Australian
Screen

Clip description

The cattle are dying of thirst. Desperate to find water, McAlpine heads them up over an old mountain pass that he knows. Mary (Daphne Campbell) leads them up but finds the path blocked near the top. If the cattle are allowed to bunch, they will fall over the sides. The stockman Jackie (Clyde Combo) climbs the steep rock face with a rope. He and Mary attach it to the horse and drag the tree clear but it almost takes them with it. A couple of cattle fall off the edge but the rest of the mob is saved.

Curator’s notes

Very few Australian films before this one have a scene such as this, where an Aboriginal man and a white woman perform the heroic deed that saves the day. The Overlanders was unusual in the amount of screen time it afforded both women and Indigenous characters. Jacky and Nipper, the two Aboriginal stockmen, are integral members of the droving team, as are Mary and her mother and sister. Harry Watt made sure to give each character a significant role in the success of the venture, stressing the idea that it was a collective effort, based on fairly equal roles. Chips Rafferty’s character is clearly in charge, but he’s just as clearly a man willing to grant autonomy to all of what he calls his ‘plant’ – the droving team – regardless of sex or race.

Watt had strong leftist convictions and his ideas about equality were fairly advanced for Australian film in 1945 and ‘46. Charles Chauvel had not yet made Jedda (1955), in which two Aboriginal actors took the lead roles. In the Cinesound films made before the Second World War, women were often athletic and adventurous but feats of action were mostly confined to men, almost invariably white men.