Imagine what it would have been like if Black settlers arrived on the shores of a continent inhabited by white natives? How would history have unfolded? How would power, privilege and prejudice have shaped the nation that followed?
Forty years ago, a groundbreaking mockumentary asked exactly those questions, turning Australia's colonial history on its head.
Babakiueria (pronounced: BBQ Area) is the story of a fictitious Black colonial country, where white people are the minority, their lives shaped by a heavy-handed government.
Written by Geoffrey Atherden and directed by Don Featherstone, it aired on ABC TV in 1986 and starred Indigenous cast members including Michelle Torres, Bob Maza, Kevin Smith, Sol Bellear and Athol Compton.
It is lighthearted look at colonisation of a different kind - where the roles are reversed and the first Black settlers interrupt a weekend BBQ and begin the process of Black colonisation with miscommunication and a sense of entitlement.
Released two years before Australia’s bicentennial, Babakiueria satirised and critiqued Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous peoples and challenged audiences to confront the realities of colonisation, racism and the treatment of First Nations peoples in a way few productions had done before.
The name Babakiueria stems from the moment of first contact between the colonisers and the (white) natives.
Arriving by boat at a BBQ area, a flag-toting company of black soldiers ask the locals, ‘What’s this place called?’.
“It’s a BBQ Area,” they respond.
“Babakiueria? They call this Babakiueria. Nice native name. Colourful. I like it,” Bob Maza’s character ‘Wagwan’ replies.
Broome-based actress Michelle Torres played the mockumentary’s narrator; TV Presenter Duranga Manika, who follows the plight of a family of Babakiuerian natives whose simple lives are controlled by a paternalistic Black government.
Speaking to NITV’s The Point, Torres recalls how she was attracted to the role from the moment she first read the script.
“I just jumped into it straight away as I could see that it was something special,” Torres said.
“It didn’t take much acting ... I actually modelled myself on Jana Wendt, who was a big 60 Minutes journalist back in the day,” she added.
As Duranga Manika, Torres describes her fascination with white people and their customs.
“I’ve always been fascinated by white people,” she declares in the film’s opening, as she watches the Babakiuerians overcook their meat on a fire and points out abandoned cars and graffiti as cultural curiosities.
As well as spending six months living with a 'typical white family', she also asks members of the Black population for their opinions on white people and speaks to the Minister for White Affairs (Bob Maza).
“It’s very hard to walk in someone else’s shoes, and satire allows the viewers to do that and depending on how fragile you are on how it hits you,” Torres told The Point.
According to director Don Featherstone, the question of how to portray both Black colonisers and white colonised was the subject of a lot of discussion during development.
Ultimately, rather than involving any profound representation of their respective cultures, the transposition is literally skin deep: Black people colonising a land of white inhabitants.
In some cases, Indigenous cast members based their characters’ mannerisms on white Australian public figures – for instance, Featherstone and Torres both say that Bob Maza based his Minister for White Affairs on Queensland’s premier at the time, Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Torres still sees the impact Babakiueria has some 40 years on.
“Wake up, you can no longer hide and not use your brain to understand there is a disconnect between what happened to Aboriginal people and how Australia celebrates its uniqueness and abundance – what was it built on and what was the cost to our mob?” she concluded.
Catch up on The Point’s episode: Land Rights, What Do We Want? on SBS On Demand.
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