(2008) Narrating director/co-writer Baz Luhrman's faraway fantasy of Oz-tralia is a half-caste boy, Nullah (Brandon Walters), who must go on walkabout with his grandfather, King George (David Pililil), to earn manhood with his own dreams, stories, and country. Wanting to be an epic sweep of a slice of history downunder, the film is a sprawling, 2¾-hour, pastiche of adventure movies with an inconsistent tone, beginning in a farcical mood that by turns goes tragic, romantic, sentimental, and apologetic for the stolen generation of mixed-race Aboriginal children.

In 1939 as war begins engulfing Europe, Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) leaves England, flying to northern Australia with the intention of bringing Maitland, her husband, back home and selling the cattle station. The drover (Hugh Jackman), an independent bloke who prefers the company of blacks - "No man hires me; no man fires me" - drives the aristocratic sheila across the outback to Faraway Downs. However, upon her arrival she finds Maitland dead, having been killed by a glass-tipped spear.

Nullah recognizes Sarah, whom he calls Mrs Boss, as the Rainbow Serpent who will heal the land; when his mother Daisy drowns in the water tank, Sarah takes the boy ("needs motherin'") under her inexperienced wing.

Having abruptly dismissed her husband's foreman, nasty Neil Fletcher (David Wenham), for his misconduct and lack of concern for unbranded cattle being stolen, she brazenly ("We can't let them win") relies on the drover ("Everybody does exactly as she's told") to lead the drive of the herd of 1,500 F.D.-branded short-horns to Darwin for sale to the military in an effort to break King Carney's (Bryan Brown) stranglehold on the beef industry.

To win over the drover for the seemingly impossible task, Sarah promises to allow him to breed her thoroughbred Capricornia with a bush brumby. For wranglers the drover has Sarah, Nullah, a female Aborigine Bandy, two experienced adult Aborigines - Magarri (David Ngoombujarra) and Goolaj, an alcoholic accountant Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson) - who teaches Nullah to play "Over the Rainbow" on his harmonica, and the Chinese cook Sing Song.

Fletcher, having gone to work for Carney, attempts to disrupt the drive but can't anticipate Nullah's gulapa magic or King George's ability to use songlines to guide the cheeky bulls through Never-Never of the hot, dry Kuraman. Successfully reaching Darwin just in time, beating Carney's best efforts to prevent her getting the contract with Capt Emmett Dutton, Sarah reverses her earlier plan to sell, deciding instead to "bring Faraway Downs back to life" with the drover as her station manager along with adoption of Nullah.

Unfortunately this happy ending falls off a cliff when the monstrously evil Fletcher takes over the Carney Cattle Company, also marrying Carney's young widow Catherine; Dr Barker removes Nullah to the Children's Island Mission with its government-run assimilation program of breeding the blackness out of the indigenous peoples; the drover departs to work for the military following an altercation with Sarah; and the Japanese after bombing Pearl Harbor attack Darwin.

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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