Backbencher

Walkabout is about two children who are driven into the Outback by their father. He proceeds to set the car on fire and shoot himself. Thus, they are alone in the vast Australian Outback. The sister of the young boy leads them through the harsh terrain; they seem to just have enough provisions with them for a while. They eventually meet up with an Aborigine boy on his walkabout, which is a tribal initiation into manhood. He helps them survive. However, there is a language barrier between the two. The young girl is naive by thinking that he must understand some English such as the word "water." "You must understand. Everyone can understand that." In a bizarre twist in the end, the young Aborigine man hangs himself, and the children find a paved road and wander into a deserted town.

Overall, I thought this movie was good. The beginning was very odd in that I really did not know where the plot was going. The movie starts out in urban Sydney and suddenly the location is in the middle of the bush. As with the movie, "Rabbit Proof Fence," this movie seems to depict man's struggle with nature. Although these two children did not endure nearly as much as the three girls did in "Rabbit Proof Fence," we see their struggle with the harsh terrain. This movie does a wonderful job of showing images from the Australian Outback, including the oases. One question I have is, "Was the audience given any reason for the father's bizarre behavior which led to his death?"