For the Love of Regional Areas

MEDIA RELEASERemembering the Australia that Australians had to leave behindEmbargoed until: 1/4/2012 When all the ‘Second Nations’ or ‘Subsequent Peoples’ in Australia were compelled to leave, what were the lives they left behind?For the Love of Regional Areas, a collection of poetry by Tom Clark, is an important key initiative in best practise at the cutting edge of contemporary arts and creative industries, because it explores what that question means for all non-Indigenous Australians. Was it a question about the landscapes? The distinctive sounds of Australian voices? Was it the confidence that we were a nation? The platitudes that reminded us why we belonged together?For the Love of Regional Areas traces the last Australians’ lives, at home and abroad, in the years leading up to the Departure. Clark said, ‘This collection remembers the personal hopes and dreams of ordinary mainstream Australians. It celebrates their public achievements. ’Sushila Ahwong’s famous Admiralty House proclamation prefaces the book. Her words set the context for the calamitous chain of events across the country that followed. A year later, this once-proud nation’s non-Indigenous people had departed: the only ones left in Australia were fugitives running from a date with deportation. ‘For the Love of Regional Areas is really an attempt to remember what we thought we had forever,’ Clark added. For further information, please contact your local historian.ENDS