Walkabout (film)

Walkabout is a 1971 British-Australian survival drama film set in the Australian outback, 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 Walkabout 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.
One of the first films in the Australian New Wave cinema movement, it received positive reviews despite being a box-office failure; it was also entered into the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, where Roeg was nominated for the Palme d'Or. It is also held to be one of Roeg's masterpieces, alongside Performance (1970), Don't Look Now (1973), and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). In 2005, the British Film Institute included it in their list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

Plot

In November, a white, city-bred teenage schoolgirl and her much younger brother become stranded in the wilderness after their father goes berserk. After driving them far into the Australian outback, ostensibly for a picnic, the father suddenly begins shooting at the children. They run behind rocks for cover, whereupon he sets the car on fire and shoots himself in the head. The girl conceals what has happened from her brother and, after grabbing some food and supplies, the pair head out into the desert.
By the middle of the next day, they are weak and the boy can barely walk. Discovering a small water hole with a fruiting tree, they spend the day playing, bathing, and resting. By the next morning, the water has dried up. They are then discovered by an Aboriginal boy. Although the girl cannot communicate with him, due to the language barrier, her brother mimes their need for water and the newcomer cheerfully shows them how to draw it from the drying bed of the oasis. The three travel together, with the Aboriginal boy sharing food he has caught hunting. The boys learn to communicate slightly using words and sign language.
While in the vicinity of a plantation, a white woman walks past the Aboriginal, who simply ignores her when she speaks to him. She appears to see the other children, but they do not see her, and they continue on their journey. The children also discover a weather balloon belonging to a nearby research team working in the desert. After drawing markings of a modern-style house, the Aboriginal boy eventually leads them to an abandoned farm, and takes the other boy to a nearby road. The Aboriginal boy hunts down a water buffalo and is wrestling it to the ground when two white hunters appear in a truck and nearly run him over. He watches in shock as they shoot several buffalo with a rifle. The boy then returns to the farm, but passes by without speaking.
Later, the Aborigine boy lies in a trance among a slew of buffalo bones, having painted himself in ceremonial markings. He returns to the farmhouse catching the undressing girl by surprise, and initiates a mating ritual by performing a courtship dance in front of her. Although he dances outside all day and into the night until he becomes exhausted, she is frightened and hides from him, and tells her brother they will leave him the next day. In the morning, after they dress in their school uniforms, the brother takes her to the Aboriginal boy's body, hanging in a tree. Before leaving, the girl wipes ants from the dead boy's chest. Hiking up the road, the siblings find a nearly deserted mining town where a surly employee directs them towards nearby accommodation.
Much later, a businessman arrives home as the now grown-up girl prepares dinner; while he embraces her and relates office gossip, she imagines a scene in which she, her brother, and the Aboriginal boy are playing and swimming naked in a deep pool in the outback.