- Collection Spotlights
- Australia's Prime Ministers
- Restoration of The Story of the Kelly Gang
- Mike and Stefani
- Film Connection
- 1967 Referendum
- Australians in WWI
- For The Term of His Natural Life
- Jedda
- The Sentimental Bloke
- Kingsford-Smith
- Wake in Fright
- Waltzing Matilda
- Theatre of the Mind
- Women In Early Radio
- Theatres & Cinemas
- Paget Plate Discovery
- Soldiers of the Cross
- Cecil Holmes
- Ray Barrett
- Shirley Ann Richards
- Graham Kennedy
- A tribute to Charles Chauvel
- A tribute to Joan Long
- Lottie Lyell - Photo Play Artiste
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT – TED KOTCHEFF
MAKING WAKE IN FRIGHT:
THE NOVEL
THE FILM
FILMING IN AUSTRALIA
SHOOTING IN BROKEN HILL
POST-PRODUCTION AND RELEASE
RECOVERY AND RESTORATION
WAKE IN FRIGHT ON AUSTRALIANSCREEN
WAKE IN FRIGHT ON DVD AND BLU-RAY
MAKING WAKE IN FRIGHT:
THE NOVEL
Published originally by Michael Joseph in London in 1961, Wake in Fright met with instant success with critics on both sides of the Atlantic, with the New York Times critic describing it as a taut novel of suspense and its author “a vivid new talent.”
Kenneth Cook was thirty-two when the book came out but in fact it was not his first attempt; an earlier novel had been pulped out of fear of a libel action.
Wake in Fright sold well initially and by the mid 60s it was in a Penguin edition in Australia and eventually became a set text for schools there. Cook estimated that by 1977 it had sold well in excess of 20,000 copies.
Cook has attributed the immediacy and urgency of the book’s style to two things: his background as a journalist and the fact that it came directly from his experience.
As a young ABC radio journalist Cook had done stints covering Australia’s big rural districts and ended up living in places like Rockhampton in Queensland and Broken Hill in New South Wales. In those days, the late 50s and early 60s, before mobiles, the Internet, good roads, and efficient rail and plane networks, Australia’s big outback towns were so isolated that they seemed a long way from anywhere. From what
Cook witnessed, a culture of drinking, game shooting, and gambling and more boozing prevailed.
With a contract to fulfil Cook wrote the novel quickly without really knowing what it really was going to be about or where the story would take him. He had it finished in three months. It was based he says, on characters that he knew, on places and things he had seen. He never apologised, at least in public, for the sense of horror and
revulsion John Grant feels at the hands of the outback locals and their aggressive friendliness.
Photo: John Grant (Gary Bond) waiting for the train to Bundanyabba at Tiboonda Station in Wake in Fright
