Bruce Beresford

Usually I try to steer clear of mounting the work of close friends on this site, because most of my friends are writers with a web presence of their own. But Bruce Beresford, whom I have known since we were students in Sydney in the late 1950s, is a film director, and publishes any prose pieces only incidentally. Yet he is so good at noticing what goes on in the world that anything he writes if of acute interest, and especially when he is talking about our homeland, Australia. For years he drove one of the classic models of Australia's Own Car, the Holden, and he evokes it exactly, as you might expect. What is unexpected is the portrait of his father, which is simultaneously hilarious and tragic. Beresford's admirers will recognise all over again his completely original taste. When we were students it was Bruce who could be found listening to the music of Martinu and other composers the rest of us had never heard of. He is still like that: an adventurous appreciator, rather like the heroine of The Getting of Wisdom, which is still. for my money, the movie that defined our generation of Australian artistic voyagers.

 Golden Olden Holden