Rainbow's End

On the 2026 VCE English and EAL text list, final year. Rainbow's End is a List 1 play for Reading and responding to texts and meets the Australian text requirement. 2026 is its fourth year on the list and it is not on the 2027 list, so this is the last year it can be examined. VCAA's reference edition is Contemporary Indigenous Plays (Currency Press, 2007). In 2025, 7 per cent of students wrote on it in Section A.

The play in brief

Rainbow's End is set in the 1950s on the Flats beside the Goulburn River, near Shepparton and Mooroopna in northern Victoria, on Yorta Yorta Country. It follows three generations of Koori women in one family: Nan Dear, the watchful matriarch; her daughter Gladys, warm, hopeful and determined to give her daughter a better life; and Gladys's teenage daughter Dolly, bright and ambitious. The men of the family are mostly absent. Papa Dear is away fighting for his people's rights.

The play opens with the family in their humpy, a makeshift hut repeatedly damaged by floods, while radio reports follow Queen Elizabeth II's 1954 tour of Australia. Gladys dreams of seeing the Queen, but the authorities make sure the royal visitors do not see the Flats. A young white encyclopaedia salesman from Melbourne, Errol Fisher, wanders into the Flats. Gladys, who believes education is her daughter's way out, buys a set of encyclopaedias on instalments; Nan Dear distrusts him and his books. Errol and Dolly fall for each other. A government inspector's visit shows how closely officials watch and judge Aboriginal families. Gladys tries to secure Dolly a job at the bank, and runs into the town's racism.

Dolly goes to a ball in town, where she is humiliated by white guests, and afterwards is sexually assaulted by her cousin Leon, who is enraged by her relationship with Errol. She becomes pregnant. The family moves into the new government houses at Rumbalara, concrete houses that are no real improvement and come with a rent collector's intrusive rules. In the final scene, at a public meeting about Aboriginal housing and with Papa Dear absent, Gladys stands up and speaks for her community, demanding decent housing and the right to make their own decisions. Gladys accepts Dolly's own choice to train as a nurse rather than the bank job she wanted for her, and Nan Dear comes to accept Errol.

Author and context

Jane Harrison is a Muruwari playwright, also known for Stolen (1998), a landmark play about the Stolen Generations. Rainbow's End was commissioned by the Ilbijerri Theatre Company, a Melbourne-based First Nations theatre company, and premiered in 2005 at the Melbourne Museum before touring to Mooroopna.

Historical context you can use (always linked to a topic):

• Cummeragunja and the Flats. In 1939 Yorta Yorta people walked off the Cummeragunja reserve on the Murray River in protest at conditions and control. Many later camped on the river flats near Mooroopna, living in humpies without running water or power. The Dear family's home belongs to this history.
• The 1954 royal tour. Queen Elizabeth II's visit was a celebration of Britishness and national unity. For Aboriginal people it exposed how they were excluded and hidden from the national picture.
• Assimilation policy. Governments of the era aimed for Aboriginal people to be absorbed into white society, while controlling where they lived, worked and whether they could keep their children. The inspector, Gladys's childhood removal to work as a domestic servant, and the rules at Rumbalara all reflect this.
• Rumbalara. In 1958 the state opened a small settlement of prefabricated concrete houses near Mooroopna for families from the Flats. Its name is usually translated as "end of the rainbow", which gives the play its title and its bitter irony.
• The Menzies era. The 1950s promoted the dream of home ownership and suburban comfort. The VCAA annotation stresses the contrast between that national dream and the reality of systemic discrimination.

Form and structure

• Two acts, many short scenes. The episodic structure moves between the domestic space of the humpy and later Rumbalara, and the public spaces of the town (the bank, the ball, the meeting). The move from humpy to Rumbalara across the play asks whether anything has really changed.
• Dream sequences. Gladys's fantasies, including her dream of meeting the Queen, are staged as heightened, theatrical moments. They show her hope and her absorption of the era's values, and the gap between dreams and reality.
• Radio broadcasts and song. Broadcasts about the royal tour and the nation intrude into the family's home, reminding the audience whose story the nation told itself. Popular songs set the period and often comment ironically on the action.
• Three generations on stage. Nan Dear, Gladys and Dolly each represent a different response to oppression: protective caution, hopeful striving, youthful ambition. Their conflicts are the engine of the drama.
• Humour. The play is often funny. Family banter and teasing show the women's resilience and make the moments of violence and injustice land harder.
• The final speech. Gladys's speech at the housing meeting moves from private life to public protest. It speaks beyond the stage to the audience, turning the play into an act of testimony.

Key characters

• Nan Dear. The matriarch. Her memories of dispossession make her suspicious of white institutions, white men and white promises, including Errol and his encyclopaedias. Her caution is protection, and it can also hold Dolly back. Her final acceptance of Errol is a significant shift.
• Gladys Banks. Nan Dear's daughter and Dolly's mother. She was taken from her family as a child and put to work as a domestic servant. She dreams big, believes in education and respectability, and pushes Dolly towards a job in white society. Her journey from dreaming to speaking publicly is the play's strongest arc.
• Dolly Banks. Seventeen and clever, caught between her mother's hopes, her grandmother's fears and her own desires. The assault by Leon and her pregnancy show how violence and the lack of choices for Aboriginal women shaped lives in this era. By the end she makes her own choice about her future.
• Errol Fisher. A well-meaning, naive young white man. His encyclopaedias carry white knowledge and white versions of Aboriginal people. His relationship with Dolly raises the possibility of love and understanding across racial lines, and the play does not pretend it is simple.
• Papa Dear. Largely offstage, a spokesman for his people. His absence leaves space for Gladys to find her own voice.
• Leon. Dolly's cousin, angry and often drunk. His violence shows how damage done by the system is turned inward on the community, and particularly on women.
• Figures of authority. The inspector, the bank manager and the rent collector at Rumbalara represent the institutions that judge, exclude and control the family.

Ideas, concerns and values, and how they are built

Home and dispossession

The humpy, rebuilt after each flood, is fragile but it is theirs. The Rumbalara houses are solid but controlled, a home on someone else's terms. The play asks what a home is when your Country has been taken.

Systemic racism and control

Harrison shows racism not just in insults but in systems: the screening of the Flats during the royal visit, the inspector, the bank, the housing rules. The characters' struggles are personal, but their causes are structural. The 2025 topic proposing that lasting change requires more than individual effort invites exactly this reading.

Knowledge and power

The encyclopaedias promise that knowledge leads to success. Nan Dear's scepticism reminds us that white books do not tell the truth about Aboriginal people, and that Nan Dear holds knowledge of her own: of Country, family and history. Gladys's hope in education is admirable, but the play shows that knowledge alone does not open doors that racism keeps shut.

Dreams and reality

Gladys's dream sequences and the title's irony stage the gap between the promises of 1950s Australia and the lives of the Dear family. Yet the play does not give up on dreams: Gladys's speech turns dreaming into demand.

Women and resilience

The women hold the family together through floods, poverty, violence and loss. Their love, arguments and humour are the heart of the play.

Voice and self-determination

The play moves from women who are spoken about (by inspectors, managers, radio announcers) to a woman who speaks for herself and her community. Gladys's demand that Aboriginal people decide for themselves is the play's political climax.

Key scenes and why they matter

1. Opening in the humpy. Radio news of the Queen's tour against the reality of the Flats. The contrast between the nation's story and the family's life is set up at once.
2. The royal visit. Gladys's dream of seeing the Queen meets the reality of being hidden from view.
3. Errol and the encyclopaedias. Knowledge, class and race collide in a comic but pointed sales pitch; Nan Dear's resistance and Gladys's hope are clearly contrasted.
4. The inspector's visit. The family's fear shows the power welfare authorities held over Aboriginal families.
5. The bank. Gladys's attempt to secure Dolly a job exposes the racism of the town's institutions.
6. The ball and the assault. Dolly's hope of belonging is crushed by humiliation, then by violence from within her own community.
7. Rumbalara. The new houses and the rent collector's rules show that official help comes with control.
8. The housing meeting. Gladys's speech, delivered in Papa Dear's absence, is the play's climax: a private woman becomes a public voice.

How VCAA frames topics on this text

VCAA's 2024 and 2025 exam reports describe three topic types: a proposition followed by Discuss, Do you agree? or To what extent do you agree?; a quotation from the text followed by a proposition or question; and a direct question. Each text gets two narrow topics about specific ideas and values.

In 2025, one Rainbow's End topic opened with a line about knowledge being power, spoken to the women, and asked whether Harrison shows this is true for them; the other proposed that the play shows lasting change requires more than individual effort. The 2025 report noted that this second topic works by comparison ("more than"). Expect topics on knowledge and power, hope and dreams, home, the role of women, resilience, change, and the relationship between individuals and systems.

For a play, your evidence includes stage directions, staging, sound (radio and song), dialogue and structure. Refer to the text as a script written for performance.

Practice topics (original, not from VCAA)

These are practice topics written for this page in the VCAA style. They are not past exam topics.

1. In Rainbow's End, dreams are a source of both strength and pain. Discuss.
2. How does Harrison use the three generations of women to explore resilience?
3. Rainbow's End suggests that the greatest threats to the Dear family come from outside it. To what extent do you agree?
4. In Rainbow's End, home is something the characters must fight for. Discuss.
5. Nan Dear's caution does more to protect her family than to hold them back. Do you agree?

Planning example

Topic (practice)

In Rainbow's End, dreams are a source of both strength and pain. Discuss.

Contention

Harrison presents dreams as essential to the Dear women's survival, but shows that dreams shaped by white Australia's promises bring pain, while dreams rooted in the community's own demands become a source of real strength.

Paragraph 1: dreams as survival

Gladys's hope and humour sustain the family through floods and poverty. Analyse the dream sequences and the family's banter as evidence of resilience.

Paragraph 2: borrowed dreams and their cost

Gladys's dream of the Queen and her faith in encyclopaedias and a bank job reflect the values of 1950s white Australia. Analyse the royal visit and the bank scene to show how these dreams expose the family to humiliation.

Paragraph 3: Dolly's dreams and violence

Dolly's hopes of belonging and of a future with Errol are crushed at the ball and by Leon's assault. Analyse how Harrison stages these scenes and what they reveal about the vulnerability of Aboriginal women.

Paragraph 4: dreams turned into demands

Gladys's speech at the housing meeting transforms dreaming into protest, and Dolly's choice of nursing is her own. Analyse the speech as the play's resolution of the tension in the topic.

Conclusion

The title's irony, Rumbalara as the end of the rainbow, shows that the promised dream was hollow, but the play ends with the women's own dreams, and voices, intact.

Common pitfalls

• Treating racism only as individual cruelty. Harrison's focus is on systems and policies.
• Making Nan Dear the villain of the romance. Her caution is grounded in history.
• Ignoring the humour. The comedy is a deliberate dramatic choice and part of the play's meaning.

Read the play

Rainbow's End is in copyright, so this page analyses the play without quoting it. VCAA's reference edition is Contemporary Indigenous Plays (Currency Press, 2007), available from your school or local library.

Sources

• VCE English and EAL Text List 2026 and Text List 2027, VCAA.
• VCE English 2025 examination and 2025 examination report, VCAA.
• VCE English and EAL Study Design (version 1.4), VCAA.
• Rainbow's End, ILBIJERRI Theatre Company.