AustLit

Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971) is a film about transitions: movement between childhood and adulthood, country and city, pre-modernity and modernity. My analysis of Roeg's classic is part of a study of the genre of environmental film: representations or re-visioning of the human-nature relationship. I explore Walkabout's transitions by observing how the film interweaves two coming-of-age stories: an aboriginal youth, Black Boy (David Gumpilil), on a walkabout (a trial to prove his readiness for manhood); and the Anglo children, Girl (Jenny Agutter) and White Boy (Lucien John, the director's son), he rescues in the Australian outback, especially a girl on the threshold of womanhood. But these rites of passage in turn contribute to the film's larger fabula told primarily through visual narrative: a critique of the post-industrial world's attitudes towards nature, including its disconnect from (or repression of) what is untamed or natural in human nature. (Source: introduction)

'On its release in 1971, Wake in Fright (Ted Kotcheff) was unkindly received by Australian critics and public alike, the bone of contention being its representation of an outback male society whose interests are limited to drinking hard, gambling hard and fighting hard, with a shameless enthusiasm for blood sports thrown in for good measure. It is a criticism that still holds sway even though the film has now reached cult status in this country. Such a criticism, however, largely draws attention away from the psychological make-up of its central character, John Grant (Gary Bond), from whose point-of-view we experience this seemingly barbaric society.' (Introduction)