6828148917470224801.jpg
This early adaptation of Katherine Susannah Pritchard's novel (published only the preceding year) is one of Australia's 'lost films': only a fragment, described by the NSFA as showing 'a woman with her head tied in a scarf crouching behind a log and aiming a rifle', remains.
The film appeared at a time of heightened nationalism: an advertisment for a screening at the Strand Theatre, for example, reads:
'Drovers! Cattle Dealers! Bush-rangers! Pioneers! Roustabouts! "Pub" Keepers! Bushgirls! ALL combine in presenting early Australian life as it actually was. [...] It tells of those intrepid men and women who, in spite of tremendous hardships, carved their homes out of the Virgin Bush. They were THE MEN WHO MADE AUSTRALIA. Their sons, the Anzacs, coming from this hardy stock, are now, by their glorious deeds, ringing the name "Australia" throughout the entire world.'
Source: The Brisbane Courier, Wednesday 18 October 1916, p.2.
