WALKABOUT REVIEW

Figure 1, Walkabout [Poster] 1971

This review will be looking at Nicolas Roeg’s 1971 adventure/drama: Walkabout and
how the film presents the children’s coming of age through harsh environments and
situations looking particularly at juxtaposition within the film. Key sources being used
include: Childhood Studies: A Reader in Perspectives of Childhood by Jean Mills and
Richard Mills and online sources such as; Criterion Confessions.

Walkabout is about two young children that are left in the Australian outback when
their father tries to kill them both. He then proceeds to kill himself and leaves the two
city-based children to fight their way to survive the outback and return to civilisation.
The two children, without names, meet an Aboriginal boy who then helps them make
their way back to the civilised world. The film takes place over several weeks,
showing the children improve their attitudes toward being in the outback and get
better at surviving, slowly letting go of their toys and dependency on modern life and
learning how to fend for themselves.

Figure 2, Uniforms and the Outback [Still

One of the first big juxtapositions we see in the film is the girl in a classroom, with
many other school girls performing speech lessons with a background noise of
traditional Australian music; ‘the first scenes juxtapose the hustle and bustle of
modern city life with the traditional native sounds of the country; namely, didgeridoo
music plays over the top of scenes of traffic jams, marching soldiers, and schoolgirls
engaging in vaguely erotic breathing exercises’ (Rich, J.S 2010). This scene of
schoolgirls then changes into the outback, showing two very different worlds; a
civilised world and a primitive world. We also see the father sitting in an office, then
sitting in a car in the middle of the outback. There are many environmental
juxtapositions throughout Walkabout, the concrete flat blocks and then the never-
ending sea and outback just around the corner from a city.

Walkabout first presents the audience with a massive difference, city children (in
grey school uniforms) in a wild environment. This then becomes a main theme within
the film, the battle between primitive and civilised cultures; the two young children
get better at survival skills while always staying in their school uniforms. This
contrasts with the savage nature we see from the Aboriginal boy and the way they
stand out from being out in the wild outback. ‘In many ways the film establishes a
juxtaposition between nature, symbolised by landscape and the Aboriginal boy and
modernity, symbolised by the white children’s civility.’ (Mills, J. 2000) There are
scenes throughout the film that suggest that the two worlds are starting to combine,
that the children are becoming one with nature. A scene that does this is where the
three children are playing on a tree, ‘her white legs and thighs with the branches of
the tree, to symbolise her developing oneness with nature’ (Mills, J. 2000). The girl,
being the most sensible of the three children is the one that takes the longest to
connect with nature, always snapping in and out of a primitive and civilised state:

Figure 3, Playing With A Tree [Still]

A walkabout in the Australian outback is typically a rite of passage, the two nameless
children end up accompanying the nameless Aboriginal boy on his walkabout, while
they do not realise that they are actually completing their own walkabout at the same
time. A walkabout is supposed to be a journey to turn a child into an adult (a boy to a
man), despite the film being about this lifechanging journey, the children still make it
feel like a child’s imaginative adventure. The young boy see’s it all as an adventure,
using his toys in juxtaposition with the harsh environment around him. The boy ends
up finding ways to communicate with the Aboriginal boy, because society has not yet
broken him in the way that his sister has been through education, she is older and
therefore lacks the imagination that the boy has. Despite the adventure taking the
three on a large learning experience, ‘The film is deeply pessimistic. It suggests that
we all develop specific skills and talents in response to our environment, but cannot
easily function across a broader range. It is not that the girl cannot appreciate nature
or that the boy cannot function outside his training.’ (Ebert, R. 1997) The girl
struggles to understand the environment the same as her younger brother, and the
Aboriginal boy struggles to understand in the same way that the two children do,
they have been raised in two juxtaposing societies, making their worlds very difficult
to intertwine, yet they manage to do this throughout the film, they can appreciate
each other’s worlds without a full understanding.

To conclude, the film Walkabout is a tricky one. The children experience a

completely different world from that of which they are used to. The environment and
the children do not go together, they juxtapose one another in a very major way.
However, the relationships they form with the Aboriginal boy is bittersweet and the
journey they all go on throughout their Walkabout could have changed everything
they thought about their lives. It will be an experience they would not forget.

Bibliography:
Ebert, R. 1997 [Online] At: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-
walkabout-1971 Accessed on: 20/03/19
Mills, J. 2000 [PDF] Childhood Studies: A Reader in Perspectives of Childhood
Accessed on: 20/03/19
Rich, J.S 2010 [Online] Walkabout At:
http://www.criterionconfessions.com/2010/05/walkabout-10.html Accessed on:
20/03/19
Mewings, 2017 [Online] At:
https://www.murrayewing.co.uk/mewsings/2017/06/03/walkabout/ Accessed on
20/03/19

Illustrations:
Figure 1: Walkabout [Poster] 1971 At:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067959/mediaviewer/rm3449225472 Accessed on:
20/03/19
Figure 2: Uniforms and the Outback [Still] At: http://www.qnetwork.com/review/2378
Accessed on: 23/03/19
Figure 3: Playing with a Tree [Still] At: http://www.asharperfocus.com/Walkabout.html
Accessed on: 23/03/19