We finally saw the nearly three hour film Australia last evening after a drive out to tour Red Hawk Casino, and then dinner - peel & eat shrimp and “lazyman” cioppino - at Powell’s Steamer Co. & Pub in Placerville. Ran into our friend Candy there listening to live jazz. Yep, we covered a lot of ground but it felt good to blow off a little work related pressure and do something we don’t often get time for. Kind of a double feature weekend!
The film is a romantic action-adventure set in northern Australia prior to World War II and centers on an English aristocrat (Nicole Kidman) who inherits a ranch the size of Maryland. When English cattle barons plot to take her land, she reluctantly joins forces with a rough-hewn drover (Hugh Jackman) to drive 2000 head of cattle across hundreds of miles of the country’s most unforgiving land, only to still face the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese forces that had attacked Pearl Harbor only months earlier.
The film wasn’t in wide release for long, so many of you may have passed it by. But if it’s still playing in your area - we had to drive out the the Century on Greenback, the only theater still showing it here - make a point to catch it on the big screen. A special treat: the kid who narrates the story and plays the half Australian Aborigine boy that is more or less adopted by Kidman’s character. He is wonderful!