A Track winding back

Episode of Series “Australian story (Television program)”.
This documentary is based on a true story written by school teacher Carolyn Landon about bushman, Daryl Tonkin and his life and memories of Jackson’s Track in West Gippsland, Victoria. It is a story of love and tragedy, of an Aboriginal community living and working harmoniously with white people in the timber industry in the forest area of Jackson’s Track established by Daryl and his brother Harry during the 1930s. It tells of Daryl’s feud with his family when he decided to live with an Aboriginal woman, the dramatic kidnapping of this woman by his brother, Daryl’s life with the Aboriginal community and the eventual bull-dozing of the camp in the 1960s to appease local Christian groups resulting in the break-up and dispersal of the almost 100 people living at the camp. Daryl talks of himself as being at one with the Aboriginal way of life, a true bushman, who saw his life neither primitive nor of poverty and hardship, but as being his preferred way of life. Includes interviews with two of his nine children, re-enactments, stills and archival footage, and excerpts from the film “Rose against the odds”. Contains some b&w images.