Ask white Australians what 'walkabout' means and they will tell you it is an Aboriginal's furious fugue, shambling off the job or out of the shelter of the humpy, and heading into the outback. It is a sudden departure, a bout of madness almost — after which the Aboriginal chases his tail. But is it so?"
I was surprised to read Paul Theroux's description of the Australian movie "Walkabout" in his book "The Happy Isles of Oceania. He writes:
"No one I met in Australia or elsewhere who had seen [it] had forgotten the film's power or denied that they had been enchanted by it. After being released in 1969, it soon vanished, and had never been re-released ... Yet it still existed as a notable conversation piece in the 'Did-you-ever-see?' oral tradition among movie buffs, and it endures that way, because it has a simple tellable story. Those who have seen 'Walkabout' always speak of their favourite scenes — the opening, a salt-white tower block in Sydney with its swimming-pool smack against the habour; the frenzied picnic in the outback where the father tries and fails to kill his two children; the father's sudden Suicide againts a burning VW; the desperate kids faced with an immensity of desert; the girl (jenny Agutter, aged sixteen) peeling off her school uniform; the shot of an ant made gigantic in front of tiny distant kids — and every other creature in the putback crossing their path — snakes, lizards, birds, beetles, kangaroos, koalas, camels; the discovery of water under the quondong tree, after which the ordeal turns into a procession into paradise, as they all swim naked together in the pools of sunlit oases; the close call with the rural ockers; the wrecked house and its curios; the lovestruck Aboriginal's dance, ending in his suicide; the madman in the dainty apron in the ghost town howling at the children 'Don't touch that!' — and no rescue, no concrete ending, only a return to the tower block (it seems to be years later) on a note of regret."
The movie ends with a poem taken from A. E. Housman's collection "The Shropshire Lad", which explores the idea of nostalgia and growing old:
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Into my heart an air that kills
That is the land of lost content,
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Paul Theraux wrote his book in 1992 which explains why he wrote, "... it soon vanished, and had never been re-released", when in fact the movie was re-released as a restored "director's cut" in 1997 and on DVD the following year. Jenny Agutter, who starred in many more movies, inclduing my favourite, "The Riddle of the Sands", is now 73 years old.
David Gulpilil, the first Aboriginal to star in a feature film, had had no training as an actor and had probably never seen a film in his life before "Walkabout" when he was about 15 years old. He then starred in "Mad Dog Morgan", "Storm Boy", "Crocodile Dundee", "The Tracker", "Rabbit-Proof Fence", "Ten Canoes", "Australia", "Satellite Boy", "Charlie's Country", "Goldstone", and a 2019 remake of "Storm Boy". And that's not counting the many documentaries and TV series. He died in 2021, sixty-eight years old. The things you remember when you read a book.
