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It is an epic tale, a source of pride for its people, yet a story little known by Australia at large. On a single day in 1968, in the scorching Pilbara heat, 137 men – mostly from the Torres Strait – smashed a world record when they laid, spiked and anchored seven kilometres of railway track in 11 hours and 40 minutes.
Now recreated on stage at Brisbane festival, this feat, part of a nine-month project to build 400km of rail line from Mount Newman to Port Hedland, has received its overdue celebration in the joyous musical Straight from the Strait, presented by Opera Queensland, the Yumpla Nerkep Foundation and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.
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Kate Hood has known the thrill of success and the sound of silence. For two decades Sydney-born Hood was an “able-bodied actor, writer and director”, with a long-running role in the TV drama Prisoner. Then, in 2003, she was diagnosed with hereditary spastic paraplegia and became a wheelchair user. Suddenly, she says, “doors shut in my face”.
Hood, 65, slowly rebuilt her career, appearing in plays such as Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone at Melbourne Theatre Company in 2023, where she became a member of the company’s advisory circle the previous year, reminding directors of their obligation to authenticity.
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On a beach on Bunurong country in Victoria’s Point Nepean National Park not so long ago, actor Tasma Walton and Indigenous elder Aunty Gail Kunwarra Dawson, lit a cleansing fire. In that moment, Walton, star of Rake and Mystery Road, vividly pictured the day, almost 200 years earlier, when sealers abducted a group of Indigenous girls and young women around that spot.
Walton suddenly felt the intensity of the grief in this “sorry place”, thinking of that day in 1833 when those females were grabbed, bound and forced inside a schooner.
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