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Richard Eastwick (Hugo Weaving) is newly arrived from England, a poor young immigrant with no prospects. He’s befriended by a government clerk who invites him to live in the same boarding house. Richard is smitten by a young woman, Kate McBride (Victoria Longley), the daughter of an evangelical preacher, the Reverend McBride (Harold Hopkins).
Curator’s notes
Richard meets the woman who will share his vision with him almost as soon as he arrives in Australia. The Reverend McBride (Harold Hopkins), her father, has an unchristian way of mixing religion and pseudo science. He threatens young Eastwick to stay away from his daughter because he says the young man has the skull shape of a criminal. Such pronouncements in the pseudo science of phrenology were common even well into the 20th century, often taking the form of a bogus proof that some races were inferior to others because of the shape and size of their skulls.
