The Back of Beyond
| The Back of Beyond | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | John Heyer |
| Produced by | John Heyer |
| Written by | John Heyer Janet Heyer Douglas Stewart |
| Starring |
Tom Kruse William Butler Jack the Dogger Old Joe the Rainmaker the Oldfields of Ettadina Bejah Baloch Malcolm Arkaringa the people of the Birdsville Track |
| Narrated by | Kevin Brennan |
| Music by | Sydney John Kay |
| Cinematography | Ross Wood |
| Edited by | John Heyer |
| Distributed by | Shell Film Unit |
|
Release date
|
1954 |
|
Running time
|
66 minutes |
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £12,000 (estimated) |
The Back of Beyond (1954) is a feature-length award-winning Australian documentary film produced and directed by John Heyer for the Shell Film Unit. In terms of breadth of distribution, awards garnered, and critical response, it is Heyer's most successful film. It is also, arguably, Australia's most successful documentary: in 2006 it was included in a book titled 100 Greatest Films of Australian Cinema, with Bill Caske writing that it is "perhaps our [Australia's] national cinema's most well known best kept secret".
The aim of the film, as requested by the Shell Company, was to associate Shell with the essence of Australia, with Australianism. Heyer took as his central motif the fortnightly journey made by mailman Tom Kruse, along the remote Birdsville Track from Marree, in South Australia, to Birdsville, in southwest Queensland. In 1957, Heyer wrote that this film, when viewed with Francis Birtles' earlier In the Track of Burke and Wills (1916), "clearly suggest[s] that the true image of Australia is, and always has been, the image of Man against Nature".
The film brought Tom Kruse to public notice, and resulted in his being appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) on 1 January 1955.
In simple terms, the film follows a "typical" journey made by Tom Kruse, from Marree to Birdsville, some 325 miles away, showing the various people he met along the Track and the sorts of obstacles he faced. In fact, sometimes described as a docudrama, the film was closely scripted: it comprises a number of re-enactments and a 'lost children' story, rather than chronicling an 'actual' trip.
Nonetheless, many of the people featured in the film were real-life bush characters. They include the bushman-cum-mailman Tom Kruse; Bejah Dervish, the Baloch camel driver who "fought the desert by compass and by Koran"; William Henry Butler, Kruse's record-playing companion; Jack the Dogger who kills wild dingoes; and old Joe the Aboriginal rainmaker. Australian Screen curator, Lauren Williams, suggests that the film "can be read like a collection of travelling vignettes along the Birdsville Track, embracing the experiences of these people and the isolated ‘never-never’ land they occupy".
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Wikipedia