Julie Janson – July 31 2016

Julie (Nibago) is a member of the Buruburongal clan of the Darug Nation. She works as a playwright, screenwriter, producer, script editor, novelist and visual artist. Julie has received numerous grants and fellowships including an Australia Council Developing Writer’s Fellowship, an Australian Film, Television and Radio School Literature Board Attachment, and an Asialink Literature Residency in Indonesia. She is a long time elected member of the NSW Committee for the Australian Writers’ Guild. Julie’s other plays include Gunjies, about Aboriginal deaths in custody; Season to Taste, about food and sex; The Information, about Aceh; Venus in Eritrea, about Africa; and the children’s play, Kerah Putih. Julie has had two short film scripts produced, Ivan and Get it On. Her debut novel is The Crocodile Hotel, developed from her play, and she is writing a second novel, Benevolence, about the Darug Aboriginal people of the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales. It is an answer to Kate Grenville’s The Secret River which tells a story of colonisation from a European settler point of view.

Black Mary published with her play Gunjies
Aboriginal Studies Press, 1996; ISBN 9780855752927
Large mixed cast
Dressed like the men, Mary Ann is one of the gang. She dreams of returning with Thunderbolt to live with her people but instead witnesses their massacre and plots revenge. Set in the 1860s, this play tells the amazing and true story of Mary Ann, female Aboriginal bushranger, born to ex-convict James Bugg and Aboriginal mother Charlotte. Married at 14, Mary Ann and her husband worked on a property where she came into contact then joined forces with cattle thief Frederick Ward, later known as ‘Captain Thunderbolt’. Her European upbringing enabled her to purchase supplies and gather information in townships and her Aboriginal knowledge of bushcraft, including catching and butchering cattle, enabled her to find food and shelter in the mountainous terrain. With her help, Ward evaded capture for six years, far longer than most bushrangers of the era.

Sample image

The Crocodile Hotel
Australian Script Centre
50 minutes; 3 female 5 male
Cast age: 16 to 18, 18+; Audience age: young adult – adult
1920 – a Makassan prahu (Indonesian fishing boat) sails to the Northern Territory. An Aboriginal man has a fight with one of the Makassans. The Aboriginal man is taken to Makassar for trial. 1970 – Jane and Jim are teachers in a remote Aboriginal school in the Northern Territory. They encounter racism and the hard life for the Aboriginal community. Jane has a love affair with David, an Aboriginal teacher. David is mysteriously killed and his body is found by Indonesian fishermen.