Publicity still for "A Return to the Brink". L-R: Andrew S. Gilbert as William Charles Wentworth, James Wardlaw as the Young Officer, Simon Wilton as Godfrey Hooke, Greg Stone as Nathaniel Quinn, Lewis Fiander as Colonel Campbell, Jackie Kelleher as Mrs Campbell, Paul English as Governor Gipps. Photographer: Jeff Busby
A Return to the Brink
By Rodney Hall
21 October 1999 – 13 November 1999 Merlyn Theatre
Playbox Theatre Company, Melbourne International Festival Of The Arts,
New Writing Theatre World Premiere
The first Government House is declared unsound. Governor Gibbs shakes the entire settlement with his decision to rebuild upon justice and humanity, ordering a retrial of the eleven white perpetrators of the infamous Myall Creek massacre. A Return to the Brink is the personal drama behind the extraordinary 1838 court case, which recognised Indigenous people as fellow human beings. A judgement that was not reasserted until the 1967 referendum, it attested a vision of greatness for this nation.
Rodney Hall combines poetry, history and politics in a remarkable play about greed, fear, justice and compassion - and a strong, but flawed leader who brought us back from the brink of civil war.
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