[1] An itinerant rural worker named Macauley – sometimes described as a "swagman" or "swaggie" – returns to Sydney from "walkabout" and finds his wife Lily living with another man.

"[6] Britain's Ealing Studios had enjoyed a huge critical and commercial success with the film The Overlanders (1946) which was shot in Australia.

However the success of Rank's film version of A Town Like Alice showed there was still a strong potential market for movies set in Australia.

[13] Finch arrived in July and an extensive talent search was conducted to find the actress to play Buster.

A young Bruce Beresford, then a student at Kings School, followed the unit with a friend, Adrian Thirlwood, making their own version of The Shiralee.

Child stars were not encouraged in British cinema so Dana Wilson's presence was downplayed by the studio during the English leg of production.

[1] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: The success of The Shiralee is due largely to the clear, sharp light it throws both on the Australian scene and its two principal characters.

Paul Beeson's finely photographed exteriors reveal a rough, bare landscape and the quick tensions of the people are depicted in a similarly unromanticised manner.

Thanks to sympathetic direction and the lively, uninhibited playing of Peter Finch as the swagman and Dana Wilson as his Shiralee (an Aborigine expression meaning 'burden'), the contrast between Macauley's proud and fiercely independent spirit and the child's simple devotion (which crystallizes into an unspoken understanding and love) is touchingly observed.

Unfortunately, few of the subsidiary characters emerge with equal force or clarity; the playing includes some broad, but not unlikeable, comedy from Tessie O'Shea and Sidney James and there are two rather tensely contrived performances by Elizabeth Sellars and Rosemary Harris.

The episodic nature of the story is also most noticeable during the second half, the encounter with the homespun Plillosopher and the quarrels over the divorce lacking the spontaneity and drive of the earlier scenes.