Cirrus@Austlit

Based on Henry Lawson's poem 'The Union Buries its Dead,' Joe Wilson's Mates is set in a small country town during the 1890s. Joe Wilson is a stranger in town, with no known family or friends. When he dies, he is found to be carrying a union card, so the local members decide to honour one of their own with a decent funeral. The narrative sees the sweating union men making frequent stops on their way to the graveyard to rest, drink beer, and bicker.

Adapted from the 1953 short story 'The Load of Wood' written by Frank Hardy under a pseudonym, this cinematic adaptation is a bleak, almost Soviet-like tale of men suffering out the 1930s Depression in a country town. Although a group of unemployed men is given relief work on the grounds that they cannot afford to buy enough fuel to keep their families warm, two of the men decide to steal a truck-load of wood from a rich man's estate and deliver it to those in the town with a desperate need for warmth.