AustLit
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Adaptations
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form
y
The Man from Snowy River
( dir. Beaumont Smith
)
Australia
:
Beaumont Smith's Productions
,
1920
7694641
1920
single work
film/TV
A film version of Banjo Paterson's poem, adapted freely by Beaumont Smith and drawing in characters from other Paterson works, including Kitty Carewe and Saltbush Bill.
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form
y
The Man from Snowy River
( dir. George Miller
)
Australia
:
Cambridge Productions
,
1982
Z920729
1982
single work
film/TV
Based on A. B. (Banjo) Paterson's classic poem, The Man from Snowy River is a coming-of-age story set in the Snowy River highlands of Northern Victoria and southern NSW in about 1880. Young stockman Jim Craig has lived his first eighteen years in the mountains.The death of his father forces him to leave the family property and go to the low lands to earn enough money to get it back in operation. He finds work on the property of the wealthy Mr Harrison, but when a valuable colt runs off to join a mob of brumbies in the highlands, he is forced to get it back and hopefully clear his name. Harrison offers a reward, which brings to the hunt dozens of the best horsemen in the district (including Clancy of the Overflow). Unimpressed by Jim's undersized mountain horse, Harrison and the other stockmen suggest that he stay behind. Jim uses his knowledge of the mountains and his horse's experience to track the colt down and bring it home. He doesn't ride so much for the reward, however, as to prove his worth to Harrison's headstrong daughter Jessica.
The narrative's sub-plot sees Jim and Jessica caught in the middle of a twenty-year-old feud between Harrison and his twin brother, Spur (who was also Jim's father's best friend and Jessica's now-dead mother's former true love).
Notes
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Adapted for the 2002 arena theatre production written and directed by David Atkins and Ignatius Jones.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Real-life Man From Snowy River Was Aboriginal, New Book Argues
2021
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 1 September 2021;'Anthony Sharwood, author of The Brumby Wars, says all the stockmen were Indigenous where the legendary ride is thought to have happened'
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y
The Brumby Wars : The Battle for the Soul of Australia
Sydney
:
Hachette Australia
,
2021
22811188
2021
multi chapter work
criticism
'It's not just a war over horses. It's a battle for the soul of Australia.
'This is a book about the intense culture war raging around Australia's wild horses, known as brumbies. It pits a vision of the legendary Man from Snowy River and the iconic ANZAC Light Horse against the spectre of ecosystems destroyed by feral pests. The debate involves powerful politicians and media commentators, and stars an animal mythologised in Australian poetry and prose. But in essence, this is about us. The Brumby Wars is about Australians at war with each other over their vision of an ideal Australia.
'To ecologists and people who ski, walk and fish in the High Country and other areas where the brumbies proliferate, they are a feral menace which must be removed to save delicate alpine landscapes. To the descendants of cattle families and many Australians in urban and regional areas, brumbies are untouchable, a symbol of wildness and freedom.
'Something has to give. But what? The land or the horses? This war is set to escalate dramatically before we have an answer. Featuring interviews with characters from all sides of the debate, The Brumby Wars is the riveting account of a major national issue and the very human passions it inspires. It is also a journey, a quest to understand what makes us tick in our increasingly polarised country.' (Publication summary)
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y
Animal Dreams
Sydney
:
Sydney University Press
,
2021
21213307
2021
selected work
essay
criticism
'Animal Dreams collects David Brooks’ thought-provoking essays about how humans think, dream and write about other species. Brooks examines how animals have featured in Australian and international literature and culture, from ‘The Man from Snowy River’ to Rainer Maria Rilke and The Turin Horse, to live-animal exports, veganism, and the culling of native and non-native species. In his piercing, elegant, widely celebrated style, he considers how private and public conversations about animals reflect older and deeper attitudes to our own and other species, and what questions we must ask to move these conversations forward, in what he calls ‘the immense work of undoing’.
'For readers interested in animal welfare, conservation, and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams will be an essential, richly rewarding companion.'
Source : publisher's blurb
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Why Do Brumbies Evoke Such Passion? It’s All down to the High Country’s Cultural Myth-makers
2018
single work
column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 13 June 2018;'Brumby activists and environmentalists seem fundamentally unable to understand one another, despite having a lot in common. They share a love of the high country but are divided over the value or threat of wild horses.' (Introduction)
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Friday Essay: the Cultural Meanings of Wild Horses
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 17 October 2017; The Conversation , 16 January 2018;'I am walking quietly through the forest. As I reach the edge of the trees there is a snort and a staccato of hoofbeats, and four horses materialise only metres in front of me: a foal, two mares and a dark stallion. The stallion, ears pricked, tosses his head and prances forward. As I crouch to pick up a branch, the stallion wheels and gallops off with the group. They hurdle an old stock fence, and almost as soon as their hoofs touch down, another big grey stallion comes towards them over the hill.' (Introduction)
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Booknotes
1985
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , April no. 69 1985; (p. 40)
— Review of The Man from Snowy River 1890 single work poetry -
Historian Dusts Off Old Books to Put Colour Back into Australia's Past
2002
single work
column
— Appears in: The Canberra Times , 21 December 2002; (p. 2-3) -
That Snowy River Man Again
1995
single work
column
— Appears in: Margin , November no. 37 1995; (p. 40) -
'They Will Have to Come Sooner or Later if You Stick At 'Em : Horse Breaking As Metaphor in Australian Cultural Discourse
2005
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , November vol. 50 no. 2005; (p. 226-234) Contends that 'horse breaking' has been used in Australian literature as a euphamism and 'justification' for Aboriginal-white conflict and dispossession of Aboriginal land. - y 'Clancy' and 'The Man from Snowy River' : Who Were They? : Definitive Traces after a Century Kyuna : Kyuna Expo Publishers , 2000 Z1251768 2000 single work criticism
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No Reason Not to Buy Rhyme
2006
single work
column
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 3-4 June 2006; (p. 28) Mike Carlton uses the opening lines of 'The Man from Snowy River' as a the base for a lyric more representative of 'the modern era of global competition for capital'.
- Bush,
- Snowy Mountains, Cooma - Snowy - Bombala area, Southeastern NSW, New South Wales,