This Wallaby Western is an intriguing slice of Anglo-Australian cinematic history, with moments of real insight and drama. Despite various anachronisms, the film sits within an Australian cinematic tradition that is essentially empathetic to the Aboriginal experience of colonisation.
In a sequence voiced by "The Trooper" (Michael Pate) we hear: "They call the natives that live there Karagany. The spring has been their tribal home for a thousand years. Two perhaps. Since the time we were savages anyway. A thousand years. One day, a bloke walks into the government office in Adelaide 800 miles away, bangs down eighty quid, they hand him a bit of stamped paper and Karagany haven't got a tribal home anymore [...] I'll tell you this. They do know that waterhole is their tribal ground and no bit of paper is going to convince them otherwise."
The film belongs to the period when the British Empire was rapidly dissipating, and the quintessentially British Ealing Studios was making a series of films on Australian themes. Fans of classic Australian cinema will enjoy the presence of Chips Rafferty and Bud Tingwell, but the The Sydney Morning Herald proclaimed at the time, it's 130 South Australian Aboriginal cast member who steal the show with their "fine natural acting, graceful body movements, dramatic expressions of emotion and their joyous laughter".
The director seems to have been unresolved in his mind if he was to make a comedy or tragedy, and ultimately chickens out of both. And yet there is something here that seven decades later still shows insight and empathy to the early struggles, battles, injustices and hopes that moulded Australia.
