The Overlanders, made in 1946, is the story of ‘one man’ – Don, played by Chips Rafferty (John William Pilbean Goffage 1909-1971) – and his small group of drovers crossing three states of Australia with more than a thousand head of cattle over 2000 miles during the Second World War. The film is set in 1943 outback Australia and is based on the true story of a cattle drive in 1942 organized by the government to vacate the land of people and supplies in the threat of a Japanese invasion.

Depicting a ‘realistic’ view of Australian culture and landscape, the Overlanders gave an insight into the nature of rural Australia and its people to the international market and the rest of the country. Plot The film the Overlanders is set in ‘outback’ Australia during 1943. This was one of Rafferty’s first films and he went on to become the ‘iconic’ and archetypal Australian bloke of his time and starred in Eureka Stockade(1949), Bitter Springs (1950), where a family of white farmers fight to take possession of land and water that is home to a well-established Aboriginal clan, and the Sundowners (1960). He was the ‘John Wayne’ of Australian cinema and there was even a biographical film made about him.

FILMS PRODUCED IN AUSTRALIA BY OVERSEAS FILM MAKERS 1946-1971 include:
The Overlanders (Harry Watt, 1946) Bush Christmas (Ralph Smart,1947) Eureka Stockade (Harry Watt, 1949) The Kangaroo Kid (Lesley Selander 1950) Bitter Springs (Ralph Smari, 1950) Kangaroo (Lewis Milestone, 1952) Long John (Silver Byron Haskin, 1954) Robbery Under Arms (Jack Lee, 1957) The Shiralee (Leslie Norman, 1957) Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (Leslie Norman, 1959).

Films made in and around Quorn include:
Bitter Springs – 1949-1950
Kangaroo – 1952
Robbery Under Arms – 1957 (This movie was remade again using the area north of Wilpena Pound in 1984 and was released in a longer version as a TV mini series).
The Sundowners – 1960
Sunday Too Far Away – 1973-1974
Gallipoli – 1980
The Last Frontier – 1985
The Shiralee – 1986
The Light Horseman – 1996
The Last Ride -2009

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