Kanowna

In a dusty dry cemetery in a little known corner of Western Australia there is a plaque that tells a tragic tale from our gold mining past, but this tale isn’t one you’d expect. It is a story about the loss of a new born baby, a double murder and a gunfight. It is 1902, the major participants are Japanese and the place is called Kanowna, which in the Indigenous language means “place of no sleep”.

Intrigued by this little known event I began to ponder about the circumstances of the people in the dry, dusty and unforgiving heat of that place and of the widespread racism of the time and I asked the question, “Why has mainstream media generally ignored the part in Australian history played by people of non-European ancestry?”

The majority of films I have made have been an unconscious attempt to tell those stories, to explore the complex relationships and perhaps, in a small part to redress the imbalance.

Kanowna is a story of love and the barriers that faced ordinary people in that extraordinary place. I wanted to explore the impact of cross cultural relationships, the taboos and the importance of one’s status at a time when equality was a dream held by many.

The Australian Goldfields would have been a harsh and intolerant place with dire consequences for those who stepped outside the accepted social structures and into this world I ventured with Chomatsu, Osarno and Trooper Brown.

Kanowna is now a ghost town, only empty streets remain and the spirits don’t sleep.