Bitter Springs

Wally King, with his family and stockmen, drive livestock over hundreds of kilometres of dry country to take up their new selection at Bitter Springs, in central Australia. A government trooper warns them that they are moving onto a waterhole that is home to a clan of Aborigines, but King believes he has all the rights. Trouble begins soon after they arrive, when Wally's son John shoots a kangaroo that some Aborigines are trying to spear. Englishman Tommy and his son Charlie are abducted, and the Aborigines burn down the makeshift homestead that Scottish carpenter Mac has built. Hot-headed John kills a young tribesman in a skirmish and is speared trying to get water. The Aborigines cut the family off from the waterhole to force them out. As they await the final attack, the trooper arrives with reinforcements. He has orders to round up the Aborigines and move them off their traditional lands, an order with which he disagrees. A final shot shows another possibility: blacks and whites working alongside each other in Wally King's prosperous shearing shed in the future.—Paul Gerard Kennedy