Bloody hell: A funny and shocking look at our multicultural past

Who the Bloody Hell Are We?
★★★★
Premieres on SBS, Wednesday, 7.30pm

The “bloody hell” in the title is a clue that SBS’ latest history program leans towards the irreverent and zany, but don’t be misled – this documentary series has a habit of weaving back and forth across the line between light entertainment and proper history with all its grim detail.

John Safran, Cal Wilson and Adam Liaw in Who the Bloody Hell Are We?Credit: SBS

The hosts of Who the Bloody Hell Are We?, MasterChef alumnus Adam Liaw, comedian Cal Wilson and career provocateur John Safran, are tasked with looking at Australian history through the lens of three of its multicultural communities, Chinese, Kiwi and Jewish respectively.

The series starts with Safran, never one to shy away from a thorny topic. Anti-Semitism runs deep in our colonial history, he explains, noting that there were a dozen Jewish convicts on the First Fleet in 1788 and in the early days all convicts had to attend Anglican services.

Soon we learn of the notorious English-Jewish bushranger Edward Davis who plundered the highways and byways of the Hunter Valley in the 1840s, becoming known as “Teddy the Jewboy”. Historian David Hunt relates enthusiastically that Davis and his gang appeared to avoid committing any of their crimes on the Sabbath.

Safran also casts an eye over the more conventional of our leading Jewish-Australians, including Helena Rubenstein, who started a global cosmetics empire from Melbourne’s Collins Street, Sir John Monash, the great World War I general, and Sir Isaac Isaacs, the first Australian-born Governor-General.

First-hand witnesses, experts and the descendants of significant historical figures make appearances. Safran heads up to Kununurra in Western Australia to talk to locals about a remarkable plan early last century – before the establishment of modern Israel – to create a Jewish homeland in the Kimberley. The Indigenous population was not consulted. Despite enthusiastic backing from the WA government, Canberra rejected the idea in 1944. Safran stands in the rugged Kimberley terrain trying to imagine a version of St Kilda’s Acland Street sprouting up around him.

Cal Wilson is shocked that anyone would question including Kiwis in this series. “New Zealand-Australian – who even says New Zealand-Australian?” she asks, but concludes that they, just like any other migrant group, have helped create this nation. Maori chiefs were welcomed as visiting dignitaries in Sydney’s earliest days; now there are about 170,000 Maori in Australia.

While Kiwis here have to endure sheep jokes, a bizarre trans-Tasman conflict did erupt as recently as the 1980s when Australian and Kiwi shearers clashed over the width of the combs they used (on the sheep). Heavily unionised Australian shearers had been using the standard combs for generations, before rebel Kiwi shearers appeared with wider combs. The dispute led to a 10-week national strike by shearers in 1983 before being resolved by the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission in the Kiwis’ favour.

Adam Liaw does all his own stunts in the sequence that opens the Chinese-Australian program, highlighting the Chinese role in the Australian gold rush, as well as a lesser-known hero of Gallipoli, Chinese-Australian ace sniper Billy Sing, who cultivated his talent as a roo-shooter in Queensland.

For all the remarkable characters and lively incidents, the presenters keep crashing into the prejudice Australia’s minorities have faced.

Liaw, for example, talks us through the foundation of Queensland’s banana industry in the late 1800s by Chinese miners after the goldfields lost their lustre, before noting that in 1921 the Queensland government effectively banned Chinese from the banana trade.

The likes of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson both included ugly Jewish stereotypes in their writings. Norman Lindsay’s iconic children’s book, The Magic Pudding, included a Jewish sleight, and even golf courses aren’t safe from anti-Semitism. After describing the foundation of the Cranbourne Golf Club in Melbourne in the 1950s by Jews who were not able to get membership in established clubs, Safran shows us images of the swastikas vandals burnt into the club’s greens.

In the end, though, Safran’s conclusion that Australia has been “pretty good” for its Jews could be applied to all the groups. In one of Who the Bloody Hell Are We?’s most touching moments, Safran talks with Szaja Chaskiel, one of the thousands of Holocaust survivors who found a home here after World War II. Despite the often jokey tone, there is substance to this series.

Who the Bloody Hell Are We? premieres on SBS, Wednesday, 7.30pm.

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