ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some of the issues surrounding the first few film scores, and examines the ways in which English composers attempted to project their notion of the Australian landscape in sound. It focuses on the music for The Overlanders, with some reference to the other films, looking at the transformation of techniques deployed by Ireland in his music associated with an English landscape once he was transported to a different, Australian context. It is particularly fascinating that Ireland and Vaughan Williams, both composers strongly associated with English landscapes, should have written music intended to accompany scenes of the Australian outback. In July 1942 Ireland moved out of London to Little Sampford Rectory, in a village near Saffron Walden, Essex, to stay with an old friend from his London days, Paul Walde. During a thirteen-year period between 1946 and 1959 a succession of Ealing Studios films were shot in Australia, all of which used English composers to provide the soundtracks.
