Love Is In The Cowboy Country Air But It's All Sex, Sex, Sex For Those Pharaohs In Their Tombs

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday January 15, 2002

Robin Oliver

Heart of Country: From Nowhere to Somewhere

ABC, 8pm: One of my considerable failings is that contrapuntally speaking I am not altogether fully adjusted to twanging guitars and the voices that tend to go with them, though I did once go on tour with Slim Dusty as a back-seat observer and, as we drove through the WA countryside, I discovered him to be an old-fashioned bonzer bloke with a sly sense of humour that was often aimed at life's meaningless restrictions. At one motel it was in Moora, as I recall there were notices listing 17 things we were not allowed to do while on the premises and that was before we had got past the reception desk. Inside the rooms, further prohibitions were listed. The following day as we headed towards Geraldton, Mr Fitzpatrick regaled us by remembering every single one of the don'ts on the list. There must have been a song for him in it somewhere. So, if I tell you that I have been to Tamworth only when it has been getting on with its everyday business and not working too hard to present the image of a giant guitar nor having its streets encumbered with the longest line dance in the world, you may understand my surprise at discovering at the start of this bright new series just how sophisticated the town has become in managing its annual Country Music Festival. A splendid-looking hall, a rather good-looking and hugely appreciative audience for the big occasion the awards night and the first program's purpose: to introduce the thoughtful, cheerful and, one suspects, totally unassuming Sara Storer on the night of nights last year when she picked a little golden guitar as Best New Talent. Storer grew up in the Mallee district of Victoria, trained as a teacher in Melbourne and then headed north, first making burgers at a Camooweal truck stop, then spending five years teaching at Kalkarindgi, an Aboriginal settlement on the Buchanan Highway near Wave Hill. She thought she had discovered her life's work until music beckoned. You'll see Storer once again making burgers in Camooweal, meeting the children in Kalkarindgi and talking about her songs of loneliness and winning and losing in love. Above all, they are about the isolation of cowboy country, here beautifully captured by cameraman Tony Gaily.

Private Lives of the Pharaohs: Sex, Death and the Lotus

ABC, 9.30pm: Sex in ancient Egypt was hardly a prelude to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton's coy little games in an overproduced flick, but that doesn't mean that sex wasn't a pretty important factor. In almost all the tombs so far discovered of the pharaohs and their peers, there is one fairly constant image: the distinctive Egyptian water lily, the blue lotus. This flower is now thought to be much more than picturesque symbolism, for Egyptologists have been investigating the theory that the lotus had properties akin to Viagra and was widely used as a sexual stimulant. You are not going to get blue movies in the concluding chapter of this series, but you will see from the murals that the sloe-eyed Egyptian beauties would take the complete open flower and place it over the nose and mouth of their menfolk, then hope for some heavy breathing.

Imran Khan: Islam and America

SBS, 8pm: Imran Khan, a popular cricketer who thus commands more than the usual attention, goes in to bat for Islam, crossing the border into Afghanistan and attempting to explain the root cause of hostility between many people of his faith and the United States. Some superb pictures here, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but Imran is brought down by allowing his hero status to intrude as he walks through the streets.