Walkabout is a 1971 adventure survival film directed by Nicolas Roeg and starring Jenny Agutter, Luc Roeg, and David Gulpilil. Edward Bond wrote the screenplay, which is loosely based on the 1959 novel by James Vance Marshall. It centres on two white schoolchildren who are left to fend for themselves in the Australian Outback and who come across a teenage Aboriginal boy who helps them to survive.
Rodney William Ansell was an Australian cattle grazier and a buffalo hunter. Described to be from "the bush", Ansell became famous in 1977 after he was stranded in extremely remote country in the Northern Territory, and the story of his survival for 56 days with limited supplies became news headlines around the world. Consequently, he served as the inspiration for Paul Hogan's character in the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee. In 1999, he was killed in a shootout by policemen of the Northern Territory Police.
Peter Falconio was a British tourist who disappeared in a remote part of the Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia on the evening of 14 July 2001, while travelling with his girlfriend Joanne Lees.
Bradley John Murdoch is an Australian criminal serving life imprisonment for the July 2001 murder of English backpacker Peter Falconio in Australia. He will be 74 when eligible for parole in 2032. Murdoch is being held in Darwin Correctional Centre in Darwin, Northern Territory. He has lodged two appeals against his conviction, both of which were unsuccessful. The High Court of Australia refused special leave to appeal on 21 June 2007. He is forbidden to talk to the press.
Wolf Creek is a 2005 Australian horror film written, co-produced and directed by Greg McLean and starring John Jarratt, Nathan Phillips, Cassandra Magrath and Kestie Morassi. Its plot concerns three backpackers who find themselves taken captive and subsequently hunted by Mick Taylor, a sadistic, psychopathic, xenophobic serial killer, in the Australian outback. The film was ambiguously marketed as being "based on true events", while its plot bore elements reminiscent of the real-life murders of backpackers by Ivan Milat in the 1990s and Bradley Murdoch in 2001, both of which McLean used as inspiration for the screenplay.
Ivan Sen is an Indigenous Australian filmmaker. He is a director, screenwriter and cinematographer, as well as an editor, composer and sound designer. He is co-founder and director of Bunya Productions.
Max Rockatansky is the title character and antihero protagonist of the Australian post-apocalyptic action film series Mad Max. Created by director George Miller and producer Byron Kennedy, the character was originally played by actor Mel Gibson in the first three films from 1979 to 1985, and later Tom Hardy in the fourth in 2015.
The Sundown murders were the murders of Sally (Thyra) Bowman (43), her daughter Wendy Bowman (14), and family friend Thomas Whelan (22) on Sundown Station in northern South Australia outback in December 1957. The search for their killer was one of the biggest manhunts in South Australian history.
McQ is a 1974 American Panavision neo-noir crime action film directed by John Sturges and starring John Wayne. It costars Eddie Albert, Diana Muldaur, and Al Lettieri, and features Colleen Dewhurst, Clu Gulager, David Huddleston, Julian Christopher, Roger E. Mosley, and William Bryant in supporting roles. The film was shot in the State of Washington, making extensive use of locations in Seattle and with a sequence near the end filmed on the Pacific Coast at Moclips.
Wake in Fright is a 1971 Australian New Wave film directed by Ted Kotcheff, written by Evan Jones, and starring Gary Bond, Donald Pleasence, Chips Rafferty, Sylvia Kay and Jack Thompson. Based on Kenneth Cook's 1961 novel of the same name, it follows a young schoolteacher who descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia.
Trucks is a 1997 Canadian-American television horror film directed by Chris Thomson, which follows the story of a group of tourists and locals attacked by autonomous trucks and other inexplicable phenomena in a rural town. It is based on Stephen King's short story "Trucks", which also served as the source material for the earlier film Maximum Overdrive, the only film directed by King. Trucks aired on the USA Network on October 29, 1997.
Cactus is a 2008 Australian mystery-thriller film, it is the directing debut for Jasmine Yuen-Carrucan.
Touch the Sun is a series of television films commissioned by Patricia Edgar for the Australian Children's Television Foundation. It was to be the ACTF's project for the Australian Bicentenary celebrations in 1988. The Australian Bicentennial Authority named Touch the Sun as the Bicentenary official children's series for 1988. Edgar's plan was to locate stories in every state in Australia showing the diversity of the Australian landscape. It was directed, written and produced by some of the top film and tv personnel in Australia. Patricia Edgar was Executive Producer of the show and it was backed by the ABC, Australian Film Commission, the New South Wales Film Corporation, the South Australian Film and Television Financing Fund, the South Australian Film Corporation, Film Victoria and the French distribution company Revcom International. National Trustees agreed to act as investor representatives for Touch the Sun in 1986 and the series was offered to the Australian Television networks for telecast in 1988. The $7.5 million necessary for production of this unique children’s series for the Bicentennial year was fully subscribed by 30 June 1987. The ABC paid $2 million for the Australian rights to Touch the Sun, the most the ABC had ever spent to acquire the rights to a program.
Jesse Stone: Benefit of the Doubt is a 2012 American made-for-television crime drama film directed by Robert Harmon and starring Tom Selleck, Kathy Baker, and Kohl Sudduth. Based on the characters from the Jesse Stone novels created by Robert B. Parker, the film is about the police chief of a small New England town who returns from his forced retirement after his replacement is blown up in the town police car. The story is set in the fictitious town of Paradise, Massachusetts.
Satellite Boy is a 2012 Australian adventure drama film about a young Aboriginal boy struggling to maintain the traditions of his heritage in the modern world when a mining company expands into the region. Written and directed by Catriona McKenzie, the film premiered domestically on 10 December 2012 at the Perth International Arts Festival, two days after being released at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Wolf Creek 2 is a 2013 Australian horror film co-written and directed by Greg McLean. The film is a sequel to the 2005 film Wolf Creek and stars John Jarratt, reprising his role as Mick Taylor. It was released on 30 August 2013 at the Venice Film Festival, then released in Australia on 20 February 2014.
Mark Coles Smith, also known by his musical identity as Kalaji, is an Aboriginal Australian actor of stage and screen, sound designer, field recordist, writer, and composer. He is known for his roles in the feature films Last Cab to Darwin (2015), Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018), and Occupation: Rainfall (2020), as well as the television series Mystery Road: Origin (2022), and the Canadian series Hard Rock Medical (2013–18).
Goldstone is a 2016 Australian crime thriller film directed by Ivan Sen. It is a sequel to Mystery Road (2013) and stars Aaron Pedersen, Alex Russell, Jacki Weaver, David Wenham and David Gulpilil. It was released in Australia on 7 July 2016. According to the film's end credits, it was largely shot on location in the small town of Middleton, Queensland, Australia.
Mystery Road is an Australian television crime mystery series whose first series screened on ABC TV from 3 June 2018. The series is a spin-off from Ivan Sen's feature films Mystery Road and Goldstone, taking place in between the two. Aboriginal Australian detective Jay Swan, played by Aaron Pedersen, is the main character and actor in both the films and in the first two TV series, each of six episodes.
Back to the Outback is a 2021 animated adventure comedy film directed by Clare Knight and Harry Cripps, from a screenplay written by Cripps, and a story by Cripps and Gregory Lessans. The voice cast includes Isla Fisher, Tim Minchin, Eric Bana, Guy Pearce, Miranda Tapsell, Angus Imrie, Keith Urban, and Jacki Weaver, and is distributed by Netflix Animation.
