Backbencher

The Movie Rabbit Proof Fence takes place in the early 1930's in Western Australia in the small town of Jigalong in the Gibson desert. Now with this we come to the notion of finding out that a fence runs through jigalong and out into the desert and it was designed to keep rabbits on one side and pasture on the other so famers and ranchers in the area could raise their crops and livestock. But the thing I noticed is that the fence has a symbolic meaning to what the movie is about once we are introduced to 3 girls who are mixed aboriginines, whose fathers were white fence workers. The girls names are Molly and Daisy who are sisters, and their cousin Gracie. The problem is the fact that thier fathers have moved on and the only source of contact with the white world of Australia is the weekly ration day at the depot station in Jigalong. Now with the girls basically being on thier own with their mother, people veiw them as wild childs in a sense and send word to AO Neville in Perth, who happens to be the Chief Protector of Aborigines, and he believes that the aboriginal race is dying out and he wants to speed this up, and to do so he makes a rule saying mixed breed aborigines cannot marry full blooded aborigines, along with taking children from these mixed marriages away from their families and preparing them for life in white society with in Australia by sending them to bording schools, to learn to live as civilized people. Molly, Daisy, and Gracie are relocated as well during this time to an settlement 1200 miles away in which conditions tend to be harsh and almost unlivable, and after a time the girls devise a plan to run away back home, but the problem is the master of the settlement is a master tracker and once he realizes they are gone he takes off on a search after them across the desert as the girls try to out run him back to thier mother by following the rabbit proof fence. now the symbolic meaning I stated earlier has two meanings to me in the sense it shows the division of peoples within Australia by showing the racism towards aborigines, but it also has the meaning of a path home as shown by the girls using it as guide back home. The thing I noticed about this movie is that in a way it made escapees from settlements very relatable to what happend with black slaves in our country by trying to escape on the underground railroad and many a slave master going after them and trying to bring them back. Overall a very good movie with an interesting point of view on the way racism affected peoples within Australia.

Matt Liese