Australia, Be Warned! - Anti-conscription leaflet

Be careful white girls, if you get jiggy with a "Chinaman" you may produce a ...... BILLY SING!

 

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AUSTRALIA, BE WARNED!

CHINESE INVASION
ATTRACTED BY MUNITION AND THE GIRLS

With the growing number of Chinamen who settle in English cities for employment at munition works, and who, in many instances, entice girls to marry them, ther in increasing anxiety amongst social workers.

"In Liverpool there is a floating population of 40,000 or 50,000, and a recognised colony, and it has just been ascertained that hundreds of Orientals have taken up quarters in Manchester and Birmingham.

"What usually happens is that one enterprising Chinaman first takes a large house and makes aliving by letting accomodation to his compatriots.

"Willing to work for comparatively small wages, the Orientals have little difficulty in finding employment, and while their presence is resented by English workers, employers have lodged singularly few complaints against them.

"The danger arising from their marriage to English girls is likely to show itself more and more; but social workers have to recognise that, if the parents of the brides do not interfere, no one else has any right to do so. It is, therefore difficult to find a solution to the problem.

""We might, at any rate," says a prominent member of the London Missionary Society,'save ourselves the trouble of sending missionaries all the way to China when there is need for evangelisation among Chinese in this country."

-Extract from the "Empire News," Manchester, September 23rd, 1917.

Preserve the White Race

Vote NO

[Authorised by Jessie Baines, and Published by the Anti-Conscription Campaign Committee, Trades Hall Melbourne'.]

My response to The Legend of Billy Sing Casting Controversy

Wow, it seems that many people are sitting up and taking note of the poor casting of this miniseries. Geoff Davis posted a reply to my original post months ago but I hadn't bothered to reply because I didn't want to give the series undue attention. Seeing that an article discussing the series was on the front page of news.com.au, I feel it is time that I took Geoff to task over his comments in defense of the series.   Geoff has actually deleted a lot of negative comments about the miniseries on the youtube movie trailer.

Note that Geoff has made his group The Legend of Billy Sing group private now, but I still have a copy of his reply.

Geoff writes:

"In actual fact I wrote this ... and your anger seems directed at a script that you have not read and a movie you haven't seen.

Can I at least give you some information to consider.

One purpose of the original script was to attack Australia's century old tendency to go off and fight foreign wars on behalf of foreign leaders who do not have Australia's interest at heart. We have done it in World War 1, we did it in Korea, in Vietnam and again in Iraq.

When Australia returns from these dubious wars the first people we seem to forget are our soldiers. These soldiers have historically been left to deal with their pain and injury with very little assistance or recognition. The typical complaint by returnees is that they have been abandoned.

It was my intention, with the original script, to make a commercial movie that highlighted the sadness I felt for these soldiers. It is not a script that was meant to criticize any other nation, neither Britain, Germany or Turkey and certainly not Asia. It is a script written by me, an Australian, that criticizes Australia's slavish devotion to other countries agendas. It was my opinion wrapped in a hopefully commercial story."

All OK up to here.
In researching the history of Australia in the years leading up to the war I found some very real characters, including Billy, who fit the story I wanted to tell.

The only problem in using parts of Billy's remarkable story was (as one of your posters correctly pointed out) finding a Chinese actor to play Billy's dad, John Sing.

Now it is interesting that you say we are no "Band of Brothers". I couldn't agree more. The budget for that wonderful show was $125 million US dollars ... that is over $US10,000,000 per episode.

When I said you were no Band of Brothers I was alluding to the fact that you disposed of historical accuracy, for what exactly?
We were a zero budget movie with no broadcaster and no government funding. We had a script and a world class cinematographer who had agreed to shoot our movie for us, probably because he wanted to help out a family member who was part of our team, and maybe because he liked the story we were trying to tell. He was available for five weeks in March 2008.

By then, as well as no money we still had no John Sing.

We advertised in all of the online film communities in this country for actors willing to participate for either no payment or at least a deferred payment contract. We received a response from over 250 actors who offered their services under those conditions. We did not receive any response from any Asian actor who would work under any condition.

In March 2008 we decided to defer the home scenes that would involve John Sing's character and went ahead with the war section of the movie. We had hoped that by showing what we could do with the action sequences we might attract some investment and enable us to shoot the home scenes later with some money to work with.

That worked to a small extent. We still have no broadcaster but we did attract some smaller (passionate) investors who contributed around $190,000 to allow us to continue.

In February 2009 our Cinematographer was available, again, for four weeks, we also had our little bit of money.

By February 2009 we had been looking for over 15 months for an Asian actor willing to play John on (at least) a deferred payment contract.
You had that much time and you couldn't find an Asian actor between the ages of 40-70?  Where were you looking and advertising? If after a few months your casting agency had put forward zero candidates, did you not think it would be good to think outside of the box and go looking at various Chinese organisations or at the very least other Asian organisations? Put an ad in Chinese newspapers?  There are quite a few Old Chinese families (as in 3rd/4th generation Australians) in the area where you were filming, did you ever think to ask them?

For this particular case, you didn't need a professional actor. I believe it would have been a minor role anyway. How many Australian films have we had where the actors weren't professional actors? Take a look at Samson and Delilah, top notch performances by people with no acting experience. The grandma acted quite well too hey? Oh and just like this series, the film had "zero budget".

When Tony Bonner, made himself available for two weeks, we gave up the search. Now asking Tony to play it as Chinese would not only have been racist and demeaning. It was also financially irrelevant, we could not have afforded the make-up.

How thoughful of you.  Wait a sec, first you say that you didn't want Tony playing as a Chinese because it was racist and demeaning, but then you mention that it would be too expensive?  So you did consider yellowface but decided against it because it was too expensive and not because it was racist and demeaning?
That is the history behind the decision on the role of John Sing. I believe if I had not accepted Tony's very generous offer to participate I would still be waiting for an actor for John. The fact is Tony was brilliant in the story and might help get us a broadcast deal.

Now we're getting somewhere closer to the truth.

Just a few more things I would like to point out

Firstly, with regards to Billy and the other dozen or so very real characters from that period whose stories we have borrowed, we have always tried to make it clear that this story is a combination of fact and fiction and is not a literal telling of Billy's life. This is a convention both legal and acceptable in literature and film. It has been employed by writers and film makers from the birth of Hollywood. How many "Legends of Wyatt Earp" has there been, how many "Legends of Robin Hood"? Not one of the last three Hollywood Robin Hoods was English born.
You sir are a douche.  A relic of the White Australia days.  Do you remember the White Australia days?  How was it for you, good/normal?  Now try to imagine, or if you have no imagination do some research on the real life experiences of Asians and half-Asians during those times.   The eurasians of those days were treated just as poorly as their Chinese fathers, so what if their mother was white.  Do you know that if Billy had tried to enlist in his hometown, where everyone knew of his heritage that he may have not have had the chance to fight in the war at all?  You seem to have no problems white-washing an Australian of Asian heritage, which luckily for you means you don't have to look at the implications of the White Australia Policy.  Cherrypick from history and make it white.

The example you have given above is crap.  All the actors playing Robin Hood are WHITE.  Are you saying that because you have a creative license you can take the character of Billy and do whatever you like?  You can, at the expense of historical accuracy and credibility.  But it means we as a community can criticise and give you shit about it.
Second with regards to the incredible man Billy Sing. I personally see him as first and foremost an Australian. He was no more English (as was his very English mother) than he was Chinese (as was his very Chinese father).
We (Asian Australians) all see ourselves as Australians.  When you say "Australian" you really mean "white Australian".   Go look up the White Australia Policy to see why we don't use terms like English-Australian, Irish-Australian, Welsh-Australian etc.  In fact John Simpson, the guy with the donkey, was born overseas and grew up overseas and had only lived in Australia for 4 years before signing up for the war because he HATED Australia and thought he'd get a free trip back to his beloved England.  Even Simpson would have been considered more Australian than Billy.
He was born in Clermont and raised around Proserpine, he played cricket and hunted kangaroo, he spoke only English with a very broad Australian accent. Whatever racism he may have confronted in his life he defeated with the resilience, the toughness and the tolerance he took to Gallipoli.
Conveniently omitted as a non-event from the series.
He was, like many of us whose predecessors arrived here in the last two hundred years, someone who only knew this country as his home. I would disagree with anyone who suggested that he saw himself as anything other than Australian.

Most importantly, I see Billy as a true hero that was abandoned, even betrayed. by his own country. I have done my best to honor him. He deserves it.

Thanks for reading.
Regards
Geoff"
Note also that Geoff Davis gave the role of Billy Sing to.....his own son Josh Davis!  Fair enough, his son's an actor but it does lead me to ask was this nepotism?  Did Geoff audition any other actors to play Billy?  Did Geoff audition any eurasian actors to play Billy?  Did Geoff give the role of Billy's father to Tony Bonner because of nepotism?

Below are my replies to various reader comments posted on the news.com.au article.

Weiry of Melbourne Posted at 11:30 AM Today

Have any of the people complaining about this ever seen a picture of Billy Sing? He didn't exactly look like he was of Chinese origin. He looked more caucasian than anything else. Had they cast an asian looking actor it would have been a misrepresentation as well.

Comment 5 of 235

I don't have a problem with a white actor playing Billy, though I would prefer an eurasian.  Regardless of whether he looked of Chinese origin, he is of Chinese origin.  No I don't think he  looks caucasian, he looks mixed.

I agree with this comment posted on another forum:

"The fact of that matter is if you want to highlight Australia's century long habit of sending troops to wars that ostensibly (naively) have nothing to do with Australia, then you didn't need to pick Billy Sing's story. You could have picked any of a number of famous rags to warriors tales from our military past. And with so much production downtime, you had plenty of opportunity to rewrite. But then you'd miss the sucker punch of Billy Sing. 

The problem is it becomes a blatant attempt to use the inspiring and popular story of an Australian war hero for a cause that although worthy, overlooks events that could have equally as much, if not more impact for the storyline, had it retained more of the true Sing story. "

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You may also like to read about Caleb Shang.

Director slammed for 'white-out' of legendary Gallipoli sniper Billy Sing

I haven't written a response to Geoff Davis' comments to my original post as the series had not been taken up by any commercial channel.  But seeing as this article will give the series more attention I will soon post a reply to his comments.  Note below that he states "we could not have afforded the make-up" when referring to the possibility of making Tony Chinese.  He considered YELLOWFACE but instead opted for RACEBENDING!  Well I would have too, there just aren't any Asian looking people in Australia, y'know?

Read the comments from the news.com.au article.

From The Australian

A FURORE has erupted over a new mini-series about the deadliest sniper at Gallipoli, Chinese-Australian Billy Sing, who is played by a white.

This portrayal in the The Legend of Billy Sing has been attacked by Australians of Chinese ancestry as a betrayal of their heritage, robbing them of a rare historic hero.

Director Geoff Davis has cast his son Josh in the lead role, while Sing's Chinese father is played by the veteran actor Tony Bonner, who came to prominence as a blond-haired helicopter pilot in the Skippy TV series.

Sing, born in 1886 at Clermont, Queensland, to a Shanghainese father and an English mother, moved as a young man to the canefields of Proserpine, where he became a keen cricketer, kangaroo hunter and a crack member of the local rifle club.

He enlisted as a trooper in the 5th Light Horse Regiment, and became celebrated as "the Assassin" at Gallipoli, where he had 201 confirmed kills, winning the Distinguished Conduct Medal, second only to the Victoria Cross. His sniping "spotter", Ion Idriess, later a successful writer, described how the Turks sent their champion sniper "Abdul the Terrible" to hunt him down, but Sing shot Abdul first. Former Nationals senator Bill O'Chee, who became an army reservist when he left parliament in 1999 and was born to a Chinese father and an Irish-Australian mother, was "deeply disappointed" by the production.

"We'll now have people growing up thinking Billy Sing was white. But we are jealous of his memory," he said. Federal Queensland Liberal MP Don Cameron, who found the site of the South Brisbane boarding house where Sing died in 1943 with five shillings on his bedside, said it was "tragically wrong" to have the sniper played by a white.

"It is plain wrong. I congratulate the filmmakers for doing the story, but condemn them for being so careless with the truth."

Davis said the problem in casting Sing as a Chinese-Australian arose when he couldn't find a 60-year-old Chinese actor to play his father.

"Asking Tony to play it as Chinese would not only have been racist and demeaning. It was also financially irrelevant -- we could not have afforded the make-up," he said. "Whatever his genetic background, his culture was Australian. To me, he's very representative of every Australian whose parents were not born here.

"A lot of people are sitting at the back of this bus attacking the driver. A lot of people feel they own the story of Billy Sing. But they've probably got more resources than me -- if they want to tell that story, then tell it."

Davis said his critics misunderstood his intention to "create a fictional story validated by having people perform true deeds, in the tradition of the historical novel".

Damien Beebe, who has worked on films including Moulin Rouge and Mission Impossible, has been enlisted as director of photography, and Andrew Knight, of Sea Change, as a producer.

The cast comprises largely unknown actors, who will be paid only if the films -- a three-part mini-series of 90 minutes each -- make money. He had run out of money to complete the series.

Australia China Youth Association president Henry Makeham said Australian Asians lacked prominent role models.

"To 'white-out' Billy Sing with a caucasian face is not only a gross historical misrepresentation, it is treading on the grave of a true Chinese-Australian hero," he said.

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Memorial for Chinese miners unveiled at Creswick

From The Courier

CRESWICK cemetery was briefly transformed into a Confucian shrine on Saturday, as more than 400 Chinese buried in unmarked graves were finally given a memorial.

A traditional Chinese offering ceremony was performed to officially unveil the memorial, erected by the Victorian Chinese Memorial Foundation to honour their ancestors.

Foundation treasurer Hong Tan was one of a large Chinese community contingent who travelled to Creswick to take part in the ceremony, which recognises those buried there after dying on the gold fields in the late 1800s.

An estimated 250 people attended.

"The Chinese miners interred there are essentially lost,'' Mr Tan said.

"We cannot possibly find who is buried there because they are all lost, so the memory is now formalised by the building of this memorial.

"It is very important to us because ancestral worship is a key tenet of Confucian culture and this is a way to respect our ancestors.''

The Chinese community members who travelled to Creswick enjoyed roast pork, vegetables and fruit after offering it to their ancestors, along with burning incense.

An estimated 4000 Chinese are thought to have populated the Creswick area at the height of the gold rush in the 1850s and 1860s.

Creswick Cemetery Trust secretary Wendy Ohlsen said it was nice to have a permanent memorial that recognised the contribution of Chinese members of the gold rush era in the historic town.

"We are trying to clean up the cemetery to make it more inviting to encourage people to look after their ancestors and to determine exactly where they are so we can commemorate the fact they were there,'' she said.

"We were thrilled to bits with the Chinese ceremony, it was fantastic and a lovely day."

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Rice Chasin' Chair Sniffer resigns from Parliament

I love Troy Buswell.  Chair sniffing, bra snapping and now an affair (which also involved misusing government funds), he sure knows how to party.  Unconfirmed reports are that his wife Margaret (pictured below) has (finally) walked out on him.  Good on you if you have Margaret and don't bother going back to this pathetic loser. Find yourself a REAL man, an Asian man ;)

More on the chair sniffing story

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Some Gumtree Gems

Just got back from a camping trip at Jurien Bay for the ANZAC day long weekend.  Met up with a whole group of friends from all sorts of backgrounds and it was quite good to not have AA stuff clogging my mind for a while.

Gumtree is a classifieds site (a bit like craigslist in the US) and usually there are some really funny posts, especially in the confessions section.  Of course some of the posts are made up but they are still fun to read nonetheless.

Below are two ads that I came across in the Community and Real Estate section, these are real ads AFAIK.  I find them hilarious albeit really creepy.  The race of the guy (white) for the first ad is implied while the second one states it within the ad.  Lol @ "I would love to learn more about your culture", yeah right *rolls eyes*

Tina begged for death, court told

From The Mercury

MURDERED university student Zhang "Tina" Yu was subjected to a horrific attack that ended only after she begged for death, a court has heard.

One of the men accused of her killing told his mate: "I want to kill a bitch tonight" just hours before they picked up Ms Yu from a Sandy Bay restaurant.

The 26-year-old was bashed with a brick, punched and strangled with wire before being drowned in the bath of a New Town flat on June 25 last year, the Supreme Court was told today.

Her battered and naked body was found dumped in a river five days later.

Daniel Joseph Williams, 22, of Channel Highway, Kingston, has pleaded not guilty to Ms Yu's murder.

His trial began yesterday before Justice David Porter, a jury of five women, seven men and one reserve juror.

Another man - Stavros Papadopoulos, 22, of New Town Rd, New Town - has already pleaded guilty to Ms Yu's murder.

In his opening address, Director of Public Prosecutions Tim Ellis SC told the packed courtroom that as the men cruised Hobart looking for women on the night of the killing, Stavros Papadopoulos told his friend: "Tonight is one night in a million. I want to kill a bitch tonight."

He said the pair had picked Ms Yu up at a Sandy Bay restaurant in the early hours of June 25 and taken her to Papadopoulos' New Town unit where she was killed.

Mr Ellis described a protracted and horrific chain of events leading up to Ms Yu's death.

The court heard Papadopoulos told Williams to wrap an electrical cord around the woman's neck, but it snapped.

Mr Ellis said Williams told investigators the student eventually begged for her ordeal to be over.

"In the end, she just told Stav to kill her,'' Williams allegedly told police.

"And they proceed to do just that,'' Mr Ellis said.

The jury was yesterday shown photographs of the unit where Ms Yu died, of the Tyenna River and Ms Yu's battered body.

The trial - which is expected to last up to five days - continues tomorrow.

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