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Rev Stanhope (Eric Colman) flies Eileen McBride (Isabelle Mahon) back to the McBride farm. He is a flying ace from the First World War, who now uses a light plane to visit his spread-out parishioners. Eileen brings news from England, of the imminent arrival of Montgomery Ralston. They joke about him wearing ‘spats, eyeglass and a bowler hat’, but Ralston and his manservant Thompson (Leo Franklin) are at that moment covered in coal-dust, working as stokers on their ship. The parson and the McBrides decide to go to Sydney to meet his ship.
Curator’s notes
Even given the rudimentary sound recording tools of 1934, Smith had a tendency to require his actors to shout as if they were working to the back stalls of a noisy theatre. His staging was similarly minimal, with actors standing square-on to camera, rather than facing each other (which would have required him to film extra shots, rather than single takes). Even so, the film has a lot of location shots, when most other films were highly bound to studios, and a confident sense of humour.
