It’s 1963 in the Australian outback and master tracker Billy Benn is being chased by the police for the murder of his wife’s lover. Can Benn escape and find solace in the outback or will the police led by fellow tracker Teddy Egan catch up to him?
Some twenty years later the police are in full force again running through the forest but this time they are not chasing a criminal, instead it is a race against time. A 6-year-old girl has been lost and stranded deep in the forest already for nine days and her survival, if possible, will depend on how quickly authorities can locate her. Once again the police will rely on the keen sense of a tracker for success. Where others see only a forest, Musgrave spots clues and signs as he reads the environment like a map.
Similarly the police have relied on the trackers’ mysterious abilities to break up a drug ring, rescue a stranded photographer in the desert, and find a young cowboy who disappeared during a stampede.
Trackers have been around for centuries and when the police realized that it would be interesting to put them to use in tracking escaped and missing persons, Australia was still a British penal colony. But in this age of GPS, 4×4 vehicles and helicopters, are we letting go of something more fundamental – an intuitive knowledge linking man to nature?
Featured in this film will be some of the last great trackers of the outback, including George Musgrave, Teddy Egan Jangala, Tommy George, and Mitjili Gibson. We will bring their most dramatic stories to life by recreating their gripping adventures deep in the unknown corners of the Australian Outback, traversing lush rainforests and wild rivers, magnificent gorges and deep water holes, dry savannahs, and red deserts in search of the soon-to-be lost Aboriginal art of the tracker.
Directors: Eric Elléna & Vanessa Escalante
Producers: French Connection Films
Year: 2007
Length: 52 minutes
Languages: English, French
Partners: France 5, Planète, RTSI, French Film Board (CNC), Procirep, Angoa, France Télévisions Distribution, Australia Tourism, Qantas, Amun Ra Ltd
Broadcasters: France 5, Equidia, Planète (France, Africa, Poland), TV5 Monde, Raiuno (Italy), TSI (Swizerland), Equator HD (Canada), Odisea (Spain), Explora (Canada), Bahrain Télévision, DigitAlb (Albania), TV Leman Bleu (Switzerland)
English
Français