ABSTRACT
As Myths of Oz points out, “The Aborigine is a personification of the central Australian landscape: each is equally and similarly opposed to the urban lifestyle of the typical white Australian” (Fishe et al.: 128) The sequence at the Aboriginal camp follows a segment which shows Tick choreographing numbers. During this segment, which parodies the famous Australian film Picnic at Hanging Rock, we get shots from Tick’s point of view of various native lizards in the outback – lizards that get incorporated, along with emus, into the big number (“Finally”) at the Alice Springs hotel and casino. Despite the fact that Tick has a vantage point from atop a high cliff, neither he nor Bernadette, who treks from the brokendown bus to the road looking for help, see the Aboriginal camp, which is close enough to the bus for the men to walk back to it to put on their costumes when they decide to perform. The camp seems to rise out of the landscape, or to merge with it. The association between Aboriginality and the landscape is furthered by the film’s use of nondiegetic didgeridoo music when the trio first sees the outback. Like the lizards, the Aborigines provide a concrete image of the bush available for the plot when the occasion suits but disappearing from view otherwise – as Alan disappears once he has brought Tick to Bob. Not surprisingly or coincidentally, the concrete image of feathers caught on brush in the bush, emblematic of Elliott’s dream of “drag queens in the outback,” appears at the desertion of the Aboriginal camp.
