By Matt Harries
For a country which has often courted an image of a roguish bonhomie and raffish conviviality, Australia seems also to possess a dark heart, which lies perhaps in the great vastness of the continent away from the densely populated coastal regions and their cosmopolitan modernity. Since being sighted by Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon in 1606 and then colonised by the British through penal transportation from 1770 onwards, our vision of Australia is based upon the white man’s settlement and his attempts to establish ‘civilisation’. For 400 years the story of today’s Australia has unfolded, yet it is estimated that the indigenous population of the land once referred to as ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ – an ‘unknown land of the south’ – first migrated to the continent across land bridges or short sea crossings possibly as early as 70,000 years ago. So the white man bought his laws and customs to the land, his gods too. Yet these are not the true gods of this land, the indigenous population having developed their tribal structure, religions and traditions over thousands of years.
There has always been then, two distinct definitions of Australian history, and much of the Australian cinema this article discusses comes from the shadows cast between the dark unrecorded past of Aboriginal culture within the ancient landscape and the relatively recent colonisation by the Western world. Much as the Aboriginal mythology – the Dreamtime – describes a land shaped by ancestral beings, so the land itself has continued to produce stories of its own, refracted through the prism of western cinematic tradition for a modern audience, but still quintessentially Australian. Perhaps, consistent with the Dreamtime concept of ‘Everywhen’ – the simultaneous past, present and future – the great Rainbow Serpent, who exists as a common motif throughout the various Aboriginal belief systems, continues to exercise its influence as creator god of this land.
Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975) seems a fitting place to begin this antipodean odyssey. Despite it not being a horror film it does transmit a strong sense of a feeling of cognitive dissonance arising from the juxtaposition of Victorian era refinement and education, set within the wholly alien environment of the Australian wilderness. To tie the film in somewhat with Brutal As Hell sensibilities, it begins with central character Miranda (Anne-Louise Lambert) reciting a couple of lines taken from Edgar Allen Poe’s A Dream Within A Dream, which was published in 1849, just over ten years before the events which take place in the film;
“What we see and what we seem is but a dream – a dream within a dream”.
An interesting parallel with the Aboriginal Dreamtime, and perhaps a reflection on the passing of the Victorian era, with its advancements and the ascendency of the powerful British Empire. Indeed, the lives of the pupils of Hillyard School has a dreamlike quality, as beautiful and virtuous young women brush their hair in soft sunlight, reading romantic poetry with faraway looks on St Valentine’s Day, 1900. Awakened from their dreamy meandering morning, the girls are taken on a horse drawn coach trip to nearby Mount Macedon, also known as Hanging Rock, a distinctive basalt rock formation. As the knowledgeable Mrs McGraw (Vivean Gray) describes the geological processes that formed Hanging Rock one of the girls wonders aloud; “a million years, waiting just for us”.
The day passes relatively quietly, the girls and two or three adults charged with their safety lie around in the shade of the picnic area gazing at flowers and eating cake. Strangely, everyone’s watch or timepiece stops at midday. Later, a group consisting of Miranda and her closest friends Irma (Karen Robson), Marion (Jane Vallis) and Rosamund (Ingrid Mason), followed by hanger on Edith (Christine Schuler), gain permission to go exploring. Miranda turns to one of the adults in charge of the the group and tells her “don’t worry about us, we shall only be gone a little while.”
Despite the complaints of flagging Edith, the girls carry on winding up through the labyrinthine rock formation. Ominous rumbling and the whispering breeze signifies a change in the tone of the film. Eventually they stop to nap for a short while in a clearing. Edith awakes, complaining of feeling ill. As she does so, she sees Irma and Marion, led by Miranda, moving upwards to a cleft in the rock. Completely ignoring her cries they continue to slowly climb. Overcome by a sudden fear, Edith screams, and runs back to the camp in terror. Shortly afterwards we learn that the three girls, as well as Mrs McGraw, are missing. With the exception of Irma, who is found much later by local valet Albert (John Jarratt, whom we’ll hear more from later, in his second film role), they are never seen again.
Picnic At Hanging Rock is based upon the book of the same name, written by Joan Lindsay. It is often mistaken for a true story, due to text at the film’s beginning which indicates as much. This presages the modern trend (often attached to flimsy found footage conceits) which uses the ‘based on a true story’ angle to add to the air of mystery. The final chapter of the book, which explains what happened next to the girls, was only published three years after Lindsay’s death, and is not covered in the film, so we are never given an explanation for the disappearance the girls. And while it is more accurate to describe the film as a mystery, it does contain a haunting and unsettling eeriness which bears a distinctly Australian hallmark. It has many other layers of interpretation too, such as the ending of an age (both in historically as well as for the individual girls themselves), underlying tones of unrequited love and repressed sexuality. Ultimately though, it is the suggestion that something lurks within the ancient landscape which has an unexplainable menace, that resonates as one of the film’s strongest elements.
The strange, seemingly malevolent power that haunts the slopes of Mount Macedon is never explained or rationalised. Nonetheless, this brooding menace is a consistent thread running throughout much Australian cinema. Despite the cuteness of your wallabies, koalas and suchlike, there is something unutterably alien about the massive, inhospitable size of the country. Just look at how the vast majority of the population clings to the coastline, leaving the interior largely to the Aboriginal population. When the world’s modern populace steps into the bush, the inevitable tension that arises provides us with a plethora of cinematic opportunities.
One film that carries a strong allegorical theme of man versus nature is Long Weekend (1978). Peter and Martia (John 
Hargreaves and Briony Behets) are a couple whose relationship has gone through a real rough patch, including extramarital affairs involving both parties and an abortion which left Martia close to death. Peter decides to take the two of them away to a remote beach for a few days to help patch things up, much to Martia’s chagrin. Despite Peter’s beer-fuelled enthusiasm, the couple fail to repair their fractious relationship and often fight, the affairs and the abortion continuing to drive a wedge between the two of them. Their unease is compounded by their own careless attitude toward the natural world. They litter the camp site with rubbish; flick burning cigarette butts into the dry brush; run over wildlife; needlessly hack down trees. Martia displays scant regard for the kinship of motherhood when she angrily smashes an eagle’s egg against a tree, even as the female bird circles them trying to reclaim it. When Peter surfs, Martia witnesses a dark shape in the waves nearby him. She cries in terror, and eager to re-establish his place within her affections, Peter shoots this dark shape from the safety of the empty beach. The waves foam with blood, and a mournful, almost human cry haunts them from far out at sea. One day the thing Peter shot washes up on the beach; it is a dugong or sea cow, and they surmise the crying sound comes from the creature’s mother, calling for her young. “It’s ugly,”sneers Martia at the bloody corpse.
Maybe it the disregard for nature they show that seems to anger the collective ‘spirit’ of the ecosystem. Perhaps this anger stems from some knowledge of Martia’s earlier abortion. Either way the couple seem unable to leave the area, often becoming lost in the dense undergrowth only to return to their starting point from another angle. Birds caw from the trees. Eagles and possums act with unusual aggression. The carcass of the dugong appears and reappears around their camp, as the mother’s cries continue to fill the air, driving Martia in particular to distraction. The warring couple finally part in anger; but they are doomed to never leave. Ferns swiftly grow upon their remains, and mother nature emerges victorious from an enjoyably eerie and obscure eco-thriller.
If it seems like old Mother N. has taken it all rather personally in Long Weekend, we are often reminded that there are beasts lurking in the outback who are quite capable of bringing their own cold eyed brand of retribution upon unwary humanity. 2007 saw the release of a pair of pictures that established the world’s largest reptile as the chief threat of the outback. Black Water deals with sisters Grace and Lee (Diana Glenn and Maeve Dermody) who end up last women standing as their boat is targeted by a lone ‘Salty’ in the middle of dense mangrove swamp. Stuck up a tree for much of the film, the atmosphere is suitably constricting despite the use of a model croc and obvious budget limitations.
Whereas Black Water was based in part upon a true story and sticks with limited production values, the Greg McLean directed Rogue goes for a modern, Jaws-esque take upon the creature feature. Melbourne-born Rahda Mitchell, as Kate, gets to unleash her best Aussie twang as she helms a boat tour down a river in the Northern Territory. The cinematography shows off the undeniable natural beauty of the area, but any thoughts of it being purely a tourism propaganda piece are literally sunk as an enormous and very territorial saltwater crocodile decides to get Cretaceous on their collective asses. Despite the greater budget, Rogue courts ridicule in choosing to make the CGI crocodile far bigger than in reality. However, as far as this kind of movie goes, it’s fairly entertaining stuff, and I’m pretty sure Tourism Australia would have approved.
Completing this trio of creature features is The Reef (2010). Like Black Water it is a film with a limited budget, but in choosing to simplify the story we get some of the most effective scenes of the three films, as a group of friends are forced to attempt to swim across shark-infested waters following the sinking of their yacht. Unlike the reptilian villains of the previous two films, The Reef uses real footage of a Great White Shark – for my money the most terrifying creature on the planet. The camera concentrates mainly on two types of shot. One, taken on the surface of the water, follows the understandably terrified group as they doggy paddle across featureless ocean, the water occasionally broken by a menacing dorsal fin. When the camera dips beneath the waves we see the shark itself circling around the group in that languid, strangely detached way. The Reef may not have any exploding gas canisters or salty sea dog one-liners but it scores highly for simply putting you in the water with a predator of such awesome, Darwinian omnipotence.
To read the second part of Matt’s feature on Australian cult cinema, click here.