Introductory note: 'This novel is based on the film, which is adapted from the play 'The Squatter's Daughter' by Bert Bailey and Edmund Duggan.' (aka Albert Edmunds, qq.v.)
Regarding the 1933 film, written by Gayne Dexter and E.V. Timms (qq.v.), Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper (q.v. 1980) note: 'For his second feature production, Ken Hall retained little but the title of an old play by Bailey and Duggan, which had been more faithfully filmed in 1910' (p. 215). In Bruce Molloy's Before the Interval (1990) Bruce Molloy further notes: 'The Cinesound version has been extensively changed, with the original's subplot involving bushranging being entirely omitted in line with the change to a contemporary setting. Introduced in this film is the theme of uncertain or confused identity which is to be a continuing one in Cinesound films' (p. 65).
This was not the first novel loosely derived from Bailey and Duggan's play. In 1922 Hilda Bridges (q.v.) had also produced a novel for the New South Wales Bookstall Company titled: The Squatter's Daughter: A Novel Adapted From the Play by Bert Bailey and Edmund Duggan which retained the bushranging theme. [see E. Morris Miller Australian Literature From its Beginnings to 1935. (1940): 752].
