Dimensions
213 x 262 x 32mm
Tim Burstall was a key figure in Australian postwar cinema. As a director, writer and producer, he was instrumental in revitalising Australia's dying film industry and launching the careers of many well-known actors. But in 1953, before realising his cinematic aspirations, Burstall began keeping a diary. He set himself the task of writing 500 words a day, storytelling, recording, observing and reflecting. The diaries begin when Burstall is twenty-six, married and with two small sons. The family were building their mudbrick house in a progressive community in the semirural township of Eltham, near Melbourne. Their lives revolved around domesticity, parties, art, politics, film screenings, intellectual discussions and promiscuity.
Burstall's diaries aren't simply passive recordings of everyday life, however. He mercilessly turns his gaze upon his immediate neighbours and wide circle of friends and acquaintances; the artists, writers, philosophers, musicians and academics that belonged to a left wing, intellectual subculture set apart from provincial Melbourne. Burstall turns on his wife, his lovers and the young woman he was determined to seduce. And he turns on himself, castigating, mocking and repeatedly revealing his insecurities. The Memoirs of a Young Bastard offers a unique snapshot of 1950s Australian bohemian life. Written against the backdrop of an Australia easily caricatured as dull and provincial, straightjacketed by suburban convention and paranoia, this is one of the most evocative, and certainly most comprehensive, Australian diaries of modern times.
