AFTER a praiseworthy career with TV series, Catriona McKenzie’s first venture on the big screen, as writer, producer, and director, is an agreeable little film that she could have delivered better.

Young Aboriginal Cameron Wallaby plays Pete, on the cusp of adolescence, living with his grandfather Jagamarra (David Gulpilil) after his mother went to the city to study hospitality so she and Pete might open a restaurant.

White fellas are about to use Pete’s piece of country to park mining machinery. Pete decides to go to the city to find his mum. His best mate Kalmain (Joseph Pedley) reckons that city life will be better than in a remote mining village.

Most of the film is the boys’ journey. Young and optimistic, their preparations are rudimentary and inadequate. While Pete has learned some Aboriginal lore from Jagamarra, Kalmain has lived in the village. They walk a lot but get nowhere. Kalmain comes close to dying of thirst on a claypan. And he saves Pete from drowning when they find a stream.

The screenplay could have dealt more vigorously with issues facing Aboriginal people living across the demarcation between white fella urban life and indigenous ways. The journey is supposed to occupy a weekend. In that time, the film places them in a variety of outback environments across the Kimberley. As a compendium of Kimberley scenery, it’s hard to fault. As a saga, it fails to convince. It needs a full measure of audience forgiveness to sustain what McKenzie intended to be a useful fable of cross-cultural issues in our time.

 At Capitol 6