Starring: Cameron Wallaby, Joseph Pedley, David Gulpilil, Rohanna Angus, Dean Daly-Jones
Distributor: Hopscotch Films
Runtime: 90 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2013
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The best audience for this Australian story would be children. The story is principally about children and the events are experienced by children from their perspective. This is an Australian aboriginal story.
The film opens with a grandfather and his grandson walking through the sparse bush but feeling that it is alive and that it owns them. The grandfather is a wise old man who speaks his own language as well as English. So does the boy, but he is a modern boy from the technological age, a ‘satellite boy’, who needs to learn the lore and traditions from his elders. But, his mother has left with dreams of opening a restaurant and the boy lives in a derelict drive-in.
What gives the film some immediate gravitas is the fact that the grandfather is played by veteran David Gulpilil who, for more than 40 years, has been in key Australian films from Walkabout to Australia via Crocodile Dundee and Rabbit-Proof Fence. His words about the land are completely convincing.
Pete and his friend Kalmain get into trouble, dream about being astronauts, play with modern robot toys. But, when a mining country starts to burn the grass around the drive-in for storing equipment and the family have to get out, he decides to go to see the bosses and argue his case. This means a 21st century walkabout. But, the boys are ill-equipped, have not planned and just go. The grandfather has a sixth sense about their travels and guides them. They fortunately come across a river, but Pete can’t swim and Kalmain helps him across. They find a satellite dish and sleep on it. Thy find a well-stocked house and find something to eat – and a gun.
When they do get to the company’s headquarters, they are eventually reunited with their mothers. Perth, new clothes (and ice cream) are an incentive to stay with him mother, but he hops out of the car, throws away his shirt and returns home, to an initiation, to walking the bush with his grandfather.
Children’s audiences can identify with Pete and Kalmain and learn about how aboriginal boys face the technological present while not losing the traditions. Adults will have a chance to reflect, via a story, about the implications for indigenous Australians and a changing landscape and the challenges of the modern world.
The setting is the Kimberley around Wyndham.
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