The Story Behind The Dreaming Team
This is a true story about the first Australian cricket team to play at the home of cricket in England. It took place in the 1860s, when Australia was a colony of the British Empire. The team that made that journey was made up of Indigenous Australians.
I became aware of it maybe 5 or 6 years ago and played a marginal role in trying to turn it into a television miniseries. I found it to be not just a fabulous yarn, but, given the increasing global interest in Indigenous affairs, also a necessary story. It shows a group of young, Black men on an unimaginable adventure, representing a colony whose white settlers have attempted to marginalize them into extinction. In spite of this, they conduct themselves with grace in social situations and enormous skill in athletic ones.
What really interested me in the story wasn’t the cricket part of it as much as the human part of it. I kept wondering what it must have been like for these guys who were children when the settlers ripped their way of life away from them, and then turned them into representatives of the colony.
The facts of the story are by themselves almost unbelievable. My goal was to turn these men into people you could relate to. That would, in turn, make the history of it even more dramatic.
So, given all of that, and knowing how important the story is as a symbol for reconciling white and Black Australia, I watched while the idea of a television miniseries died on the vine. Nobody was picking up the ball in either the Aboriginal community or the community at large.
I knew it was a huge risk, as not only a white person, but a foreign-born one, to venture to write the book. People would be lining up for miles to criticize my brashness. That kept me from even starting for a long time. But eventually I decided that the risk was far outweighed by the importance of telling the story. So, I wrote it as a historical novel for people like me who may not know or care much about cricket, but do care about people and their journeys in Life.
Title: The Dreaming Team
Author: Chris Wallace
Pages: 368
Genre: Historical Fiction
In
the 1850s, Australia was a thriving colony of the British Empire, with
its own sense of importance and sophistication. But the people who had
occupied this vast land for upwards of 40,000 years didn’t fit well with
colonial expectations of the future. In every way imaginable, white
Australia tried to keep its “darkies” in line. It is against this
backdrop in the 1860s that the amazing story of an all Aboriginal
cricket team, the first Aussie team to do so, played at Lords, the home
of cricket in England. Conventional wisdom predicted that Indigenous
Australians would die off by the next generation. The Dreaming Team
brings those Indigenous players to life and follows them on an
adventure that would appear to be unbelievable if it weren’t true. They
not only changed the minds and perceptions about Aboriginal
Australians, they arguably changed the course of Australian history.
Praise for The Dreaming Team: “A beautiful story, beautifully
written, about a piece of Australian history that, if you don’t know
about, you probably should. Heartwarming, heartbreaking and brimming
with relevance for today’s Australia. A poignant example of how far
we’ve come and how far we haven’t.” “The Dreaming Team tells the
true story of the all Aboriginal cricket team from Victoria who did a
tour of Great Britain back in the 1860s and all the drama, setbacks, and
cultural divide between the Aboriginals and white Australians involved.
Considering the state of affairs for Aboriginal people in those days,
the team’s accomplishments are no small feat!” “What an
interesting story. It is truly an Australian story about indigenous
Australians. The story grabbed me from the first chapter, and drew me
further in to where I could not put it down. I don’t want to give
anything away, so I will say that the twists and turns makes you want to
know what happens next at the end of each chapter. To say it is a
sports story is not fair, it is a people story, told from the heart,
about the hearts of people who love the land, and their story. I
recommend it highly, and look forward to more from the author, Chris
Wallace!”
You can purchase your copy at Amazon.
Chris Wallace is a creative resource.
As an actor, he was a regular on the hit daytime drama, All My Children, created the role of The Half-Percenter in Joe Papp’s production, Mondongo, appeared in countless television programs, including The Incredible Hulk, The Mary Tyler Moore Hour and had a starring role in the holiday horror classic film, New Year’s Evil.
As a producer, he put on New York: A Great Place to Live
at Lincoln Center which kicked off New York City’s Diamond Jubilee; for
Channel Five in New York, he produced the highly acclaimed Harlem Cultural Festival; at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, he produced Uptown Sunday Afternoon,
which was hosted by Harry Belafonte and featured Richard Pryor, Bill
Withers, and a galaxy of other performers; for the National Organization
for Women, he produced A Valentine’s Day Tribute to Woman at New York’s Town Hall; was associate producer of the first Ali-Frazier Heavyweight Championship Fight at Madison Square Garden, and produced the gigantic block party, hosted by Gwen Verdon, which named West 46th Street as Restaurant Row. .
He earned the Silver Award at the New York International Film and Television Festival for In the Balance,
a film that advocated sustainability and common sense in wildlife
management. It was also singled out by the Department of the Interior
as one of the best films of its kind. Chris wrote, narrated and wrote
the musical score for that film.
He
performed on several children’s television programs in New York,
Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and Jacksonville, singing his
original children’s songs. In Hollywood, he performed them for all
denominations of Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America. He created a
musical, A Special Thing to Be, at the Los Angeles Children’s Museum that featured his kids’ songs and the museum’s children’s chorus.
He wrote the songs for two children’s theatre productions in Hollywood, Hooray, Here Comes the Circus and Sleeping Beauty; wrote and performed the songs on Strong Kids, Safe Kids,
a video produced by Henry Winkler for Paramount that dealt with the
protection of children from sexual molestation and exploitation. He
created his first musical revue, Greatest Hits, in Hollywood, which played several venues, including Carlos ‘n’ Charlie’s on Sunset Strip and The Backlot in West Hollywood.
Upon relocating to Australia, he produced A Helping Hand at the Victorian Arts Centre, a benefit for Quadriplegic Hand Foundation; wrote book, music and lyrics for Nothing to Wear, a musical based on “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” also produced at the Victorian Arts Centre. He created a one-man show, A Thing of Shreds & Patches, for the Melbourne Fringe Festival; created another one-man show, The Mark Twain You Don’t Know, which toured Australia, then Pacific Palisades, California, and played in New York City on the 100th
anniversary of Mark Twain’s death. He created several cabaret shows
for The Butterfly Club in Melbourne, most notable of which was Les Femmes which featured an all female cast. He wrote, produced and performed in Huckleberry: A Musical Adventure which premiered in Melbourne.
Which brings us to The Dreaming Team. This is his second book. The first, Hollywood Mosaic is written under the pen name, Pete Joseph.
You can visit his website at www.olentangymusic.com.