English Commentary Julia Bradley 10Y
“No More Boomerang” written by Oodergoo Noonnucca is a significant Aboriginal poem that strongly reflects and represents Australia and Australian culture in around about 1985.
This poem is written from a unique perspective of Australia because it was written by a native Aboriginal woman. Oodgeroo Noonuccal was a lifetime communist / feminist activist who focused mainly on the fight for aboriginal rights in Australia. This particular cultural perspective and point of view is important to consider when reading the poem to better gain a further understanding of the text. “No More Boomerang” relates to “Aboriginal Australia” as it explores the historical portrayal and representation of Aboriginal Australian culture. It reflected the culture of settlement times.
In this poem she lists how everyone was much better off with the poverty, poor health care, constant warfare, and strict social hierarchies of aboriginal society than they are in modern wealthy democracies. The Aboriginals feel they no longer have a culture because it has been destroyed by the settlement of “white people” on their land.
It uses a variety of literary techniques to further create imagery for the reader as well as create an idea of how it felt to be an aboriginal living in Australia in these times.
Change is a view that is repeatedly explored and been written in poem “No More Boomerang”. This text emphasizes changes in the aboriginal’s lives through the use of various techniques such as alliteration, metaphor, simile and assonance.
Noonnucca used the poem “No More Boomerang” to construct a view of Australia through the use of literary devices and techniques such as repetition in phrases such as “Now we”, and “No More” which help to make a solemn impact on the reader.
Imagery techniques are also used in this poem when talking about the “Black hunted wallaby” which gives the reader a better sense of the Australian fauna and created a picture.
Selections of similes such as “Work like a nigger” were used to create a powerful and descriptive visual of the way Noonnucca felt the aboriginals in Australia were being treated.
Alliteration is also used in phrases such as “Bar and beer” to make the poem more interesting. Metaphors such as “White-fella bunyip“ are also used to further explain and add emphasis to the mellow feeling the poet is trying to evoke.
Oogergoo Noonnucca also makes references to an abundance of descriptive language and some imagery techniques to give an idea of what Australian looked like around 1985 for example, “Now all civilised colour bar and beer.”
Throughout “No More Boomerang”, rhyming lines such as the following were used to give the poem flair and rhythm:
Lay down the stone axe take up the steel,
Work like a nigger for a white man's meal,
No more fire stick that made whites scoff,
Now all electric and no better off.