| Contact | |
|---|---|
 Poster | |
| Directed by | Bentley Dean Martin Butler |
| Edited by | Tania Nehme |
| Music by | Antony Partos |
| Distributed by | Contact Films |
Release date | 2009 |
Running time | 78 min. |
| Country | Australia |
| Languages | English Martu Wangka |
Contact is a 2009 Australian documentary film that tells the story of 20 Martu people who in 1964 became the last people in the Great Sandy Desert to have come into contact with Europeans.
In 1964, a Blue Streak test missile launched from Woomera by ELDO was expected to land in the Percival Lakes area of Western Australia, an area traditionally belonging to the Martu. Two Native Welfare patrol officers, Walter MacDougall and Terry Long, were sent to the area to make sure it was uninhabited. When they arrived, they located a group of 20 Martu women and children in the area. The group had never seen white skinned people before and upon seeing the patrol officers they wanted nothing to do with them, and they ran away from them. Despite the presence of the Martu people in the area, a missile was still fired from Woomera, but it went far off course, landing hundreds of miles away from the lakes.
After several months, a second missile was scheduled to be deployed and Walter MacDougall and Terry Long returned to the area with two interpreters, Punuma Sailor and Nyani, in an attempt to take the group of Martu women and children away from the Percival Lakes area. When the group was located this time, the patrol officers tied their ankles together to stop them from escaping and took them to Jigalong mission.
Throughout the film, the experiences of the Martu women and children are described by Yuwali who was 17 years old when she was a part of this group back in 1964. Now 62 years old, she shares her memories of growing up around Percival Lakes, her dingo Yuntupa and the first time that she saw the patrol officers and their car. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
A book about the same events documented in Contact was released in 2005, entitled Cleared Out: First Contact in the Western Desert by Sue Davenport, Peter Johnson and Yuwali. [5] [6] [8]
| Ceremony | Category | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History | Prize for Australian History | Won [9] [10] |
| Australian Film Institute Awards | Best Feature Length Documentary | Won [9] [10] |
| Walkley Award | Best Coverage of Indigenous Affairs | Won [9] [10] |
| Film Critics Circle of Australia | Best Feature Documentary | Won [9] |
| New South Wales Premier's History Awards | Multimedia History Prize | Won [9] |
| Sydney Film Festival | Foxtel Documentary Prize | Won [9] [10] |
| Australian Directors Guild | Best Achievement in Directing for a Documentary | Won [9] [10] |
| Australian Screen Sound Guild | Best Achievement in Sound for a Documentary | Won [9] |
| Australian Cinematographers Society | Bronze Award for Cinematography: Documentaries, Cinema and TV | Won [9] |
| Chicago International Film Festival, United States | Gold Hugo for Best Television Production & Best Documentary: Social/Political | Won [9] [10] |
| Miradas Film Festival, Canary Islands | Best Documentary | Won [9] [10] |
| Annu-ru Aboro Film Festival, New Caledonia | Best Documentary: Pacific/Oceania | Won [9] [10] |
| Planete Doc Review Film Festival, Poland | Ecumenical Dialogue Award | Won [9] [10] |
| FIFO, Tahiti | Le Grand Prix du Jury | Won [10] |
The de Havilland Propellers Blue Streak was a British Intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), and later the first stage of the Europa satellite launch vehicle. Blue Streak was cancelled without entering full production.
Wiluna is a small town in the Mid West region of Western Australia. It is situated on the edge of the Western Desert at the gateway to the Canning Stock Route and Gunbarrel Highway. It is the service centre of the local area for the local Martu people, the pastoral industry, the Wiluna Gold Mine, and many more people who work on other mines in the area on a "fly-in/fly-out" basis. Wiluna's climate is hot and dry, with an annual rainfall of 258 millimetres (10.2 in). Mean maximum temperatures range from 19 °C (66 °F) in July, to 38 °C (100 °F) in January.
Kumpupintil Lake, also known as Lake Disappointment, is an endorheic salt lake located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Woomera, officially Woomera Village, is a town located on the lands of the Kokatha people in the Far North region of South Australia. It is approximately 446 kilometres (277 mi) north of Adelaide. In common usage, "Woomera" also refers to the wider RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC), a large Australian Defence Force aerospace and systems testing range covering an area of approximately 122,000 square kilometres (47,000 sq mi) operated by the Royal Australian Air Force.
The Western Desert language, or Wati, is a dialect cluster of Australian Aboriginal languages in the Pama–Nyungan family.
The Maralinga Tjarutja, or Maralinga Tjarutja Council, is the corporation representing the traditional Anangu owners of the remote western areas of South Australia known as the Maralinga Tjarutja lands. The council was established by the Maralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act 1984. The area is one of the four regions of South Australia classified as an Aboriginal Council (AC) and not incorporated within a local government area.
The 2005 Cronulla riots were a race riot in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It began in the beachside suburb of Cronulla on 11 December, and spread over to additional suburbs the next few nights.
The Martu (Mardu) are a grouping of several Aboriginal Australian peoples in the Western Desert cultural bloc.
A woomera is a wooden Australian Aboriginal spear-throwing device. Similar to an atlatl, it serves as an extension of the human arm, enabling a spear to travel at a greater speed and force than possible with only the arm.
The Western Desert cultural bloc or just Western Desert is a cultural region in central Australia covering about 600,000 square kilometres (230,000 sq mi), including the Gibson Desert, the Great Victoria Desert, the Great Sandy and Little Sandy Deserts in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia. The Western Desert cultural bloc can be said to stretch from the Nullarbor in the south to the Kimberley in the north, and from the Percival Lakes in the west through to the Pintupi lands in the Northern Territory.
Operation Totem was a pair of British atmospheric nuclear tests which took place at Emu Field in South Australia in October 1953. They followed the Operation Hurricane test of the first British atomic bomb, which had taken place at the Montebello Islands a year previously. The main purpose of the trial was to determine the acceptable limit on the amount of plutonium-240 which could be present in a bomb.
Giles Weather Station is located in Western Australia near the Northern Territory border, about 750 kilometres (470 mi) west-south-west of Alice Springs and 330 kilometres (210 mi) west of Uluru. It is the only staffed weather station within an area of about 2,500,000 square kilometres (970,000 sq mi) and is situated mid-continent and near the core of the subtropical jetstream. This means it plays an important role as a weather and climate observatory for the country, particularly eastern and southeastern Australia, and particularly for rainfall predictions. The station is on the Great Central Road and the nearest township is the Warakurna Aboriginal settlement, 5 kilometres (3 mi) North. Giles is within the Shire of Ngaanyatjarraku and is in the foothills of the Rawlinson Ranges.
Donald George Mackay CBE was an Australian outdoorsman, long-distance cyclist, and explorer who conducted several expeditions to the remotest areas of the Australian continent.
Punmu is an Aboriginal community, located 640 km south east of Port Hedland in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, within the Shire of East Pilbara.
The RAAF Woomera Range Complex (WRC) is a major Australian military and civil aerospace facility and operation located in South Australia, approximately 450 km (280 mi) north-west of Adelaide. The WRC is operated by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), a division of the Australian Defence Force (ADF). The complex has a land area of 122,188 km2 (47,177 sq mi) or roughly the size of Estonia or Pennsylvania. The airspace above the area is restricted and controlled by the RAAF for safety and security. The WRC is a highly specialised ADF test and evaluation capability operated by the RAAF for the purposes of testing defence materiel.
Molly Kelly was an Australian Martu Aboriginal woman, known for her escape from the Moore River Native Settlement in 1931 and subsequent 1,600 km (990 mi) trek home with her half-sister Daisy Kadibil and cousin Gracie. She was a member of the Stolen Generations, which were part-white, part-Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families by the Australian government. Her story was the inspiration for the book Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, and the film Rabbit-Proof Fence.
Walter Batchelor MacDougall was an Australian missionary and patrol officer who worked with the indigenous peoples in the desert regions of Western Australia and South Australia
The Mandjildjara, also written Manyjilyjarra, are an indigenous Australian people of Western Australia.
The Nakako are an indigenous Australian people of Western and Southern Australia.
Warri (1909–1979) and Yatungka (1919–1979) were an Aboriginal couple from the Mandildjara tribe of the Gibson Desert in Western Australia who spent about 40 years isolated and living nomadically in the Australian desert.
