Around fifty years ago, a couple of undergraduate History students who lived on the same corridor of a residential college at JCU started to fantasise about a film.
It was based on various Problems in Australian History and would be filmed in Ravenswood. The cast would include various campus identities, playing seemingly appropriate roles.
Many years later, with Dirty Work at The Crossroads in the bag, its author turned his attention to a long-neglected scenario.
I subsequently reworked it into a double-stranded narrative that dealt with significant issues in Australian historiography.
The result is Zen and the Art of Locating The Real Australia, which (hopefully) manages to deliver on three fronts.
First, it sets out to transform the original film scenario, which lacked a definite conclusion, into a sequence of dreams with a reasonably tidy end.
Second, given a need to spin the dream sequence out across a succession of nights, it aims to deliver a mildly satirical look at campus life in somewhere somewhat similar to Townsville circa 1975 or thereabouts.
Third, it comments on the way historians have presented Australia's national story. That narrative contains details that many would prefer to omit.
This site currently lacks a final version of Zen and the Art since loose ends need resolving. The result also needs to be approved by its co-originator.
Beyond those considerations, several more projects currently sit somewhere between initial conception and a developing narrative that needs a conclusion.