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The Squatter's Daughter
( dir. Ken G. Hall
)
Australia
:
Cinesound Productions
,
1933
Z49664
1933
single work
film/TV
Although based on the 1905 play by Bert Bailey and Edmund Duggan (which was itself more faithfully adapted for film in 1910), this cinematic version retains little of the original. The storyline begins with Joan Enderby about to lose her family's sheep station because she can't afford to buy out the lease from her neighbours, the Sherringtons. To make matters worse, the elderly 'Ironbark' Sherrington, the owner of 'Waratah,' has been in England for two years allowing his villainous son Clive to try and remove Joan from the property. His attempt to bankrupt her is foiled, however, when a mysterious stranger offers to buy three thousand head of sheep from her at a good price. What she doesn't know is that the stranger, Wayne Ridgeway, is also rightful heir to the Sherrington estate. The only person who knows Ridgeway's identity is an Afghan trader called Jebal Zim, but he is murdered by Clive's overseer before he can tell the recently returned Ironbark Sherrington. Typical of the melodrama genre, the story's climax is played out in a thrilling scene - a bushfire - as Joan and Ridgeway try to deliver three thousand sheep to the market. After escaping the fire, they rescue Zim's kidnapped daughter, Zena and capture the overseer, Fletcher. Naturally Ridgeway is restored to his rightful inheritance, and he and Joan marry.
[Source: Australian Screen]
'In a famous study, The Australian Legend, first published in 1958, Russel Ward argued that the bush legend was the central foundation story that explained the evolution of Australian character and nationalism. Ward's version of the legend explained how from convict times onwards itinerant bush workers had created and adhered to an ethos that encompassed mateship, anti-authoritarianism (including hostility to Britain and its empire), egalitarianism, and adaptability. Although the bush legend allegedly originated with and was nurtured by a bush proletariat, Ward proposed that this regional ethos became a national creed at the turn of the 20th century, transmitted from rural to urban Australia through conduits that included the trade union movement, periodicals like The Bulletin, and the work of writers like Lawson and Paterson. (Publication abstract)
'In a famous study, The Australian Legend, first published in 1958, Russel Ward argued that the bush legend was the central foundation story that explained the evolution of Australian character and nationalism. Ward's version of the legend explained how from convict times onwards itinerant bush workers had created and adhered to an ethos that encompassed mateship, anti-authoritarianism (including hostility to Britain and its empire), egalitarianism, and adaptability. Although the bush legend allegedly originated with and was nurtured by a bush proletariat, Ward proposed that this regional ethos became a national creed at the turn of the 20th century, transmitted from rural to urban Australia through conduits that included the trade union movement, periodicals like The Bulletin, and the work of writers like Lawson and Paterson. (Publication abstract)
