For the Term of His Natural Life (1927 film)

For the Term of His Natural Life is a 1927 Australian film, based on the novel by Marcus Clarke, directed, produced and co-wriiten by Norman Dawn. It was the most expensive Australian silent film ever made and remains one of the most famous Australian films of the silent era.

After a row, Ellinor Devine reveals to her husband Sir Richard that he is not actually the father of their son, also named Richard, but that he was fathered by her cousin, Lord Bellasis. Sir Richard throws his son out and storms off in a rage. Shortly afterwards, Richard Junior finds his biological father dead in the forest. Only the viewer and an unidentified witness know that Lord Bellasis has actually been killed by his own son, known as John Rex. However, it is Richard Devine who is found next to the body and arrested. Thinking that his father killed Bellasis, Richard wants to protect his mother's reputation and gives his name as Rufus Dawes.

The convict ship that brings Dawes to Tasmania also carries the new governor Vickers and his wife and his daughter Sylvia. The commander of the ship is a brutal man by the name of Maurice Frere. With the Vickers is a young girl, Sarah Purfoy, as a nurse to the child. However, she really is the fiancée of John Rex, convicted for forgery, and tries to help the convicts take the ship. The rebellion is led by a murderer named Gabbett. They fail when Dawes overhears their plans and manages to warn an officer while being brought to a quarantine room for the sick. Gabbett decides to claim that Dawes was the actual ringleader.

A few years later, Frere comes to visit Vickers and shows interest in Sylvia who has grown to be a beautiful young woman. Gabbett has come back after an escape and hints that he cannibalised his comrades to survive. Dawes, who is kept in solitary confinement on an island before the coast, attempts to drown himself. Frere has brought Vickers the order to give up the settlement and move to Port Arthur. Vickers embarks the convicts and sails with them. A smaller boat is supposed to carry Frere, Mrs Vickers and Sylvia, but is taken by John Rex, who maroons the three on the abandoned shore. There, Dawes finds them a few days later and manages to inspire them a new will to live. Sylvia especially takes to him very much and convinces him to make a boat, but Mrs Vickers dies before they can leave and makes Dawes promise to look after her daughter. The three survivors are found later by Vickers who has started to search for them. Frere takes the credit for saving Sylvia, who is herself unable to remember a thing after waking. Dawes is put back into prison.

Later again, it is shortly before the wedding of Sylvia and Frere. John Rex has been captured and Sarah Purfoy begs Frere to save his life by saying that he left them food and weapons. She threatens to reveal his past with some of the women in the settlement to Sylvia and Frere complies. Dawes, who also testifies, is shocked to find that Sylvia cannot remember him. He escapes on the night of the wedding to speak to Sylvia but is apprehended. The next day, a young convict named Cranky Brown is sentenced to a flogging for escape despite the protest of the reverend North and Dawes is ordered to carry out the punishment. He refuses to do so after Brown faints and his flogged himself. Upon finding that Brown is dead, Dawes curses Frere.