Wanambi - Terror Australis

A screenplay by Chris O'Loughlin

From the dreamtime it roared, brought back by a people desperate to escape the savage grasp of oppression, little knowing that they themselves would fall under the deadly curse of their own revenge.

All over the country they came, answering the call to arms. Regular and volunteer alike, taking up axe, shovel and hose to fight one of the fiercest fires in their nations history. Thrown into the very epicentre of Hell battling nature at its most intense and deadliest. Yet for seven of these brave men and women it wasn't the terrifying fury of fire that was to send fear and terror jolting through their nervous system, for Mother Nature had a very special surprise in store for them.

After becoming engulfed in an intensely dense smokebank the seven firefighters emerge to find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar landscape. With their radio and compasses refusing to work the group decides they cannot wait around in the vein hope of being rescued and head off in search of help, and for almost two days they wander the bush until late the second day, cold, tired and hungry, and with nerves and tempers quickly fraying, they emerge out onto the boundaries of a large homestead where they are shocked and horrified to discover the rotting and mutilated corpses of sixty or so head of prime cattle.

This is Wanambi - a tale of courage, betrayal, hope, horror and terror that pits the ingenuity of modern man against, not only his own weaknesses and prejudices, but the forces of Mother Nature and the primeval cunning of an ancient hunter.

(c)copyright Chris O'Loughlin 2002