Cirrus@Austlit

'THE main credits open onto an image of the planet, a curved section hanging in a dark sky, and for a second, the whole globe. Those shots will have delayed impact; at the end of the film, almost half an hour later, we’ll know why they’re there. Almost immediately then, we’re in the bush, in Kakadu, looking through the trees at a vast rock wall, while a woman’s voice – a friendly, humorous, matter-of-fact kind of voice – delivers a memory of time there. Nugget, says Meredith McKinney – meaning H.C. Coombs, widely known as Nugget – always wanted to show this place to her and to Judith Wright, his lover and Meredith’s mother. Judith is then quoted; she said, as Meredith remembers it, that the high wall with the ancient rock paintings was “far too sacred” a place for her; she would meet them at a bench along the path.' (Introduction)