Overlanders, The (1946, Chips Rafferty, John Nugent)

In 1944 Jack Beddington, director of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information asked Ealing Studios’ Michael Balcon to devise some way of publicising the almost unknown Australian war effort. Balcon responded by sending director Harry Watt to Australia to find a suitable theme for a film. Watt’s meeting with an official of the Federal Food Office resulted in this sweeping epic set in 1942 when 100,000 head of cattle were driven across the continent to remove them from the threat of Japanese attack.

Watt’s gritty, well-observed screenplay was spare, muscular and to the point. In 1942, when the Japanese forces threaten northern Australia, a scorched earth policy is decided on. But cattle drover Dan McAlpine has other ideas. He plans to save 1,000 head of cattle by taking them some 2,000 miles across hostile, near-desert, territory. He gathers a handful of helpers and, in spite of a series of hardships, setbacks and crises, he achieves his mission. then, flying back north to undertake another drive, he sees herd after herd of cattle being driven southward away from the threatened invasion..

Watt was fortunate in his leading actor. CHIPS RAFFERTY, known as the ‘Australian Gary Cooper’, turned out to be the ideal choice in what was, essentially, a Western. Rafferty had made his screen debut in 1939’s Ants in His Pants and had scored a success in 1944’s Australian-made Rats of Tobruk. The Overlanders was his fifth film and, said Variety, he ‘is a natural’. He was also the only professional actor in the film.

Twenty-year-old DAPHNE CAMPBELL, plays the energetic young member of the group who along with PETER PAGAN, supplies the slight romantic interest. Campbell was a nursing orderly in a military hospital before Watt ‘discovered’ her. The Evening News was enthralled by her and stated she, ‘is pretty in a natural kind of way, rides a horse better than you have ever seen a girl do on the screen before and there is no fake about her exploits among the milling cattle’.

Watt’s handling of his narrative was impeccable and he staged the highlights – among them the breaking in of wild horses, a vivid cattle stampede and a forced march along a mountain path with a sheer drop on one side – with considerable dramatic force. Summed up Variety, the ‘first big feature film to be made in Australia by a British firm … should come as a breath of fresh air for audiences jaded with routine pictures’.

production details
UK – Australia | Ealing | 91 minutes | 1946

Director: Harry Watt
Script: Harry Watt

cast
Chips Rafferty as Dan McAlpine
John Nugent Hayward as Bill Parsons
Daphne Campbell as Mary Parsons
Jean Blue as Mrs. Parsons
Helen Grieve as Helen Parsons
John Fernside as Corky
Peter Pagan as Sailor
Frank Ransome as Charlie
Stan Tolhurst as Manager
Marshall Crosby as Minister
John Fegan as Police Sergeant
Clyde Combo as Aborigine Jacky
Henry Murdoch as Aborigine Nipper