[4] The story of a Scottish settler and his wife, Donald and Mary Cameron, who live in the Gippsland bush, with their son David.

[11] The critic for the Sydney Morning Herald wrote that: Raymond Longford's latest Australian production... is a distinct advance on his last picture, "The Bushwhackers".

In fact, from the state of having practically no story at all, Mr. Longford has run to the other extreme and tried to bring in too much story, so that after one has been looking at the picture for nearly two hours new issues are still coming in, which would need still another half hour for their adequate solution... Mr. Longford himself seems to have realised that his spectators' patience must be at an end here; for he has suddenly brought the play to a close and left all sorts of important things unexplained...

If only The Pioneers could be wound up about half-way or two-thirds of the way through, so as to obviate all this trite melodrama, which has been put in obviously as a sap to the populace, it would stand as a landmark In the history of Australian motion pictures.

The producer has endeavored to cram too much into the story with the result that one skips the passing of years with a rapidity that baffles... At the end one is left in doubt as to the meaning of it all... picture does not come up to the standard of previous local productions.