Put Buckley on big screen
Our ‘Castaway’ deserves spotlight
WILLIAM Buckley’s incredible story of survival is one of Geelong’s most legendary tales, and one that deserves to be immortalised on the silver screen, a Labor MP says.
Corio federal Labor MP Richard Marles has called for Buckley’s survival story to be made into a movie.
Mr Marles told Parliament this week — amid celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the apology to the Stolen Generations — to call for the “story of goodwill” to become a movie.
Buckley was sent to the Port Phillip Bay penal colony in Sorrento, in 1803, from which he eventually escaped and travelled to Geelong.
In Geelong he befriended the native Wathaurong people.
“By the time he reached the site of present day Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula he was close to death,” Mr Marles said in Parliament this week.
“The Wathaurong took Buckley in, returned him to health and ultimately made him one of their own.
“Over the next 32 years, Buckley lived with them, he became a husband, a father and, ultimately, an elder of that community.
“As tensions rose between the new settlers and the Wathaurong people, Buckley was able to intervene to prevent an outbreak of hostilities.”
Mr Marles said the story was one of co-operation and coexistence between Wathau- rong people and their earliest experiences with Europeans.
“It’s more extraordinary than Tom Hank’s Castaway. But it also contains within it a hopeful message about how indigenous and non-indigenous Australians can take a positive path to work and live together,” he said.
“So when we talk about a movie being made in Geelong, this is the movie that should be made in Geelong. This story needs to go mainstream, and it deserves the big screen.”