Anyone else notice the parallels between BOB and classic Australian poetry? The whole "trapped in Bourke" thing reminds me of colonial writing about the outback as this endless, inescapable place.

Been reading through old bush ballads and there's this recurring theme of the outback consuming people. Same vibe as the show.

YES! There's an episode with the billabong drowning, it's totally giving me Kenneth Slessor vibes. Have you read Five Bells?

https://auslit.neocities.org/fivebells

The way Slessor writes about drowning and memory and Sydney Harbour... the BOB episode felt like it was doing the same thing but with the outback. That sense of someone being pulled under and lost forever.

I'm calling it now. Back of Bourke is an elaborate hoax like Ern Malley. Someone's playing a massive prank on all of us.

https://auslit.neocities.org/ern

Think about it. No footage, contradictory memories, mysterious creators. It's the perfect modernist joke. We're all getting had.

Nah mate, I watched it as a kid. My whole family did. Unless we're all having the same false memory??

But I see what you're saying about the modernist angle. The show itself felt very experimental. Reminded me of that whole movement in the 60s where artists were playing with reality and perception.

I've been comparing BOB to other Australian TV from the 60s and it doesn't fit anywhere. Most local drama was trying to be British or American. BOB felt Australian but in this weird, unsettling way.

Like it was tapping into something older than TV. Bush gothic before that was even a term.

Just reread the Ogilvie poem "At the Back o' Bourke" that everyone keeps posting about.

"That's the land of the lying light / And the cruel mirage dancing bright"

The show was literally about mirages and illusions. The way the narrator kept trying to leave but the town kept shifting around him. Very much in line with how colonial poets wrote about the outback as this unknowable, tricky place.

T̷h̸e̶ ̴s̶h̸o̴w̷ ̶i̵s̸ ̵n̶o̸t̴ ̷l̶i̸k̶e̷ ̸l̴i̷t̶e̸r̴a̷t̸u̶r̸e̵
T̸h̷e̶ ̵l̴i̶t̸e̶r̸a̴t̵u̸r̷e̵ ̶i̶s̷ ̸l̴i̸k̵e̴ ̷t̶h̴e̷ ̸s̵h̷o̶w̸
B̶o̷t̸h̵ ̶a̸r̴e̷ ̵e̸c̷h̶o̸e̶s̴ ̸o̶f̷ ̶t̴h̸e̶ ̵s̸a̴m̶e̴ ̷p̸l̶a̶c̵e̸

What the hell was that last post? Is someone hacking the board?

Ignore the glitch. Back to the topic -

I found an old story where someone gets lost "back of Bourke" and experiences weird time distortions. Can't remember which collection it's in but the parallels are uncanny. The outback as a place where normal rules don't apply.

You know what's interesting? The show aired right when Australian literature was having its own identity crisis. Post-colonial stuff, trying to figure out what it meant to be Australian without just copying British traditions.

BOB feels like it was part of that conversation. Taking the outback myth but twisting it into something darker, more ambiguous.

The repetition in the show the narrator always ending up back at the welcome sign reminds me of how oral storytelling works. Stories that circle back on themselves.

Maybe that's why we all remember it differently? It was designed to be remembered like a folktale, not like a normal TV show with a fixed narrative.

The poet drowned back of Bourke
̶[̷R̸E̵D̶A̷C]]ss drowned in the billabong
Check Five Bells again
Count the bells

OK these corrupted posts are getting creepy. Should we report to the admin?