ABSTRACT
One of the most successful documentary films ever made in Australia, The Back of Beyond, was also one of the most significant productions of the Shell Film Unit during the 1950s. A dramatized documentary in the tradition of Night Mail and Fires Were Started, it won critical acclaim at international film festivals and was the most widely seen Australian film of the era, due to extensive nontheatrical distribution at home and overseas. The Back of Beyond was produced, written, and
directed by Tasmanian-born John Heyer, who had left the Australian National Film Board in 1948 to lead the newly formed Australian Shell Film Unit. Given a brief to make a ‘‘prestige’’ documentary that would capture the essence of the country, he undertook an extended threemonth trip into the Outback, traveling through the Central Australian desert before returning to Sydney to prepare a detailed shooting script with the assistance of his wife, Janet, and writer Roland Robinson. Narration and dialogues were written in collaboration with the poet and playwright Douglas Stewart.
