Cirrus@Austlit

Set in the late 1800s, Robbery Under Arms is the story of bushranger Captain Starlight, told from the perspective of young Dick Marsden. Dick and his brother Jim follow their father's footsteps, on the wrong side of the law. After they succumb to the impetuosity of a tossed coin and participate in the theft and subsequent sale of fifteen hundred head of cattle, the pair team up with the mysterious Starlight (the renegade son of a British noble family), and evolve from petty criminals to outlawed bushrangers, terrorising the countryside, often in partnership with their father Ben and Starlight's Aboriginal offsider Warrigal. Throughout this story, the brothers find themselves at odds with both their mother and sister and with the lives they could have otherwise led.

An adaptation of Robbery Under Arms, released as both a feature film and a mini-series: this is the latter version.

'Based on the life of one of the world's greatest, most controversial and most loved sporting personalities, swimmer Dawn Fraser.'

Source: Screen Australia.

'The mysterious disappearance of a school teacher leads to the exposure of a reclusive family living at Summerfield, an island estate. Unfolding events lead to tragedy in the quiet town.'

Source: NFSA

Set in early colonial Australia, Luke's Kingdom follows the various fortunes of Jason Firbeck, who emigrates to Australia with his three children, and his son Luke, who is far more suited to life in the new country.

According to Moran, in his Guide to Australian TV Series, the program 'is not only a drama concerned with a man's settlement in a savage, hostile wilderness but is also a psychological drama wherein the son displaces the father. Jason is shown to be ineffective in the new land in contrast to Luke, who is a down-to-earth pragmatist who takes what he wants.'

A British and Australian co-production--both financially and in terms of cast and crew--the program did well when it aired on the Nine Network.

'David feels cramped in this suburban Melbourne flat. The 'real' country is out there, and he'd like to get to it. But will his wife join him in the adventure?'

Source: Radio Times, 3 June 1976, p.17.

Set in 1956 on an outback sheep station, the narrative explores the life of the old-time shearers: sweat-soaked days and rum-soaked nights, bloody two-fisted punch ups ... and the scab labour brought in during the shearers' strike of 1956. Central to the main storyline is Foley, a gun shearer who has been unbeaten in the tally for ten years, but who now arrives at the station aware that his days as the fastest shearer are now numbered.

Contrabandits was a fifty-minute procedural series following the Customs Special Branch, an elite group of law-enforcers intercepting contraband in Sydney.

Colin Free was script editor for the series (as well as scripting several episodes).

Source:

Moran's Guide to Australian TV Series

Storey, Don. Classic Australian Television http://www.classicaustraliantv.com/contrab.htm (Sighted 13/9/11)

See also:

Musgrove, Nan. 'Contrabandits'. Australian Women's Weekly 4 October 1967, p.17.

'Smuggling Theme of New Series'. Canberra Times 18 September 1967, p.15.

Now an extremely obscure television program (of which no mention is made on the National Film and Sound Archives website), Wandjina! was a seven-part fantasy series for young viewers, written by G.K Saunders (who, in 1964 and 1965, had scripted The Stranger) and, like The Stranger, produced by the ABC.

Wandjina! followed three young protagonists who stumble across a mysterious valley. In one of the valley's caves, they find cave paintings of the Wandjina spirit people. But after making this discovery, they start to see some odd things.

The central mythology of the program was inspired by the Dreamtime mythology of the Kimberley region of north-west Australia; as such, it represented an early attempt to create a consciously Australian style of fantasy for television (for example, it preceded the television adaptation of Patricia Wrightson's The Nargun and the Stars).

Moran notes in his Guide to Australian TV Series that the program was 'notable in using young Aboriginal actors such as Bindi Williams, as well as bringing some sense of Aboriginal culture to its young, white audience'. The lead roles were taken by Juliana Allan (who played Ensign Eve Poitier in Vega 4 in the following year) and Jacki Weaver (one of her earliest screen roles).

For a detailed, episode-by-episode synopsis, see Notes.

'It concerns the domestic problem of an architect, his wife and their family of two children. The plot unfolds through the eyes of the central character, Stephanie Stewart, the architect's wife. [...] There is an ever-growing rift between Stephanie and Mike. As the play opens, they are quarrelling about the sudden changes of decor which she wants for their home. She cannot understand why her husband will not allow her to pay for the alterations with money his mother had given her as a gift. The argument is only one sympton of their growing apart. A little while later matters come to a head when Stephanie learns from her gossiping girl-friends that Mike is involved with another woman. When husband and wife finally face the issue, there seems to be no way to break the tension between them.'

Source: 'Sydney Woman's First TV Play', Canberra Times, 6 October 1964, p.13.

A daytime soap opera (like its predecessor, Autumn Affair), The Story of Peter Grey follows a young clergyman newly appointed to a large parish.