26 April 2012

WDYTYA Australia: John Wood

The episode with actor John Wood was in two parts, first tracing the steps of his father, who served in the Australian Army during WW2, was captured in Greece and became a German prisoner of war. It was a story his father had only hinted at, but as war stories go not especially extraordinary.

The presentation was strange. He was handed a copy of an Australian war diary by a researcher in Greece when surely it would be found in an archive in Australia. He was also handed an original photo of his father's fiance carried through the war, and a letter he sent to her on being released in May 1945, without there being any indication or curiosity about where they came from.

The second part explored why his great-grandfather was able to buy a large quantity of land. The story told was that he, or his children, had stumbled across a large gold nugget, but it seemed he was already living on the property. Perhaps he bought an addition to an originally small acreage, but that wasn't clear.

While the story was reasonably interesting there were lapses in the continuity you would expect in developing the story.  

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