of this shared history over almost a century. But the film is constructed in such a way that it gives the impression that a unified front is being presented.

Kelly himself notes that for a long time people kept “quiet about what happened… even me, I never been told about it”.

Bergen O’Brien, the film’s editor, conceded that the most challenging part of editing the film was “getting different oral histories from people and they all actually have different versions of what happened… like Chinese whispers”.

Despite the heavy subject matter, Coniston is easy to watch. Francis’s quirky interviewing style and sprinkles of humour compliment the already solid filmmaking and rich storytelling.

The film also holds great emotional significance for many central Australian communities and will hopefully play a part in helping the healing process.

It has been well-received by audiences and critics, at the Sydney Film Festival, the Melbourne International Film Festival, and the Araluen Centre in Alice Springs, with further screenings planned before the end of this year.

As Francis puts it: “People were happy and some of them were crying; it was really sad, but people were saying ‘at last, we got the stories on film to tell our kids’.”