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The spiritual belief required to traverse such distances was based on unsustainable expectations. In 1420, Prince Henry the Navigator was made grand master of the Order of Christ, a company established to succeed the crusading order of the Templars. Funds from the order financed his expeditions and the first Portuguese navigators sailed under the Red Cross. |
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The Portuguese, on the other hand, located Prester John in Ethiopia, where the Knights Templar had journeyed to find the lost Ark of the Covenant. Portuguese campaigns in Angola and the Congo were nominally aimed at meeting up with the holy empire of the East. |
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For many years after that battle, there were various waves of Sebastianismo, in which various impostors claimed to be the king. As with modern Elvis Presley sightings, hopes were sustained that the King, and with him Portugal’s lost glory, would be restored. |
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… the dank, corrupted air That festers in the marshes around there Has made me food for fish here in the snarling, Fierce seas that dark the Abyssinian shore, Far from the happy homeland I adore. |
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The poets subsequently inspired by his work were called the Sósino Generation. In modern times, this spirit has been carried by the poet Fernando Pessoa and novelist Jose Saramago. |
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"It is not I who shall comment on the Text, but the Text that shall comment on me. I will not say a word that is not the Gospel’s own, because there is not a clause in it that is not mine. I will echo its voices, and it will shout out my silences. May it please God that men on earth might listen to them, that they might not come to be heard in Heaven." |
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"Down the coast here, under a hopeless, black basaltic cliff, is to be seen the wreck of a very, very old ship, now covered with coral and seaweed. I waited down there for a spring tide, to examine her, but could determine nothing, save that she was very old; whether Dutch or Spanish I know not. You English should never sneer at those two nations; they were before you everywhere." |
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Despite the lack of hard evidence, the city of Warrnambool has capitalised on the hypothetical Portuguese wreck. The first major ‘re-discovery’ was a documentary made for Channel 7 by the businessman adventurer Dick Smith. |
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In the episode ‘I Name Thee Bay of Pearls’, the mayor, Bob Jolly, attempts to win tourists by manufacturing a theme-park history, titled ‘Ye Olde Pearl Bay’. Given the lack of any historic artefacts, the mayor discovers that mystery can be gained by the mere possibility that an old object belonged to the early explorers, such as the Portuguese. He thus declares that a rusty car gasket may have been a Portuguese cooking implement. It is the very uncertainty of the attribution, rather than its Portuguese origin, which grants it mystique. |
 Hali with award-winning tea bag dress. |
In Madeira, her father’s family had lived in a cave, providing everything for themselves. They carried the same lifestyle into the banana plantation where she grew up, and at which she worked after school. ‘Every time you killed something, you had to eat nose tip to tail, tip and everything in between. Open the pot and you’d see it all, chicken, chook heads, comb and beak. Just life.’ |
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Some locals feared that Australians would bring a ‘Bali culture’ with them, with liberal sexual that were offensive to the conservative Catholic East Timorese. Australia’s failure to stand up for the East Timorese on the world stage is still remembered: ‘Australia is seen as a lap dog to Asian dictatorships, the US and other dominant countries of the west.’ |
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Before the ballot, Nicholson made thirty-three hand-drawn copies of the leaflet that Australians had dropped over East Timor in 1944. The leaflet was an expression of solidarity and encouragement from the Australians towards the East Timorese, informing them of recent Japanese defeats and their own impending liberation. The action is personal and wistful, referring back to a time when Australian foreign policy was aligned with unambiguous good. |
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Ironically, the title ‘Unaustralian’ has since become a rallying point of political action. Soon after Bracks’ statement, the demonstrators were joined by a figure playing a mounted Ned Kelly, bearing the title ‘Unaustralian’. Like the returned lost King, this symbol of Australia’s rebellious spirit finds a new vocation in a contemporary context of conformity and political impotence. |
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Baz Lurmann’s debut Strictly Ballroom (1992) pitted passionate Latin culture against the rule-bound Anglo mentality. The young competitor Scott Hastings brings authentic Latin techniques into the closed circle of rigid Aussie dance codes. The film reaches its delirious comic end with a mass of competitors frolicking in Latin frenzy. |
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One officer wrote back to London saying that his spirits had soared on reflecting that this flourishing and important colony was originally settled and peopled on a plan exactly similar to that of the present expedition. But Phillip would have none of this: he was confident he would see the time when Botany Bay would be of more use to England than as a drain for its more degraded inhabitants. |
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But two centuries later, as Australia has developed into a virtuous nation, there is a hint of yearning, a saudade, for the passion and adventure of the Portuguese explorers. As encapsulated in the classic song diptych of Peter Allen, ‘I still call Australia home’ for stasis and comfort, but ‘I go to Rio’ for engagement and life. |