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Clip description
An old lady (Alethea McGrath) tells her two granddaughters (Chloe and Phoebe Ferguson) a story that a man once told her. It is about a woman from the star Epsilon, in the Southern Cross, who arrives unexpectedly on earth. She is confused by where she is, and how she got there.
Curator’s notes
‘Everything was strange to her – the smells, the terrain, the colours, the light.’ This gives us the clue that this is partly a metaphor for the migrant experience in Australia, but in its widest sense, going back to 1788. This woman is like the first whites who arrived here and were dazzled by the colours, the different light, the strange animals. The sequence becomes a beautiful circular hymn to the Australian light that de Heer loves, captured in a stunning time lapse sequence that takes us along the rim of an almost abstract landscape in central Australia. Graham Tardif’s music suggests the sounds of Aboriginal singing, which gives the sense of a prior occupation.
