British film director Harry Watt came to Australia in 1944 as an official war correspondent and a guest of the Australian government, after the latter approached the British Ministry of Information for help increasing awareness of Australia's war effort. Then working for Ealing Studios, Watt was invited to take up the offer (with his employment still underwritten by the studio) in response to his strong record as both a documentary and feature filmmaker. Among his productions to that date were the documentaries Night Mail (1936), North Sea (1938), and Target for Tonight (1941). His two feature films had been Nine Men (1942) and Fiddlers Three (1944).
Six months after arriving in Australia, Watt settled on a story he had been researching through the Commonwealth Food Controller. It concerned a real cattle drive that took place in 1942 as part of the Northern Territory's 'scorched earth' policy, designed to hinder the likely invasion by the Japanese Imperial Forces. The subsequent film, The Overlanders, went on to become Australia's most critically and financially successful movie to that date. It is still considered to be among the classic Australian films of all time.
Following The Overlanders, Watt was put in charge of another Australian film, Eureka Stockade. A proposed co-production between Ealing Studios and Australia's Cinesound, the deal fell apart and Cinesound pulled out of the arrangement, leaving Ealing to go ahead on its own. Watt conceived Eureka Stockade as the first of a series of films showing the birth of democracy around the British Commonwealth, and subsequently spent a good deal of time researching the events, in collaboration with Rex Rienits and a small team of historians. His pursuit of the 'greys and mediocrities of historical truth' were undermined, however, by compromises forced upon him 'during the arduous physical difficulties of the production, and above all by the miscasting of Chips Rafferty in the role of Lalor' (Pike and Cooper, p. 271).
Watt left Australia for Africa following the completion of Eureka Stockade, somewhat despondent over the reluctance of both the Australian government and the Australian private sector to support its local film industry. His African films include Where No Vultures Fly (1951) and West of Zanzibar (1953). His association with Australia continued in the late 1950s when he directed Ealing Studios' final film, The Siege at Pinchgut (1959), adapted by Jon Cleary from his novel of the same name (with Alexander Baron). Although set largely on the Fort Denison island prison in Sydney Harbour, the film was shot both on location and in Ealing's UK studios.
