The Journey

‘The caption “Children Onboard”, notably placed at the top of the single frame, is a pun based on the 2001 “Children Overboard” scandal where a senate inquiry found that the government has misrepresented the truth of the sinking of a group of asylum seeker’s boat by suggesting that they has deliberately thrown their children “overboard”.’ – the pun creates humour as it satirises the apparent honesty of John Howard’s current government policy of reconciliation by changing the caption to “Onboard.” This satirisation invokes questions of fairness surrounding Howard’s current policy in relation to the unethical deeds which have already been committed against the Indigenous population.

The cartoon has a large [deliberately and ironically] white truck placed centrally in the one frame, symbolising white Australians and drawing attention away from the Indigenous Australians by making them seem insignificant [in relation to the size of the truck], just as white people one tried to do. The way the caricature of John Howard is tossing the Indigenous Australians into the truck is a metaphor for the way White Australia tried to assimilate the Indigenous Australian culture into their own in the hopes that it would fade away; and how the current “new” policy is just “more of the same”.

The expressions shown on the faces of the Indigenous Australians are blank, representing the inability the Indigenous Australians had to stop the white Australian population from taking their children and disfiguring their cultures and beliefs.

Another form of symbolism which can be found in this cartoon is the placement of one of the Aboriginal children in the bottom right hand corner of the one frame. This segregation of one child from the other few, and from the mother represents the segregation of many children from their families and friends during the period in which Indigenous Australians had very few rights.

The journey represented in the cartoon shows us that not every journey is a positive one, and also that our journeys are not always in our own hands. What happens to us during the course of any journey is directly and indirectly manipulated by the people around us; for better or worse. How we are at the end of our journeys is influenced directly by what happens within them.

Golding’s cartoon relates to Morgan’s narrative through the way they both depict the wrongs committed against Indigenous Australians. Both Morgan and Golding advocate the adverse effects of miscegenation on the Indigenous people’s nation. However, where Golding’s cartoon is deliberately confrontational, Morgan’s narrative is deliberately but skilfully persuasive yet non-confrontational; she has told the story of miscegenation through the narratives of her uncle, mother and grandmother.

In conclusion, the statement “the journey, not the arrival, matters” is truthful in that it is what happens within our journeys that makes us who we are, and who we are is the thing that matters. These several texts have supported this idea through the numerous techniques and story lines they represent, showing us that a journey can be good or bad; as short as a week or spanning many generations and that we’re not the only ones who control our journeys, but simply the ones who experience them.