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Butcher Baker His-story Maker re-imagines the story of Kenneth McKinnon (pseudonym) growing up the way others expect in 1940s Castlemaine, with surprising results. Though responsibilities weigh, Ken has a determined spirit. He wants to fly for the Royal Australian Air Force, swim for Victoria, to reach adulthood on his own terms. But Ken’s dreams depend on a weary, embittered father, a Catholic education and the fallout of war.
Ken helps his mother cook, clean, and look after his four younger brothers while his father is away butchering. The bush and birds surrounding their shack offer a playground and classroom for the five boys, a little relief till father returns. Ken draws closer to his aviation career when he enrols at Saint Gabrielle’s College, but home, school and sibling pressures cause overwhelming grief. Is there enough money or time for Ken to continue his studies? Is his brother Kevin so jealous that he’ll ruin Ken’s chances? Will Ken have to drop out, and be chained to the butcher’s block like his old man? Or will he overcome adversity and duty to soar like the birds and aircraft he so admires? And what have film stars, singers, writers and poets to do with his ambition?
Ken and his adult daughter sit at the kitchen table revisiting the memories, songs and poems that Ken chooses to recount, exposing his own sense of accomplishment from a life full of contradictions. At the heart, their father-daughter relationship blossoms, poetic banter acting as a salve for patriarchal expectations. Butcher Baker His-story Maker reveals the creative way Ken confronts life’s traumas, and how he comes to leave a hopeful legacy.
The story spans three generations, and is narrated from informal interviews held in 2011 and 2014 in Ken McKinnon’s family home on the banks of Barker’s Creek, Castlemaine.
