THE SUNDOWNERS

Life in New South Wales in the '20's is reflected in the peripatetic Carmody family when Paddy heads for Bulimga for a drover's job. Ida does not always agree with him that the ""whole bloody country's me backyard"" but follows faithfully, if sometimes very vocally, while 14 year old Sean watches and waits for a place to call home. Their friendship with remittance man, Venneker, the trek with the 600 sheep and their meeting with the Batemass, and then a chance to work for all of them at a sheep station. Ida cooking, Paddy proves a winner as a top shearer and the doings of the ""good mob"" fill this stay with security. And with their savings they are about to buy part of a farm but Paddy's mischances take away this hope and they are off again, in their waggonet for the rootless life in the bush. A little family, close in merriment and hardships, and an assortment of game bastards add up to a graphic picture, rich in incident and character, of Australia and her people. Whereas Frankie in You Can't See Around Corners 1947) was a brutal heel, Paddy here is a likeable one.