Synopsis
This outstanding and highly readable study of Australian cinema explores the relationship between a series of films produced in different periods of Australian history but linked by a representative trope - the repeated image of sheep. It focuses on two key sheep films: "The Squatter's Daughter" (Hall, 1933) and "Bitter Springs" (Smart, 1950). Both movies are explicitly concerned with the national project, in which sheep-growing and nation-building are seamlessly aligned, but are vastly different vehicles.