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Flightless Birds Achieve Lift-off  … a suite of 10 paintings, is closely related in style and sentiment to the large body of work The Rim, the rim of our brittle and disintegrating world …  (refer next series).

The emus — uniquely Australian flightless birds — are symbolic here of seasonal and also of political fluctuations. After several good seasons in the early 1970s emu numbers, and likewise their confidence, had increased to such an extent they were encroaching upon areas where they were out of control and forced to confront the reality of their inbuilt limitations. Attempts to achieve lift-off proved catastrophic.

Produced spontaneously in 1975, a watershed year for political experiment and national tensions, Flightless Birds Achieve Lift-off … is reflective and satiric comment upon contemporary events whether occurring far away on Australia's Rim or right in the centre of power.