“It’s a hard country, makes for hard men”, declares Spur (Kirk Douglas), a craggy-faced, one-legged goldminer in the south-east highlands of Australia in George Miller’s The Man from Snowy River (1982). “Well God bugger me”, accepts the fit and toughened shearer, Foley (Jack Thompson), as he looks at the blood on his hand from touching his head after rolling his car on the flat, dry plains of south-west Queensland in Ken Hannam’s Sunday Too Far Away (1974). These two films, while both undeniably Australian and both displaying iconic images of Australianness, seem, at first, to offer quite disparate visions of what it means to be Australian. Their similarities, however, support the contention by Enker (1994, p. 211), that Australian cinema has reflected a “diverse, and often disturbing image” of its nation and its national identity, even though Australian politicians might prefer to espouse the notion of a ‘smart nation’, and the populus, generally, may prefer to revel in the myth of the ‘lucky country’. Australian cinema, more often than not, has portrayed this ‘sunburnt country’ as an uncompromising environment populated by calloused men, stoic in their acceptance of the need to struggle and sacrifice, but defiant in the face of authority or governance. While The Man from Snowy River offers a Hollywood-style, melodramatic narrative concerning the return to patriarchal order, and Sunday Too Far Away concerns the isolation of the ‘gifted’ male individual in a threatening natural and social environment, the similar ways in which these quite different films represent and resolve conflicts reveal how these conflicts relate to broader issues of Australian identity and cultural values. Two different tales set in two different times against two different landscapes ultimately present one cultural icon - the ‘typical’ Australian - white, male, muscular, determined and defiant against all odds, anti-authoritarian, and triumphant against an adverse environment.

The Man from Snowy River, a film O’Regan (1996, p. 17) refers to as a “kangaroo western”, is loosely based on ‘Banjo’ Paterson’s poem of the same name. While there are no kangaroos to be seen in the film, it certainly contains the iconography of a classic American Western - the horses, the Western-style town with its timber boardwalks, the stagecoach, horse-drawn wagons, the ‘iron’ horse, the goldmine and the ramshackle miner’s hut. But this is no tale of cowboys and Indians. This is a tale of man against beast, the beast being represented on one hand by renegade stallion, Big Black, leader of the brumbies, and on the other hand, by Spur’s brother, Harrison (also played by Kirk Douglas), the authority figure as domineering and unyielding as the stallion is daring and haughty. But there is also a third beast in this saga, as the young horseman from the mountains, Jim Craig (Tom Burlinson) explains to Harrison’s daughter, Jessica (Sigrid Thornton):

Jessica:		One minute, it’s like paradise. The next, it’s trying to kill you.
Jim:		If it was easy to get to know, there’d be no challenge. You’ve got to treat the mountains like a high-spirited horse - never take them for granted.
Jessica:		It’s the same with people too.

This personification of the environment, or the use, as O’Regan (1996, p. 57) claims, of “landscape as character” is a common characteristic of Australian cinema in which the inanimate are often imbued with animate traits - the rocks in Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), the road in Miller’s Mad Max (1979), the bus in Stephan Elliott’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), even the fence in Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-proof Fence (2002). A. D. Smith (cited in O’Regan 1996, p. 67) refers to this as the ‘national cultural’, or as O’Regan (1996, p. 67) defines it, “the cultural core of memories, values, customs, myths, symbols, solidarities and significant landscapes shaping ‘Australian’ identity”. It could be suggested Australians, Australian males at least, identify more with their environment and its flora and fauna than with other humans. For example, in Sunday Too Far Away, after the death of a fellow shearer, Garth (Reg Lye), Foley opens up about his youth at an orphanage and the respect he gained as a young ‘gun’ shearer. But although the sheep farmer’s daughter, Sheila (Lisa Peers), is in the background of this scene, it is as though Foley is talking to the piles of wood around him. Indeed, when he begins to cry, Sheila runs away, leaving the man where, perhaps the scene is suggesting, Australian men feel most comfortable - alone and in the bush - the ‘Aussie’ battler.

But while Australians have tended to see themselves as modest but hopeful ‘battlers’ in a harsh land which needed to be accommodated rather than tamed, Jim Craig certainly tames, indeed, conquers his environment in the single-handed fashion of a Clint Eastwood or John Wayne, only his weapon is a whip and his adversary the mountains and the stallion who would rule them. There are a number of distinct narratives at work in The Man from Snowy River, all intermingled, tied together with threads of melodramatic coincidence and excess. But they are all resolved by the one protagonist in one massive, and now iconic, scene of triumph of man over nature as Jim, on his horse, jumps over the ledge of a cliff in pursuit of the brumbies - boldly going where no other man would dare go, not even the legendary Clancy (Jack Thompson). But Jim’s determination and apparent bravado is driven more by his need to resolve conflict than by any blind heroics. Jim blames Big Black for the death of his father and the ‘theft’ of the mare, Bess. This conflict between Jim and the stallion is very much a Manichean struggle between good and evil - ‘white’ versus ‘black’. Throughout the film, there are a number of shots, almost comical in their excess, of Big Black giving Jim the ‘evil eye’. It is later revealed that Big Black is actually the first foal from the mare, Old Regret, and was a wedding present from Spur to Harrison’s bride, Matilda. Harrison was jealous of Spur’s affection for his wife and would not allow her to keep the colt, setting it free.

Meanwhile, Jim, oblivious to the relationship between Spur, with whom Jim’s father had been partners in the goldmine, and Harrison or the stallion, is told he can only take possession of his father’s house and land after he proves himself eligible to be called a ‘mountain man’. He acquires work at the cattle station owned by Harrison. A conflict arises here between Jim and the older, though not necessarily wiser, Curly (Chris Haywood), who is threatened by Jim’s eagerness, diligence and obvious horsemanship, and also, perhaps, by the developing romance between Jim and Jessica. This romance also fuels conflict between Jim and Harrison, who is determined for his daughter to marry ‘money’ and ‘success’ as opposed to a mere lad from the hills, revealing another conflict - class. Harrison is extremely possessive of Jessica, who is not even aware of the existence of her uncle, Spur. Matilda is absent, presumably having died giving birth. Harrison doubts his paternity, suspecting Spur to be the father. Indeed, it is Harrison who is responsible for Spur’s lose of a leg, having shot Spur when he suspected he had been with his wife. All of these conflicts are brought together when Curly sets free Harrison’s prized colt, coincidentally the last foal from Old Regret. The blame is laid on Jim. But Jim is able to prove his masculinity and heroic stature, not only re-capturing the colt, but also Bess, Big Black and all the brumbies. To remove any doubts that this will be the end of any conflict and that he has won the apparent ‘rights’ of manhood, Jim lays down his terms to Harrison, rejecting his offer of a cash reward:

Jim:		There’re a dozen good brood mares in that mob. I’ll be back for them. (He looks at Jessica.) And for whatever else is mine.
Harrison:		I don’t like to repeat myself. She’s not for you.
Jim:		Jessica can make up her own mind about that.
Harrison:		You gotta long way to go yet lad.
Spur:		He’s not a lad, brother, he’s a man. He’s a man.
Clancy:		The man from Snowy River.

As Jim rides off, the other men move quickly to get out of his way. This man has proven himself. He is a hero. He is a legend.

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