Just read this amazing book.
Bold, brave, enlightening and sobering; this work of painstaking research, reveals a depth and breadth of corruption at the upper echelons of our society which is staggering. If and when it is made into a mini series, the problem will be that audiences may doubt the veracity of the narrative; it is indeed a case of the truth being much stranger and much more outlandish than fiction. Congratulations to Kate McClymont and Linton Besser.
The Island of Doctor Moron premiered at The New Olympia Theatre on November 4th, 2014.
It ran for one month, playing to packed and sell-out houses in its last weeks.
This is what audience members thought of the show: CLICK HERE
Following are reactions to the world premiere season of The Island of Doctor Moron by industry and other significant people:
“The Island of Doctor Moron has breathed new life into live musical theatre. I witnessed this show work its magic on a full-house audience. The energy the show produces is irresistible; it is destined to captivate audiences all over the world.”
“Rock energy, raw vitality, fantasy and fun. Moron is a kaleidoscope of musical momentum. Island magic not to be missed.”
Brad Hazzard – NSW Attorney General (who officially opened the show and returned to see it again in an unofficial capacity.)
“From the moment I heard about The Island of Doctor Moron I was desperate to see it and it didn’t disappoint. This is a show whose origins story is a tale to match the on-stage adventure; equal parts crazed ambition, monumental heroism and fire-breathing drive to succeed. Moron is one massive, monumental musical.”
Giles Hardie
ABC News24 – ABC 702 – Mornings on Nine – The New Daily – Foxtel magazine – Fliks.com.au – Time Out,getflicked
“This show has that rare ‘X Factor’ which creates a tangible ‘buzz’ of excitement and delight from the audience in the foyer after the show. I know, because I was part of it. I haven’t seen many shows do that in my 40 years in the theatre industry. Doctor Moron is sure to go far beyond our shores, bringing the same happiness to audiences all over the world.”
Bar Manager and Licensee – The State Theatre
“I know great entertainment when I see it and this show is great entertainment. The Island of Doctor Moron has all the ingredients for huge commercial success. It appeals to audiences of all ages and leaves them filled with joy. The show has the potential to develop a global cult-like fan base.”
Bicci Henderson – Manager Hunter Stadium and former manager of live entertainment, Star City, former touring manager for The Angels
“Energetic, enthusiastic, toe-tapping but most of all, fun. If you want a good night out, go and see Moron!”
Matthew Reilly – International Best-selling author
“The Island of Doctor Moron gives audiences everything they desire in a musical. The music especially drives the show with relentless and irresistible energy. This combined with the fact that many of the characters are primal natives and mutated animal-human creatures allows an opportunity for some of the most creative choreography I have seen.”
Dianne Heaton – Agent, Choreographer & Producer
“I saw the show seven times. I was utterly captivated by it. It is so wonderfully different from any other musical I have seen for decades. It has all the hallmarks of becoming an international hit.”
Norman Scott – Ret’d – Formerly with Her Majesties Theatre
“Being the audio engineer for The Island of Doctor Moron has been one of the highlights of my 23 years in the music industry. The music in this show is amazing. It was impossible to be unmoved by the rhythms and the energy. The songs all stand alone as powerful pieces which the audiences were already singing as they left the theatre!”
Phil ‘Kez’ Kesby – (Audio engineer to Human Nature, David Campbell, Birds of Tokyo, Rose Tattoo etc)
“I loved the whole concept of The Island of Doctor Moron. It gave audiences a completely different theatrical experience. Its appeal is to mainstream audiences who want a musical to provide a vehicle of delightful escapism. I had numerous listeners call in to rave about the show. This in itself was a rare if not unique occurrence.”
Grant Goldman(Broadcaster – 2SM Super Network Radio)
“There’s a rock musical on at the moment called The Island of Doctor Moron… the singing and dancing is unbelievable.”
Alan Jones – (Australia’s most popular talkback presenter – 2GB)
“Doctor Moron creators Chris and Lyn Dockrill, have crammed so much into the fun story line and musical score – drama, adventure, sexual tension, a bunch of sub-plots, vibrant sets and lighting, colourful costumes plus a rockin’ soundtrack – that audience detachment is just not an option.”
Greg Phillips – Australian Musician Magazine
“The Island of Doctor Moron is an out-of-this-world visual feast cleverly crafted to excite and entertain audiences of all ages. Music is a key driving force of this fantasy musical – presenting an all-original, infectious soundtrack.”
Chris Duncan – DanceLife Magazine
“The music in this show is different from most musicals where the songs are part of the dialogue or libretto and their melodies and rhythms often get lost in the narrative. InDoctor Moron, the songs stand alone. Every song is a knock-out. They drive the show with incredible energy. The percussion in many of the songs is just relentless. It blows the audience away.”
Andy Byrnes – Drummer – Loonaloop, Hughie & The Swing Thing, Psycho Zydeco, Jim Conway’s Big Wheel, The Moffs, The Clouds, The Island of Doctor Moron)
That was then, this is now:
Further to my recent letter, I have been running over, in my mind, a ‘balance sheet’ for Goolawah; that is, a brief comparative assessment of what we have gained and what we have lost due to the hand-over of the Goolawah State Park to the NPWS. Quite frankly, if it were to be measured in fiscal terms, Standard and Porrs or Moody’s would probably downgrade the park’s credit rating if it had one. Here are a few observations:
Then (ie when Goolawah was a State Park administered by the Department of Lands): we had a dedicated Lands Department ranger solely responsible for managing the entire park from Big Hill to Back Beach Crescent Head. His brief was to pro-actively manage the park for positive ecological improvement and to manage an enviro-friendly camping/tourist/recreational facility (which he did with outstanding success). All monies raised from commercial applications were directed back into ecological and park improvements.
Now (ie since the hand-over to NPWS): There is no specific ranger responsible for the park. Various rangers are responsible for various parts/operations of the park’s management as part of their much wider (and, I suspect, overloaded) duties extending far beyond the Goolawah area. Again, the chain of command or management of the park is removed and lost in the bureaucratic hierarchy.
Then: The Park had a dedicated on-site caretaker 24/7 responsible for on-site supervision and management of public campers and day users of the park.
Now: There is no permanent on-site caretaker. Money from campers is collected by rangers in an ad-hoc or sporadic fashion. There is no effective full-time, consistent supervision of public users of camp sites.
Then: Dogs were allowed on the entire park, from Back Beach Crescent Head to Big Hill as per community wishes. People from Crescent Head were free to walk their dogs south from Back Beach to Racecourse.
Now: We heard much bureaucratic double-talk at the hand-over – “NPWS cannot allow dogs on their parks however, out of the goodness of our bureaucratic heart, NPWS will create a special “regional park” at Delicate so dogs can be allowed on half the park”. This, of course, begs the question by any thinking person who is not bound by the inherent inconsistencies of such bureaucratese: Why did they not declare the whole of Goolawah a “special regional park” and allow dogs on the entire park as before???
Then: When the Lands Department established the State Park, they also formed a Community Advisory Committee (CAC). CAC members were appointed and unpaid. They were drawn from the immediate community. They reflected a broad cross-section of community interests and were only concerned with Goolawah. The CAC and the then ranger, Stuart Johnson, met at evenings to allow CAC members who worked to attend. The CAC held regular meetings with fixed and formal agendas. The CAC practised a formal, positive decision-making process which produced clear and agreed-on outcomes for the park which truly reflected community concerns.
Now: There is NO interaction between NPWS and the local community. There s no local committee or forum wherein issues and concerns can be raised and debated. No decisions by NPWS concerning the park are or have been canvassed with the community. Not one physical change (aka “improvement”) has been canvassed with any formal community forum. The only lame attempt at community interaction was the one “information day” which was held well within in NPWS working hours, including set-up and pack-up (so they all were paid). Tents were erected, sausage sandwiches and pamphlets handed out. No formal forum to air public concerns. Working members of the public were unable to attend due to their own work commitments. Some months later, NPWS survey forms were left at the local Post Office for people to complete. This apparently produced no outcomes or feedback and was yet again a tokenistic, bureaucratic, ‘Claytons’ approach to community interaction (ie – the interaction you have when you aren’t having an interaction).
Then: Immediately prior to the takeover by NPWS, the State Park management was only weeks away from establishing formal inter-departmental authority over the beach and the land. This would have allowed the Park management to effectively license and pro-actively control commercial uses of the beaches and the park by businesses such as surf tour companies so as to allow for a compatible dual use of beaches by the public and private businesses. This was only possible because the Department of Lands also has authority over the beaches eastwards from a point on the sand known as the inter-tidal Zone (ITZ). The ITZ is the area between high and low tides
Now: Still now, years after the takeover, NPWS is no closer to closing the gaping bureaucratic and legal loophole created by the take-over of the park by NPWS. The Department of Lands (which is a different government department) still controls the beach east of the Inter Tidal Zone (ITZ). NPWS now has authority of the land adjacent to the beaches. Accordingly, there is no effective authoritative control over who uses the beaches and the purposes they are used for. Commercial businesses have free reign. Surf tour businesses, for example, can and do have over 60 or more people on Goolawah beach/es at any one time. Who can blame them? NPWS was warned at a public meeting that this would happen but their representative ignorantly dismissed these warnings. Now there is no single ranger or manager or care-taker to actively and actually pursue and police this matter. Unfortunately the only thing that may break this hiatus is the first serious spinal or head injury or death (I hope this will not happen) which will result in legal exposure of whichever government body/ies allow (even tacitly) the uncontrolled operation of commercial activities on land and/or water for which they are responsible and about which they have been publicly warned.
Then: The local Dunghutti people (the traditional owners of the land) have used Goolawah as a camping area to take their families for low-cost holidays. This use was recognised and flexibly accommodated within the camping grounds at Delicate and Racecourse.
Now: Some local Aboriginal people have found the full cost of paying increased camping fees genuinely onerous. Rather than allowing local Aboriginals to camp for free or for a discount, bureaucrats have reportedly seriously considered establishing a segregated ‘cultural camp’ (aka a “blacks’ camp”) on the old rutile tailings site. If this is true, it merely reflects another aspect of the institutional insensitivity of the NPWS with regard to Goolawah and smacks of bureaucratic thinking similar to that which spawned such disasters as the now defamed Aboriginal Protection Scheme of 1869.
Then: An active Dune Care policy and practice.
Now: ?
So, there we have it. A ‘balance sheet’ for Goolawah. Quite frankly, it makes Greece’s financial situation look good. Souvlaki anyone?
Chris Dockrill
Q: What kind of knuckle-dragging cretin takes a chainsaw into his own backyard and cuts down a 500-year old tree?
A: Our kind.
Refer to full article at :
http://www.acfonline.org.au/articles/news.asp?news_id=2206
Date: 3-Apr-2009
In a state first, radiocarbon dating has confirmed that a tree logged by the Victorian Government began growing before Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the Americas.
“This a monumental find for Victoria. The carbon sample, taken from a logged shining gum tree at Brown Mountain in East Gippsland, shows there is a 68 per cent chance the tree started growing between 1435 and 1490 AD. The tree is well over 500 years old,” said Jill Redwood, coordinator for Environment East Gippsland, who commissioned the study.
Benchmarks is an unusual play because it is divided into six short acts – four duologues and two monologues. Added to this is the fact that the acts are not numbered – they are nominated by a colour. This is because, they can be performed in any order. This provides for interesting experimentation in dramatic and narrative structure. The play is about two characters who meet in a park late at night. Ivan is an old man who has lost touch with everyone who was dear to him. His life has contracted to a park bench where he sits in judgement of the world and the people in it. Luke is a teenager who has run away from home. He cannot relate to his parents or sister and feels alienated by the world at large. The meeting of the pair provides for some interesting manipulation and subtle confrontation. Each is a runaway and an outcast but for very different reasons. The play has a running time of approximately 70 minutes. It has been compared to Albee and Pinter for its oblique representation of life and, on the other hand, its sharp edged dialogue.
It explores issues such as
• Family & home
• Belonging
• Alienation
• Power
• Cruelty
Benchmarks appears in the collection, Dynamic Dramatics, published by Cambridge University Press
Old Girls
Old Girls
A group of five girls who were friends at school get together approximately one year after they have left school. The purpose of the get-together is apparently simple enough: to share old memories and talk about what they are doing with themsleves now. However, from the beginning of the play, we see that, even after one short year, the girls’ memories of each other have faded as their ‘new lives’ after school have pre-occupied them. They also realise that they did not know as much about each other as they previously realised.
This is a moving play about memory, time, friendship and hardship.
The play appears in the collection – Super Scripts – published by Longman.
The Joker
The Joker was first directed and produced by Tony Spinks for the ACT International Year of LIteracy Campaign at the performance theatre of the Lake Tuggeranong College, Canberra. The slogan for the play is: “Being illiterate is no joke!”
“As long as there are people out there with literacy problems, this play reamains relevant and provocative.” – Tony Spinks.
The Joker traces the life of Adam, an illiterate person who, from his earliest experiencs at school, encounterred difficulties. Adam’s time at school is miserable; his only reposnse to is be the class clown or ‘the joker’. This is his way of disguising the facts about his literacy inadequacy.
The play appears in the collection – Super Scripts – published by Longman.
Bring back the Croc
Think nationally, act rationally. This appropriation of David Suzuki’s famous line should be the motto for the bean counters in Canberra when they are considering funding indigenous programs for 2009. Last year, they killed Croc Fest and replaced it with an array of smaller scale ‘feel-good’ festivals. Federal ministers Macklin and Gillard may be able to say that they are funding more festivals but they are actually reaching much fewer children in regional Australia and achieving a fraction of the positive outcomes of Croc Fest. Croc Fest was a unique and very successful project mainly due to its very efficient economies of scale. The Rudd government should swallow its pride and recognise this fact – in spite of the Croc’s being spawned during the Howard years. Croc Fest gave hope, initiative, ambition and direction to tens of the thousands of children and their communities throughout some of the most isolated and remote parts of this country. It’s time for Mr Rudd’s government to think nationally and act rationally by giving Croc back to the people who really need it!
Chrisdockrill's Weblog 