|
 In 1939, Lady Sarah
Ashley (Nicole
Kidman) travels from England to northern Australia to force her
philandering husband to sell his faltering Australian cattle station,
Faraway
Downs. Her husband is murdered shortly before she arrives, with
suspicions that
he was killed by an Aboriginal elder, "King George" (David
Gulpilil). Cattle station manager Neil Fletcher (David
Wenham) is trying to gain control of Faraway Downs, so that Lesley
'King'
Carney (Bryan
Brown) can have a complete cattle monopoly in the Northern Territory,
which
will give him negotiating leverage with an Australian army officer,
Captain
Dutton (Ben Mendelsohn).
The childless Lady
Sarah is captivated by a young half-caste
boy, Nullah, who was born to an Aboriginal mother and an unknown white
father.
When Lady Sarah sees Fletcher mistreating the Aborigines, she fires him
and
decides to try and run the station herself. She persuades her husband's
drover (Hugh
Jackman) — called simply "Drover" — to take the
cattle to Darwin
for sale. Drover, a white man, is friendly with the Aborigines, and
therefore
shunned by many of the other whites in the territory. It is revealed
that he
had married an Aboriginal woman, but she had died after being refused
medical
treatment in a local hospital because of her race.
Drover leads a team
of six other riders, including
Lady Sarah, Drover's Aboriginal brother-in-law Magarri (David
Ngoombujarra), Nullah, and the station's
accountant Kipling Flynn (Jack Thompson), to drive the 1,500 cattle to
Darwin.
They encounter various obstacles along the way, including the death of
Flynn.
However, Lady Sarah and Drover develop a romance, and she gains a new
appreciation for the Australian territory. After they successfully
deliver the
cattle, Lady Sarah, Nullah, and Drover live together happily for two
years.
However, Fletcher kills Carney and marries Carney's daughter Cath
Carney, takes
over his empire, and then continues to menace Lady Sarah. It is
determined that
Fletcher was the actual murderer of Lady Sarah's husband, and that
Fletcher is
also almost certainly the father of Nullah.
Nullah is drawn to perform
a walkabout
with his grandfather, the aboriginal elder "King George", but is
instead captured by the authorities and sent to live with other
half-caste
children on Mission Island. Lady Sarah vows to rescue him, but first
works as a
radio operator during the escalating war.
When the Japanese attack the island and Darwin in 1942, Lady Sarah
fears that Nullah was killed, and Drover and Nullah hear (mistakenly)
that
Sarah was killed. The Drover rescues the children from the island, and
when
they sail back into port at Darwin, Nullah plays his harmonica with the
tune of
"Over the Rainbow" from the film The Wizard of Oz.
Lady Sarah hears
the music, and the three are reunited. Fletcher attempts to shoot
Nullah but is
speared by King George and falls dead. On the way back to Faraway
Downs, King
George calls for Nullah, his grandson, who returns to the outback with
his
grandfather. |
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