The embedded links should give you a sense of the depth and scope of this work...
The Flight of Ducks is an Australian on-line documentary spanning more than 70 years. It began when F.J.A. Pockley (my father) travelled to Central Australia in January 1933 where he undertook a private camel expedition from Hermannsburg Mission to Mount Liebig. He brought back cinefilm, photographs, journals and Aboriginal objects. The collection provides insight into the end of the frontier period when there were still isolated groups of Aborigines yet to experience non-aboriginal contact. His companions were also interesting men. They were: Hezekial, an Aboriginal guide; the remarkable T.G.H. Strehlow; artist, Arthur Murch and animal and skull collector, Stanley Larnach.
My father rewrote his journal three times before his death in 1990. His memories changed. He added a post script after his return in 1976 where significant changes can be seen, not only in Central Australia but in himself. Another layer to this story was added in September 1996 when I took my own children (his grandchildren) on a journey that retraced the 1933 expedition.
The Flight of Ducks is an evolving work. It is no longer just about past and present expeditions into Central Australia. It has evolved into a journey into the use of a new medium for which we have yet to develop a descriptive language. It is part history, part novel, part data-base, part postcard, part diary, part museum, part pilot, part poem, part conversation, part shed.
Above all, it is an ongoing communication between its stories and its audience or participants. A collection of digital objects is given meaning, not just because they have historical significance, but because the story is still unfolding.
The Flight of Ducks draws on the characters and imaginative layers that create the idea of `the centre'. Herein lies the significance of the title of this work. It is an image drawn from the heart of the expedition journals. It refers to imaginative flight, to the shape and form of the work and to the process of telling a story in a networked participatory space.
Like oral epic poetry, the work publicly accommodates its own evolution as a living proliferating organism. It is shaped by its participants, by a continuous exploration of the the poetics of the medium and by concern for the preservation of its content.
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