Phillip Noyce's first feature has Peter Weir regular Russell Boyd as cinematographer and is an existentialist road movie that has at its core the relationship between an Aboriginal and a white Australian drifter. Starting off just at the back of Bourke in north-west New South Wales the two men steal a car and head for Sydney 800 kilometres away, picking up and separating from various characters along the way. What starts off as a bit of a lark ends up badly
Based on a short story by John Emery but with dialogue largely improvised by its stars Gary Foley, a well-known Aboriginal activist of the time, and a well-cast Bill Hunter as the racist yobbo, and released the same year as Fred Schepisi's more polished The Chant Of Jimmie Blacksmith, the film did not find a local audience but was deservedly noticed at the Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals.
Made on a budget of $23,000 and influenced by the realist aesthetics of American filmmakers like John Casavettes and films such as Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) it is seat-of-the-pants film-making that works, capturing the crudity of the time with unflinching honesty.
FYI: There was another ending intended for the film with the three main protagonists (Zac Martin, another Aboriginal, joins the initial two-man odyssey) making it to Sydney and disappearing into urban anonymity but budgetary considerations and Foley's pessimistic view of the future for Black Australia determined the ending that we see.