APPENDICES

Appendix A
”PHANTOM GOLD”

Author Unknown. Singleton Argus Mon 21 June 1937.
Retrieved September 12, 2022 from Trove, National Library of Australia.

The epic story of Lasseter's lost reef has attracted such a wealth of attention during the last few years that Mr H. V. Foy, curious as to what the country really looked like, decided to equip and lead an expedition into that little known land. "Lasseter's Land," as it is known to those of the interior. On his return, and after viewing the splendid motion picture record of the adventurous journey, it was decided that the story of the true facts of Lasseter and his reef would be of tremendous interest if told as a real Australian feature film. "Phantom Gold" is the tale of 'Lasseter's reef, and its attendant expeditions, forced landings, and the tragic ending which closed probably forever the door to the reef, which Harold Lassctor claimed to have found about 30 years previously. And now all this is brought to the screen, in. all its tragic dramatic truth by Rupert Kathncr, who's masterly directing of such an epic adventure places him in the forefront of Australian directors. Associated with him in the production is Mr Stan Tolhurst, who plays the tragic role of Lasseter. Mr Tolhurst - who referred to himself as “Dem the Drover” to the confusion of others - has no previous performance credits and in fact approached the picture’s financers when he discovered their intentions. Others in the cast are people actually re-living their own past adventures—Bob Buck, Australia's greatest living bush man, the nma who, in fact, found Lassoter's body; Capt. W. L. Pittendrigh, pilot of the "Golden Quest" 'plane which was forced down in the search; Bryce Russell, Lasseter's partner; Reg. King, experienced bushman and mining engineer and "Old Warts," Lasseter’s native companion. This group of men all commented on the uncanny way in which Mr Tolhourst brought their former compatriot to life in front of the screen. These striking echoes of a real-life adventure bring to the Plaza screen a story that every Australian will want to see and enjoy, being, as it is, an Australian film that even the severest critics could not find fault, some even claiming for it the title of Australia's greatest screen drama. The associate feature is the adventurous sea drama, "Ship of Wanted Men."

Appendix B
Dream Millions review – promising playwright's debut epic aims high

Van Badham. The Guardian Australia, Mon 24 February 2020.
Retrieved September 08, 2022.

Kim Ho is a young Australian playwright who has notched up some impressive career successes. A touching short film he wrote as a teenager went viral, drawing praise from Stephen Fry and Ellen DeGeneres. He’s also won enviable awards, and with them the notice of the main-stage theatre companies.

The premise of his new indy showing at Melbourne’s Theatre Works certainly intrigues. Dream Millions promises to explore the Australian legend of Lasseter’s Reef through his own tenuous connection with head of the expedition Fred Blakeley. Ho charts Blakeley’s path from washed up bushman to gold digger to anachronistic native title sympathiser. It’s not necessarily a bad idea on paper but Ho ends up tying himself into knots making sure no stone is left unturned in his own retelling.

At the height of the great depression in 1930, Lasseter managed to raise both £50,000 and fervent hope in an expedition to find the gold and rescue Australia from its poverty. They ran into difficulties, the gold was not found, and the prospecting party denounced Lasseter as a charlatan and abandoned him. His lonely body was found in the desert a year later.

But in order to get his expedition funding he had to partner up with ‘bicycle bushman’ Fred Blakeley. Blakeley immediately begins to resent Lasseter’s flamboyant tall tales and loses faith in the reef’s existence. By the time the two part ways, the reef is no closer in sight and Blakeley declares the presumed dead Lasseter a fraud. In Blakelye’s own memoir (written on the typewriter of Ho’s own grandfather) he contrasts his growing disillusionment with Lasseter’s quest with his increasing empathy towards ‘the sandhill people’; Aboriginal Australians encountered during the expedition.

It’s a strong story for Ho to explore; the turning away from a grand act of colonial plunder towards a conciliatory vision of Australia’s future. Unfortunately Ho can’t help but second guess himself at every turn. He both romanticises Blakeley’s increasing sympathy towards the plight of First Nation Australians while cringing at such conciliatory politics. Ho is clearly touched by his familial connection to the expedition (one so tenuous most audience members would be hard pressed to follow it) but is uncomfortable with the unabashedly colonial overtones of the myth he’s placed himself in.

There’s certainly a degree of hutzpah in promising both a rollicking patriotic adventure and an unflinching exploration of Australia’s early folly. But with that much on your plate you better not drop it. Alas, Ho does. Dream Millions prods at an Australian cultural canon in which the heaviest trope is of non-Indigenous locals terrorised by landscape. But Ho’s fresh takes on a theme that saturates local literature get hopelessly lost – not within impenetrable wilderness but amid incoherent structural choices and overwriting, and clumsy stagecraft. How lost? The play is billed at lasting 120 minutes. We were there for 210.

The direction is so uncertain as to whether we are witnessing a memory, a reconstruction or a play within a play, that the next two hours are spent in confusion – utterly unhelped by lighting design that can’t decide if the audience should be allowed to see things or not. Soon enough scenes crash into one another without schema, pauses are made for prolonged movement sequences, Ho walks onstage to confront Blakeley for his shortcomings, and then Paul Keating turns up.

As a director, Caspar Renwick makes an excellent choreographer. By some margin, the movement work is the most effective contribution to the production. Unfortunately these sequences are so bereft of dramaturgical connection to the rest of the story. Renwick shows a clear knack for the body’s movement when free from Ho’s stifling prose. However this skill disappears entirely once he remembers he’s making theatre and not dance, replaced by awkward stage placement of actors and props, and interminable exits and entrances.

Actor Jeremi Campese shows an energetic potential for comedy that’s consistently misdirected into stage mania. Annie Stafford seizes at two isolated monologues in the script that allow her to actually do some acting and delivers moments so beautiful that while they can’t save this play they do rescue Ho’s reputation as a writer of potential. These moments prove he can turn a line – and while his emerging theatrical ideas aren’t coherent in Dream Millions, it’s cause for some excitement that he’s having them.

For that reason, if you have a spare 210 minutes and the curiosity, Dream Millions is worth a visit. Not because it lives up to the titular dream but because it illustrates in one or two strong moments amid its failed experiments what a long and difficult expedition that dream re

The Chunderful Gizzard of Oz: The Whole Story Behind THAT Logies Moment

Abbie Blakeley. PEDSESTRIAN.TV. Wednesday, June 13 2020
Retrieved September 13th 2022

An Aussie screenwriter just shat and vommed on stage at the Logies, proving truth is stranger – and far more explosive – than fiction.

It’s Australian TV’s night of nights, but the Logies are also notoriously the loosest of our entertainment award ceremonies. 

Every year they’re plagued by scandals: that time Steve Irwin’s snake literally bit Tim Webster; when Karl Stefanovic turned up to the Today set the next morning still drunk; or when walking sacks of mashed potato reliably beat out their far more talented colleagues of colour.

But no scandal was more, uh, mellifluous than that concerning Gina Erin Bozovski and her apparently infinite deposits of projectile vomit and explosive diarrhea.

You heard that right. An Aussie screenwriter just shat herself on stage whilst accepting her award… and then chundered all over herself. And Grant Denyer.

Strap in. Here’s the full sordid story.

Shartistic Excellence

At only 28, Gina Erin Bozovsky was by all accounts a rising star of Australian screen. She’s been mentored by industry giants, won the John Hinde Award for science fiction writing and was the youngest recipient of an AACTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for her work on ABC’s The Fatal Shore. 

In 2020, she raised eyebrows by turning down an offer from Screen Australia to undertake a residency in Los Angeles, saying, “Those American ***** couldn’t handle my ****** ** ********** *** ******* ***********. 

Indeed, some speculate that it was Bozovski’s flair for language that inspired the Logies committee to create an entirely new award, the Gold Logie for Best Story, in 2021.

Bozovski was nominated for her work on Love Changes Everything: The Alan Jones Story, alongside Alice McGooley for Diary of an Asylum Seeker, Mac Peters for Dumpster Doctor Season 3, Jacqueline Groscht for her new Tasmanian noir series, Murder on the Derwent, and Damian Pounder for Ned Kelly: The Untold Story.

Against all odds, the reclusive writer from Zetland beat out the old hands to become the inaugural winner of this brand new category – an unprecedented upset in the Aussie TV landscape.

That’s where everything went wrong.

Yakult, Ya Fukt

Industry insiders describe Bozovski’s professional behaviour varying from unconventional to erratic to downright unsettling, with some colleagues (who wish to remain unnamed) describing her watching porn on her phone during writers’ rooms and only ever consuming jumbo packs of Cheetos and cans of V.

More recently, rumours spread about Bozovski’s alleged cocaine use. In the words of one writer who worked with her: “Gina would excuse herself to go to the bathroom a few times an hour, but would also let us all know she had chronic constipation. We knew nothing was coming out. It was obvious she was going in there to snort a line.”

“She started getting nosebleeds and blamed it on the aircon,” another of Bozovski’s colleagues told me. “The building didn’t have aircon.”

What did she do to address her chronic constipation? Did she go to a doctor? Get a prescription?

“It would get to the point where Geb would down half a dozen Yakult in a day to try and, y’know, get some bowel movement,” this colleague said.

“The next day she wouldn’t show up to work. It was like clockwork. Cheetos and V, coke, Yakult, day off. She’d have been unhireable a long time ago but she’s just such a goddamn genius, so we put up with it.” 

#Shomitgate

Which brings us to Logies Night.

To be clear, there is no implication by this publication that Gina Erin Bozovski became constipated by heavy cocaine use, then used Yakult to get her bowels moving before the Logies, but mistimed the flush-out and ended up erupting out of both ends at the worst possible moment.

But it would explain why her vomit was purple.

Bozovski arrived in what appeared to be a pleather power suit. Eyewitnesses said she was shifting uncomfortably in her seat, with one overhearing her allegedly say: “Calum Scott had better hurry the f*** up because I’m about to unleash a tsunami in the toilets like the one in The Impossible. Where’s Naomi? She’d better watch out.”

The rest is history. No sooner had Gina Erin Bozovski named the inaugural recipient of the Gold Logie for Best Story, she made herself the first person ever to shit themselves on the Logies stage (that we know of).

It was a truly eldritch spectacle seared into the retinas of all unlucky enough to bear witness.

Watch the whole sorry affair here, if you dare:

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CAST & CREW