We of the Never Never

The film tells the story of Jeannie Gunn, who leaves her life in Melbourne to settle on her husband’s isolated station. She tries to find a footing in a place full of prejudice of both sex and race, and in time her good nature and stubbornness win over the misogynistic stockmen. The real difficulty begins when she tries to change their racist attitudes toward the Aboriginal people. The film rests on a woman’s memoir and gives its events wholly through the settler’s eyes; the Aboriginal characters appear mostly as part of her own learning. That point of view is the film’s own limit. The account shows the landscape as harsh and beautiful, but records the cost of the work as well. Angela Punch McGregor plays the lead in Igor Auzins’s hundred and thirty four minute Australian film, completed in 1982.