Crossing the Divide

A high school history class, sets out on a two-day trek across the Great Dividing Range, learning about the expedition by Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson. As the group travel through the Blue Mountains, their guide Lionel draws their attention to what is often left out of the history books. They learn about some of the earliest interactions between Indigenous people and the colonial explorers, revealing some of this nation’s difficult truths.

As the trip continues, Liam, a scholarship student from the Torres Strait, starts to feel uncomfortable, constantly having to declare or defend his experience as a First Nations person to his classmates. Tensions mount when Liam’s friend Max refuses to see how European settlement created anything but a positive pathway to progress for a newly forming nation. Tempers flare around the camp fire and Liam becomes lost – in time and place – as he’s suddenly staring down the barrel of a shot-gun held by an equally startled and confused Gregory Blaxland.

The physical landscape of the Great Dividing Range serves as an allegory for the pertinent issues that Australia is grappling with and the divide between various parts of our society. Crossing The Divide asks the question, “Can we find a path to a more unified Australia, or is the distance too vast to cross and will we always be divided?”