Australian
Screen

Clip description

Bert (Benedict Sweeney) has signed up as a cook’s mate on a cattle drive with boss drover Baldy Bob McInnes (Norman Yemm), Arthur (Ed Turley) and others. A sudden storm blows up, stampeding the cattle and frightening the horses. In the ensuing chaos Bert is separated from the team. He awakes to find himself lost and completely alone in the vast stillness that is the Pilbara.

Curator’s notes

This clip is from the droving sequence shot from the top of Mt Nameless near Tom Price in the Pilbara, where these events originally took place. The emptiness of that huge landscape could not have been captured without travelling this far. The problem was there were no cattle in the vicinity, so a mob of 400 had to be trucked in, all their ear tags removed then put back on again after the shoot, and trucked all the way back home. The heat was horrific, and they had to carry in all their supplies, water and generators for power.

However, the storm in this sequence was far less difficult to stage – it was all shot in the studio in Kewdale. Being an old converted warehouse, the space was both large and without load-bearing posts to obstruct camera angles. Sound problems with the original building were solved by lining the interior with sound-absorbent egg cartons. The flashes of gorge country you can see momentarily are painted backdrops. All the elements of the scene – thunder, lightning, rain, startled horses – could be much better controlled in this environment. Imagine trying to do all this in the middle of nowhere. Even getting enough water for the rain effects would have been a good trick. When Bert awakes on the morning after the storm, we are again in the real outback. It shows just how much can be done with good lighting, sound effects and editing.