Australian
Screen

Clip description

The 'Great Desert Boat Race’ is followed by the 'Annual Bar-room Brawl’ witnessed by Police Sergeant Carruthers (Terry Gill) and the Two Old Codgers (Frank Otterson and Herb Krause). Dr Tom Callaghan (Andrew MacFarlane), Dr Chris Randall (Liz Burch) and Nurse Kate Wellings (Lenore Smith) find themselves patching up not only local hotheads Ben Miller (Mark Little) and Bruce Hayes (Mark Neal) but their colleagues, pilot David Gibson (Lewis Fitz-Gerald) and radio operator Joe Forrest (Gil Tucker), along with a raft of others including Hurtle (Max Cullen) and Mad Max wannabe Lionel (Brian Mannix).

Curator’s notes

In Coopers Crossing this is the Annual Pub Brawl that tradition dictates follows the Annual Boat Race and is in turn followed by the Annual Patch-up at the RFDS base. It is funny and entertaining but interesting too in that it shows how entrenched the consumption of alcohol is in our culture. Beer drinking is a constant in the series, although it features rather more in this episode because of the boat race storyline.

Many scenes are played out in the pub; as a permanent studio set it needed to be well used and was a natural meeting place for the locals. It could be argued that the drinking in the show is merely a reflection of reality, but if that is the case where is the cigarette smoking that inevitably accompanied the beer drinking in those days? A clear decision has been made by the producers to limit the former, so much so that it actually comes as a surprise to see the police sergeant with a cigarette; the pub barely sports an ashtray when in reality it would be in a constant fog of tobacco smoke.

Yet it was not considered necessary at the time to apply the same censorship to drinking or indeed to the drunken behaviour seen far more blatantly in scenes other than the one chosen for this clip. Tom Callaghan is the only character heard to object in any way vociferously but Tom’s is a voice in the wilderness, with even his fellow medicos putting down his grumpiness to stress from overwork. In fact, the story is so weighted with humour and spectacle on the side of the lovable larrikin contestants of the boat race that, even to the viewer, Tom comes over as a bit of a prig. Everyone else including, one suspects, most viewers would support Dr Chris Randall’s assertion that it is 'all good fun’.