Return Journey | |
---|---|
Directed by | William Sterling |
Produced by | John Sherman |
Cinematography | Gerry Vandenberg |
Budget | $12,000 |
Return Journey is an Australian film about the Burke and Wills expedition. It was directed by William Sterling and produced by John Sherman. [1]
In 1961 filming began with a cast of four and a crew including Sterling and cameraman Gerry Vandenberg. Filming took place near Alice Springs. [2] They had $12,000 in funds. [3] The plan was to film it on 16 mm and blow it up to 35mm. Filming was difficult - there was trouble with the camera, colour stock and sound track. [4]
The filmmakers did not have enough money to complete the feature film so it was recut as a documentary. [5] [6] In 1966, when John Sherman died, Colin Bennett claimed he had seen three different versions and said the best was a 30-minute documentary version. However, at that stage the film had not yet been released. [4]
Ham, a chimpanzee also known as Ham the Chimp and Ham the Astrochimp, was the first great ape launched into space. On January 31, 1961, Ham flew a suborbital flight on the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission, part of the U.S. space program's Project Mercury.
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The Burke and Wills expedition was organised by the Royal Society of Victoria (RSV) in Australia in 1860–61. It initially consisted of nineteen men led by Robert O'Hara Burke, with William John Wills being a deputy commander. Its objective was the crossing of Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 3,250 kilometres. At that time most of the inland of Australia had not been explored by non-Indigenous people and was largely unknown to European settlers.
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Nora Noel Jill Bennett was a British actress.
William John Wills was a British surveyor who also trained as a surgeon. He was the second-in-command of the Burke and Wills expedition, which was the first expedition to cross Australia from south to north, finding a route across the continent from the settled areas of Victoria to the Gulf of Carpentaria. He and the expedition leader Robert O'Hara Burke both died of exhaustion on the expedition's return journey.
Vincent Sherman was an American director and actor who worked in Hollywood. His movies include Mr. Skeffington (1944), Nora Prentiss (1947), and The Young Philadelphians (1959).
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