Bush Christmas

Review by David Woodward

One of my strong childhood memories was watching black-and-white movies on lunchtime TV during the school holidays. Bush Christmas was a particular favourite as it had all the elements of a feel-good story set in the Australian bush.

The Bush Christmas I remember however was a 1947 production filmed in the Blue Mountains by a UK company and starring Chips Rafferty.  I had forgotten that the movie was re-made in colour in 1983.

This more recent version has most of the same features of the first version (although filmed and set in Queensland), but more importantly was the film debut of (the then) 15-year old Nicole Kidman.

A skinny and rosy cheeked Kidman plays the eldest child of a family trying to keep their farm from going under. Their horse, Prince, must win the New Years Cup to pay off their debt, but two shady characters steal it and go into the mountains to escape. 

Kidman leads the other two children in the family to chase the crooks on horseback with the help of a young Aboriginal who works on their farm.

This all leads up to a climatic horse race after which all live happily ever after!

The other standouts in the cast are Mark Spain (a child actor from in A Country Practice at the time), stalwart Aussie actor John Ewart (remember him at his best in The Picture Show Man?) and John Howard (younger and skinnier than as he appears in All Saints today).

From the opening sequence, the music of an iconic Australian bush band (The Bushwackers) sets the scene of life in outback Queensland with its country towns, dances, mountains and horse races.

I was an avid follower of The Bushwackers during the late 1970s and was pleasantly surprised to actually see Dobe Newton and the other boys appearing as themselves in several scenes.

The film does try a little hard to include all the traditional elements of what overseas audiences thought was the idealised Australian bush (such as rugged mountain ranges and Aboriginal mysticism), and has the look and feel of earlier overseas produced Aussie films like Smiley.

Regardless, there are some genuinely funny moments between John Ewart and John Howard, as well as some great images of the bush, to make it a really enjoyable movie.

I think this is the first time Bush Christmas has been made available on DVD and it joins a growing list of great Australian movies distributed by Umbrella.

DVD Special Features

As with most Umbrella releases, there are some interesting extras, primarily a trailer (2:23) that covers most of the film’s action and an interesting photo gallery of over 30 colour pictures from the production.

There is also a pdf version of the script and press kit.

Conclusion: Episodes 80% Extras: 75%