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Clip description
Jack and Gary, two drifters in a stolen car, have picked up a young woman, Anna (Julie McGregor) at an outback service station. At Gary’s home reserve, Anna talks to an Aboriginal woman (Essie Coffey) about the causes of Aboriginal poverty. Jack (Bill Hunter) can’t wait to leave, but Gary (Gary Foley) wants to spend some time with his young son.
Curator’s notes
The scene is typical of the film’s attempt to get authentic Aboriginal opinions and voices on film, speaking with candour. Noyce worried less about dramatic conventions, more about providing a forum for dialogue. We are never introduced to Essie Coffey’s character; we just hear that she has a lot to say and a firm way of saying it. The song she sings at the end was a well-known 'drinking blues’ song in Aboriginal communities.
Essie Coffey was a Muruwari woman from southern Queensland, a co-founder of the Western Aboriginal Legal Service and the Aboriginal Heritage and Cultural Museum in Brewarrina. With Martha Ansara, Coffey made the award-winning film My Survival as an Aboriginal (1978), which she gave to Queen Elizabeth II as a gift at the opening of Australia’s new Parliament House in 1988.
