Australian
Screen

Clip description

McAlpine (Chips Rafferty) swims his cattle across the crocodile-infested Roper River, one of the largest rivers in the Northern Territory. Mary Parsons (Daphne Campbell) plunges in, leading her horse across, as her mother (Jean Blue) and sister (Helen Grieve) watch anxiously from the far bank. Last to cross are Corky (John Fernside) and 'Sinbad’ (Peter Pagan). McAlpine’s relief as they make it across shows how worried he was about the crossing.

Curator’s notes

This is a spectacularly well-handled sequence, made more effective by the fact that we see the actors doing it for real. It’s preceded by a tense sequence in which Mrs Parsons and Helen are chased by a crocodile, so that we are very aware of the dangers (even if no crocs are seen in this sequence). Cattle crossings were a feature of American westerns and had been depicted before in Australian films, but never on such a large scale. Watt’s documentary background informed the way he mounted the whole film. As far as possible, the actors did their scenes as real, without stand-ins.

The score adds a strong sense of majesty and adventure to underline the pioneering spirit of the undertaking. This was more than a cattle drive; this was a patriotic cattle drive, aimed at depriving the enemy of food, should there be a Japanese invasion of northern Australia. John Ireland’s music invests the whole sequence with a sense of noble purpose, to complement the immense physicality of the images. Ireland was a British composer, but this was his only film score.