My Place



My Place is probably the most ambitious children's story ever written about Australian history. It spans from the modern day, to before the colonisation of the continent. The story was first told in a book by Nadia Wheatley, and later adapted for TV by ABC 3 and the Australian Children's Television Foundation. It would be more accurate, however, to call it a loose collection of short, interlinked stories.

My Place takes pains to accurately portray the periods involved. Each episode provides a brief window into a different decade. Despite being a kids' show, it does not soften what life was once like - children are forced to work hard, experience racism, are mistreated by heartless masters, go hungry and even die of whooping cough. However, it's not all grim, and often heartwarming or even quite funny - the tales range from escaped convicts to conquering cricket.

Most of all, though, the focus is kids being kids - whatever the era, the kids will misbehave, or screw up, and ultimately seek sanctuary in their hideaway - the same huge fig-tree. Whether it ends happily or sadly depends on the episode.

This series provides examples of:

 * Back to Front: The series opens in 2008 and travels back to pre-1788.
 * Baseball Episode: Cricket Episode.
 * Culture Clash: Various examples, between Abogininal Australians and Caucasian Australians, Asian Australians and Caucasian Australians, but perhaps the most interesting example is between a Vietnamese girl and her Vietnamese Australian cousin, who initially do not understand each other for cultural, but also personal reasons, at all.
 * Deliberate Values Dissonance: Used, despite it being a kid's program. Most memorably, a bastard little girl is shunned by many in her community, meaning she can't even sell her vegetables to get by in life, and also a character who treats Australian Aborigines like wild animals. Also features a child convict who is treated like crap.
 * Historical Fiction: Only the first few episodes are set in the modern era.
 * Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each episode is named after the year in which it takes place.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: The series stretches across 220 years, so naturally. Many characters are seen from old age to early childhood, and they come from many different backgrounds, although most are Anglo-Australian for historically logical reasons. Because of having a different child protagonist per episode, it also clocks up at 22 central protagonists, with even more main characters. Protagonists are often secondary characters in other kids' stories however.
 * Loveable Rogue: Many, but particularly the Irish convict.
 * Motifs: The fig tree, the house.
 * Parental Abandonment: One of the characters is a bastard little girl, and totally abandoned by her father.
 * Slice of Life - The stories mostly focus on characters going about daily lives in the particular era. Many feature a pivotal moment in the character's life, but others are just pure Slice of Life.