Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Bush Christmas (1947)

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clip Snake for Christmas

Original classification rating: G. This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

After two days trying to find the thieves, the children have no food, so they must eat snake. Neza (Neza Saunders) is pleased with Helen’s cooking of the snake but Michael (Michael Yardley) can’t face it. Neza offers some live witchetty grubs instead, eating them with great relish. Snow (Nicky Yardley), the youngest, walks away to have a quiet cry, but the kookaburras laugh at him. Chasing them away, he discovers something in the valley below – the horse thieves.

Curator’s notes

by Paul Byrnes

The notion of ‘bush tucker’ has taken on a wholly different respectability in Australia in the last 20 years. In 1947, this scene was intended to amuse and horrify white audiences in Britain, who had no doubt heard tales of the exotic foods eaten by Australian Aborigines. It would be interesting now to hear Neza Saunders’s version of the making of this scene, because it may well have been improvised on the spot.

Little is known of Neza Saunders. He is said to have been a protégé of Chips Rafferty, and was mentored by Henry Murdoch, a pioneer Aboriginal actor who appeared in The Overlanders (1946, on which Ralph Smart was a producer) and in Bitter Springs, directed by Smart in 1950. A Queensland newspaper report in 2007 said that both Saunders and Murdoch then retired from films, preferring ‘the bush life’. Murdoch became a stockman (any information on Saunders or Murdoch would be welcome – please contact this site).

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All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

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