First Contact (1983 film)

First Contact is a 1983 Australian documentary film by Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson which recounts the incursion of gold-prospecting Australians into the unexplored interior highlands of New Guinea in 1930, then inhabited by a prosperous native population numbering in the region of one million.

Inhabitants of the region and surviving members of the Leahy brothers' gold prospecting party recount their astonishment at this unforeseen meeting.

The film includes both moving and still pictures taken by Michael Leahy, leader of the party, and contemporary footage of the island's terrain.

These two films document Joe Leahy's life as owner and manager of two coffee plantations on land acquired in controversial circumstances from the Ganiga tribe.

In Cinema Papers, Barbara Alysen called First Contact "an entertaining film about a series of historic meetings - selective, as most accounts are, that is as much drama as conventional documentary".