Australian Western

*The Story of the Kelly Gang* (1906), world's first full-length narrative feature film.

Australian Western, also known as meat pie Western or kangaroo Western, is a genre of Western-style films or TV series set in the Australian outback or "the bush". Films about bushrangers (sometimes called bushranger films) are included in this genre. Some films categorised as meat-pie or Australian Westerns also fulfil the criteria for other genres, such as drama, revisionist Western, crime or thriller. A sub-genre of the Australian Western, the Northern, has been coined by the makers of High Ground (2020), to describe a film set in the Northern Territory that accurately depicts historical events in a fictionalised form, that has aspects of a thriller.

The term "meat pie Western" is a play on the term Spaghetti Western, used for Italian-made Westerns. Since Westerns are a genre associated with the United States, the food qualifiers indicate the origin of other cultures that play with the characteristics of the genre. Historically some Australian Westerns were made specifically with the influence of US Westerns in mind. The Ealing Westerns, made in Australia, are particular examples of this, though they depict Australian history.

One connection has been the parallel between the two native people, and their treatment by settlers and the white colonial people. In the case of Australia, Aboriginal Australians, and in the US, the Native Americans.^[1] Cattle ranches and vast tracts of land are both similar themes, being borrowed from US Westerns and used in Australia, in particular the movie The Overlanders (1946).^[2]

^ Starrs, Db. (2007). Two Westerns That Weren't?: "The Tracker" and "The Proposition." Metro, (153), 166–172. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.803136366889698 (Original work published January 2007) p 153
^ The Sundowner Mayer, G. (2005). The Phantom Stockman: Lee Robinson, Chips Rafferty and the Film Industry that Nobody Wanted. Metro, (142), 16–20. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.954348614840126 (Original work published January 2005) p 18

[1] Starrs, Db. (2007). Two Westerns That Weren't?: "The Tracker" and "The Proposition." Metro, (153), 166–172. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.803136366889698 (Original work published January 2007) p 153

[2] The Sundowner Mayer, G. (2005). The Phantom Stockman: Lee Robinson, Chips Rafferty and the Film Industry that Nobody Wanted. Metro, (142), 16–20. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/ielapa.954348614840126 (Original work published January 2005) p 18

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