The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 2

2- THE AGE, Friday, October 13, 1978 his Neds turning in rave A Sories of Fret CHRISTIAN SCIENCE LECTURES is bting given by CHARLES W. FERRIS of Minneapolis. Minnesota. USA. Mr.

3 rum a a memMr of the Christian i science Board of Lectureship. The final three Victorian lectures ire listed. i sir Chas. Ferris REALITY: MATTER OR MIND? is being given at BENDIGO CITY HALL Lyttleton Terrace. Bendigo on SBnday, Octebtr 15 it 3.15 pm THE SPIRITUAL BASIS FOR HEALTH is being given at CAMBERWELL CIVIC CENTRE Camberwell Road.

Camberwell. on Monday, October 18, at 8.1 pm REALITY: MATTER OR MIND? it being given at ROBERT BLACKWOOD HALL Wellington Road. Clayton, on Tvesdiy. October 1 7, it 1.15 pm ALL ARE WELCOME For furtfcor mformitkM about ditto lottoroi rmg 83 4702 were not added until tht early 1880s. Mr.

Arnold's second choice is Trio, a book of poems by Kenneth Slessor, Harley Matthews and Colin Simpson illustrated by Raymond Lindsay, William E. Pid-geon, James E. Flett and George Ffney (Sydney: The Sunnybrook Press, 1931). Mr. Arnold chooses this because the typography and printing are the most aesthetic.

The third choice is Rules and Regulations of the Melbourne Sparrow Shooting Club (Melbourne: J. Gadsden, probably 1902). You have to admit that the name alone entitles it to some sort of recognition. Sparrow shooting? A club for sparrow shooting? Mr. Arnold chooses it because it is the most esoteric.

He can say that again. He let me have a browse through it yesterday (look, I can't get it out of my mind a club for sparrow shooting!) and it's fair dinkum. I had time to make a note of one brief rule: "If the 'shooter's gun miss-fire, with the first barrel, he may demand another two birds, but if he fire his second barrel, he must abide by the consequences." Boy, they sure had sparrow shooting under a tight rein back in 1902. Some of the books on show are rarely seen, even by scholars and students. They may not be put on public view again for a generation or more.

You can see them until D.ecember 3. wants to see the spot where Ned shot Kennedy, Scanlan and Lonigan is deterred from the very start. It is possible to drive for two hours, back and forth along the access road, and not have a clue where to turn off. When you do get there, you find, an ordinary piece of bush-land. The only indication that, something dramatic once happened there is the name Lonigan cut into a giant eucalypt, but even this is nearly indecipherable, because bark has grown over some of the lettering.

May it stay this way forever. The Kelly story is too tragic, profound and scarring to be trivia-lised by eskies of cans and the scream of transistors. A MAJOR exhibition, "Celebrat-ing Australian opened last night in the Irving Benson Hall of the La Trobe Library. About 150 books have been selected from the thousands and thousands available in the library. If you are ducking in for just a few minutes and don't know what to start looking at, let me pass on the favorites of Mr.

John Arnold, who selected and mounted them. The first is His Natural Life (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1874) by Marcus Clarke. Mr. Arnold regards this as the most historically significant copy of the book in the world, because it is fulsomely annotated by the scholar J. J.

Shillinglaw. You think the title is wrong? No, the words "For the Term of town and were well-known. Mansfield felt outrage at the deaths. Unarmed civilians, risking their lives, readily accompanied the police party which brought back the bodies from Stringybark Creek, But there is no hatred now, he says. Mansfield has decently buried the past.

"Some of my friends are relatives of the Kelly gang who married descendants of the police Ned shot," -Supt. McDonald says. "They want no publicity and they do not consider there is anything unusual in what they have done." Can he name these people? but I'm not going to. The past is the past. Mansfield is one of the best communities in Australia because the people are one." Can lie give any clue as to who they are? No.

It is a firm no. But he does mention the names Scanlan and Kennedy on the police side. One gets the impression that it is the descendants of these people who married into the families of Kelly, Byrne or Hart. And this is as far as most inquiries will take you in Mansfield. The police won't tell on their townsfolk and neither will the public.

It's not the first time I've tried, and there have been scores before me. "There is a terrific understanding between the local police and the community," says Supt. McDonald; and I believe him because he is a relaxed, polite, articulate ARE they listening up there in the Wombat Ranges the ghosts of Big Ned and his mates? What a turn-iip for the books! Suddenly they've taken" a back seat to the three policemen they shot. In fact the seat has been pulled from' under them. According to some reports, the name of Ned Kelly will not be mentioned at the ceremony in Mansfield on Saturday fortnight at which the centenary of the policemen's deaths will be commemorated.

Ned Wouldn't 'consider, this strange. If his ghost has ever wandered into Mansfield on cold and starry nights and examined the monument to the dead trio, he must have noted that his name is not there. The inscription says merely: "To the memory of three brave men who lost their lives while endeavoring to capture a band of armed criminals in the Wombat Ranges near Mansfield, October 26th, 1878." "A band of armed criminals" so much for old Mansfield's view of the Kellys. Mansfield js deep in the Kelly country, but it has never outwardly been a Kelly town. The reason is clear, says the man in charge of police arrangements for the commemoration service.

Acting Chief Superintendent Dallas McDonald, in charge of the Upper Goulburn Police District, says the three policemen, and their mate who escaped the Kelly bullets, were living in the do that, it is fitting that we should keep the centenary anniversary." Mansfield is a beautiful-looking town, with its wide streets, shady trees and neat shops, and it is also extremely peaceful. The only crime last month was 10 petty larcenies. The Mansfield police covers 968 square miles, and is manned by a senior sergeant and six others. Their main problem is not with the 4500 citizens of the Mansfield shire, with tourists who get lost in the snow or fall into Eildon Lake. Snow tourists alone totalled 178,000 last year.

TYJEANWHILE Stringybark Creek continues to enjoy the peace it deserves. If other nations possessed its story, they might signpost the area for miles around, put up a monument and sell take-away food which the kiddies could eat on slides and roundabouts. With great decency, Mansfield has done nothing beyond erecting one signpost which people (tourists, it is said) continue to dis-mantle. The result is that anyone who and intelligent man, one of those policemen who'd have done well in any career but chose instead to rise high in the force. It is both startling and refreshing to hear a policeman say he can see two sides of the Kelly story.

This does not mean he is pro-Ned. But he can see a few greys where a lot of people see only black and white. His feelings about the commemoration service on Saturday fortnight are solely concerned with the dead policemen. The stark thing to him is that they died doing their job. Who shot them is immaterial.

This is a feeling shared by Acting Inspector Neil Evans, of Mansfield, who is also arranging the commemoration. "We are neutral," he says. "We are not trying to downgrade Ned Kelly or upgrade him. The ceremony has nothing to do with him. We are honoring three brave policemen who might have been killed by anyone." And he goes on: "In 1880 the public in Victoria and New South Wales thought enough of Kennedy, Scanlan and Lonigan to raise the police monument.

If they thought enough of them to Couple wanted to work in Spain 6 months minimum. Man for general maintenance work, sirt to supervise American corespondent course for 2 children 4'i and 6. JrES" Jpr extended stay 10,000 Pesetas per month each 'month and the Mediterranean on your doorstep. Further information Mrs. Ellsa Holler.

Camping Cafa D'Oques, Hospltalet del Infante, Tarragona, Spain. Phone Tamgona 770 23254. the riiel prize Expatriate grips SKE2fiffi. CINEMA Colin Bennett A poor sequel to a bad omen BOOKS Stuart Sayers His name is Andrew Cowan. And his Scots neighbours in the county of Berwickshire know him to be a canny farmer.

In Australia, however, he's known as the Master of LEtt GARNER of Gee-Jong, now living in Paris writing- short stories, has won the principal National Book Council literary award for 1978 for her hovel, Monkey Grip. Kevin' the Aboriginal playwright, poet and artist has been awarded second prize for Living Black, his recreation, from taped conversations, of the lives led by Aborigines in the bush, small towns and the black ghettos of Sydney and Melbourne. The awards were announced in Melbourne last night': by Mr. Justice- Kirby chairman- of -the Australian Law Reform Commission, at a dinner marking the opening today of Australian Book Ms." Garner receives $2500 and Mr. Gilbert $1750.

McPhee Gribble and Penguin, the hardcover and paperback publishers of Monkey Grip, share $500. Allen Lane, publisher of Living Black, receives $250. Ms. Garner, born at Geelong in 1942, and head prefect of The Hermitage school for girls, became a teacher after graduating from Melbourne University. She won notoriety when dismissed from Fitzroy High School for providing explicit answers to students' questions on sex and sexual practices.

The sacking provoked the Victorian Secondary Teachers' Association to strike. Kevin Gilbert, born at Condob-olin, spent 14 years of a life sentence for murder in New South Wales prisons before public agitation helped -win his release in 1971. His first book, Because a White Man'll Never Do It. was published in 1973. Monkey Grip, named first-prize winner from ah entry of 102 books, was published in hard-' cover 13 months ago.

It was highly commended in "The Age" Book of the Year Award for 1977, and is expected to be made into a film next year. In their report on the eight finalists for. the 1978 book council awards, the judges describe Monkey Grip as "beautifully although neither an easy nor early choice as prize winner. They acknowledge that the subject matter heroin addiction, inner-city communal living and obsessive love has been criticised by some reviewers as distasteful, but add "The author is not illusioned, but utterly honest in facing the dilemmas of freedom, and particularly of social and sexual freedom for women trying to create for themselves a role which will recognize their full humanity." The judges found Living Black -to be "a work of art and ah important social document which allows white Australians to hear for the first time the voices, of Aboriginal Australians describing, in their own terms, the way in which they live in a white society." Although evidently impressed by many of the books submitted and satisfied that each finalist, possesses "high literary merit" and makes "an important contribution to Australian literature," the three judges word their report with noticeable restraint. Such caution suggests that, at least between July 1 1977 and July 31 1978, the period spanned by this year's book council awards, Australian publishing threw up few, if any, works of unmistakeable significance.

This matches the conclusion of the judges for The Age" Award for 1977, which embraced books published between November 1 1976 and October 31 1977, thus overlapping four months of the book council award year. "The Age" judges reported that the 1977 crop of Australian books showed "a high level of effectiveness attained by many writers rather than outstanding individual peaks of achievement." Judges for the book council awards, which are subsidised by the Literature Board of the Australia Council, were Joyce Nicholson, editor of Australian Bookseller and Publisher; John McLaren, editor Of Australian Book Review; and Anne Summers, author and until recently Literary Editor of the National Times. the Southern Cross Rally. And in the world of motor racing, he was named by the Royal Automobile Club of Great Britain as last Helen Garner won notoriety, wins award. year's International Driver of the Year.

It's a title he richly deserves. Not only as the six-times winner of the Southern Cross Rally, including five consecutive Simon Nasht REPORT Art groups warned Never mind the total lack of suspense or common sense in Damien: Omen (Midcity). Forget the two-dimensional characterisation. The film has other things on its (very small) idea of entertainment is to have you anticipate who will be the next to be killed by the sweet Antichrist child, Damien. This is not difficult to do, as, on each occasion, Jerry Goldsmith's music croaks a warning well before the event So you are left with time on your hands to enjoy guessing which horrible method Damien will use.

A woman's eyes are gouged out by a crow. One man drowns under the ice of a lake. Another is sliced in half (opportunity here for a delightful slow-motion exposure of intestines) by a lift-shaft cable. Omen H's journeymen film-makers, led by routine director Don Taylor (who replaces the more talented Richard Donner) show no inclination to construct- a genuine story. They cheat us by putting all their energies into a catalogue of increasingly prolonged and unpleasant ways to dispatch veteran players (Sylvia Sidney, Lew Ayres) who, many people thought, were dead already The cherubic child from the first instalment of this rubbish about Biblical Revelations is now 13 and played by Jonathan Scott-Taylor.

Adopted by Uncle William Holden, the brother of Gregory Peck who was killed off in Omen the boy with jackal's marrow in his bones still moves in the swankiest circles. Holden own about half of a handsomely photographed Chicago and the film commutes by gleaming limousine between plush skyscraper and snowy stately home. Periodically, it also presents long, irrelevant scenes set in Damien's military academy. Well, perhaps not entirely irrelevant Obviously, in Omen III (already being prepared) Damien will grow up to be a four-star general and turn into a hawk as well as a crow. years from 1972 to 1976, but also because of his exciting victories in the London to Sydney Rally and his recent victory in the 30,000 kilometre 'Internacional' Round South America Rally.

This year, in the Southern Cross Rally, Andrew Cowan will drive a new car. A works prepared Volkswagen Golf GTI, sponsored jointly by Selleys and the VW Dealers. Andrew Cowan's Golf will be the only VW entry in the Rally. It will challenge the might of the established works teams single-handed. And that's a brave decision for a man to make, especially a man who not only has a rally to win, but a reputation to lose.

But then, as Andrew Cowan knows, the most important attribute a rally car needs is staying power. And who knows more about staying power than Volkswagen? SR 1 1 stS salute to Andrew Cowan from Selleys LeeLBeia. 3 Jm and Volkswagen. Our hopes, our pride and our TONIGHTS TV tion conforms to rules that are beyond dispute." The multi-million dollar' opera house gets a critical blast for its poor production facilities, small audience capacity and inefficient design. "Sydney, for normal opera performances, has only half an opera house, yet it is the home of Australia's National Opera Company," the council says.

The council, responsible for allocating the Government's $26 million annual expenditure on the arts, says the 1977-78 year was a year of achievements "but one which also yielded "a crop of The financial collapse of Sydney's Old Tote Theatre Company, criticism of the artistic policies of the Australian Ballet and the power struggles within the opera company are among the events which the council suggests may be worrying to those people trying to justify the huge sums of public money spent on the arts. CANBERRA. The Australia Council has warned art organisations to become less autocratic and exclusive or they will lose the support of the people. In its annual review for the last year, released yesterday, the council also calls for a new Sydney Opera House because the present centre "is probably imparing the promotion of arts in The council says art organisations, including the Australian Opera, must become more democratic to fulfil its aims. "Many subsidised companies have rules or articles permitting them to exclude, for no specified reason, applications for membership," it says.

The organisations should be open to all citizens who have an interest in that branch of the arts, the council says, and the Australian Opera should amend its articles so that "any future elec best wishes go with you in the 1978 Southern Cross Rally. The Selley's Golf runs with: THE MUPPETS SHOW. HSV-7, 7.30 pm: Jim Henson's irresistible Muppets entertain guests Leo Sayer-ahd Roy Clark in a show cleverly-blended by Channel 7 in Melbourne. A viewing must. 1978 KING OF POP, GTV-9, 7.30 pm: The Little River Band's lead singer Glen Shorrock hosts the annual pop music awards and introduces special guests Kate Bush and Leif Garrett.

A 90-minutes life show for only the most devoted of fans. TICKLED PINK, ABV-2, 8.30 pm: Executive producer Bruce Best's personal favorite in the series of half-hour comedy plays is featured tonight. It's Palace of Dreams and stars John Meillon and Bunney Brooke. STUART WAGSTAFF'S WORLD PLAYHOUSE, ABV-2, 9 pm: Tonight's choice, The Floater, is a play that examines the ways of the law in the case of a young man to be tried on a drugs charge. It stars Richard Beckinsale and Julian Curry.

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Come ond see us and you will bo convinced that and save! HUGE DISCOUNTS We offer the best I TUST to add fuel to the interesting speculation about who will become the Australian Ballet's artistic director, it is worth noting that Margaret Dale is visiting Melbourne. Miss Dale, 56, was a dancer with Sadler's Wells Ballet (later Britain's Royal Ballet), but is noted mainly as a producer of ballets for television. This is a skill that should in the Australian Ballet's new production of Coppelia, opening at the Palais, St Kilda, on February 22. NEIL JILLETT TtTRS. Margaret Whitlam l1M- has been elected chairman of the association of Australia's professional opera companies, the Opera Conference, for three years.

A MERICAN jazz pianist and composer Keith Jarrett will give a concert in Dallas Brookes Hall on November 15. DINING SUITES FROM $349 interest our national dance company's executives, who regard television as a way of introducting young people to ballet. Hungarian-born dancer Ivan Nagy, mentioned here yesterday as the current front-runner in the artistic directorship stakes, probably will visit Melbourne early next year. The guessing is that he could have a hand, or foot, Plain English Speaking Award 1978 NATIONAL I VI I THE AGE Prices 1 Ertdra Suite Discounted to FINAL Buy difct bur fr" $495 cash Made from the finest furniture timber Tesmanian Teak Mom than bargain at this low price Oefineth not to bo missed. FURNITURE TODAY Details p.14 SERVICE and SPARE PARTS mm MONDAY-FRIDAY Victoria and tooth NSW 14c rofcen HU 20c BY AIR ACT.

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Torment Ctfc. Darwin. Port Moresby 36c AN exhibition tribute to the late George Bal-dessin, a well known Melbourne artist, will be heid at Realities Gallery from November 1 to 17. He died in a car crash in August. Proceeds will go to his widow and two children.

AUDITIONS for the Na-tional Institute of Dramatic Art, Sydney, will be hel at the State College of Victoria, Hawthorn, from November 7 to 11. MANUFACTURER 6 MONTHS INT FREE I City Mazda LAY-BY TERMS FfiOM $4 00 WEEKIY Wambt' of Victoria" Ciaibe MnU'cttJror 57-59 GEDDES STREET, MULGRAVE, VIC 3170. PH. 561-3180 Hours Wookdavt 8 am 5 pm Saturday am-1 pm. PHOHJZtOm welcome nera Mli'JoTlrlJoear out.