Clancy of the Overflow and My Brilliant Career Comparison

Write a paragraph comparing the way country Australia is represented in "Clancy of the Overflow" with the way it is represented in the opening scenes of "My Brilliant Career". Provide a thesis in your topic sentence. Then refer to the texts to support your thesis. In the poem, you might mention specific words or phrases and in the film, you might mention particular shots or dialogue.

Both the poem, Clancy of The Overflow, and the film, My Brilliant Career, focus largely on the Australian outback landscape and how central this environment is to the Australian identity. However, each text presents a very different portrayal of what the outback has to offer for the Australians that live in these rural areas. The poem Clancy of The Overflow portrays Australia and Australians as wild, adventurous and friendly. Patterson uses evocative language to express the beauty and abundant life and spirit of the Australian outback. The description of the ‘sunlit plains extended’ and ‘everlasting stars’ presents Australia as a country of immense, natural beauty that offers a sense of freedom for all who live there. Patterson then continues to portray Australians as welcoming, down-to-earth people who appear to be continuously happy as they ‘ride behind [their droves] singing.’ Their droving work is further described as having ‘pleasures that the townsfolk never know.’ Despite having enjoyable, outdoor occupations, Clancy of The Overflow also portrays Australian people as unsophisticated and uneducated, to a certain extent. Patterson’s specific, grammatical error – ‘we don’t know where he are’ – suggests that Australians are somewhat backward compared to countries such as the United Kingdom or the United States of America. Despite being depicted as slightly regressive, Patterson ensures that Australians are still portrayed as displaying their well known ‘mate ship’ when, in the poem, the unknown sheerer replies to the writer of Clancy’s letter, despite not knowing the writer personally. On the other hand, the film, My Brilliant Career, focus very much on the dry and ‘red dust’ aspect of the outback environment, and the extensive hard work that accompanies one when choosing to live in these areas. The ‘rural and frontier settings’ depicted in the film also touches on the idea of the ‘Aussie battler’ – men who stuck to their, often, barren land despite depression, drought or bushfire. In the opening scenes of My Brilliant Career, the viewer is presented with images of men sweating in intense heat, as they work to herd cattle and tend to their dusty, dry farms. These particular scenes refer to the difficult life of the Australian farmer whose livelihood depends on the weather and other sources beyond his control. These farming families endure hard-work all year round, and despite what Clancy of The Overflow suggests, they very rarely have time to appreciate their surroundings and experience the freedom that such an overwhelming and immense landscape has to offer. While both exploring, in depth, the Australian landscape, the poem, Clancy of The Overflow, and the film, My Brilliant Career, present very different, but equally significant, representations of Australia.