The Shiralee: D'Arcy Niland's 1955 Australian western

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Shiralee is a 1955 novel by D'Arcy Niland, telling the story of a wandering swagman on a journey through the Australian outback, accompanied by his 10-year-old daughter. It was made into a 1957 film by Ealing Studios, starring Peter Finch, and now it is being brought to the stage of the Sydney Opera House by the Sydney Theatre Company. Mark Burman talks to the show's cast and crew, including playwright Kate Mulvany, about this Australian classic's journey to the stage. This episode contains a reference to suicide. If you are suffering distress or despair and need support, you could speak to a health professional, or an organisation that offers support. Details of help available in many countries can be found at Befrienders Worldwide: befrienders.org.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:05.6	I'm Mark Burtman, and for the documentary from the BBC World Service,
0:09.8	we're travelling deep into the outback and the first ever staging of a classic Australian novel.
0:15.0	The Shiralee by Darcy Nileand.
0:17.0	Act 1, Scene 1, New South Wales, 1995, a vast expanse of plains, dust and spin effects.
0:25.1	From the distance appears a man alone. He gets closer and closer as he walks along a seemingly
0:31.6	endless dirt road. He is McCauley, a man of 35, built like a sanitaph.
0:41.7	He had ridges on his forehead like a row of sleepers, a brassy look, and a wide hat that put evening on his face while the rest of him was in sunshine.
0:46.9	His hands were huge.
0:48.6	Taking the Shiralee from page to stage is the multi-talented writer and actor Kate Mulvaney.
0:54.7	She's been documenting her creative process for In the Studio.
0:58.6	I'm at about draft four and I've been working on it for about 18 months.
1:04.1	The really annoying thing about the book is it's a chapterless book.
1:09.2	To turn that into a play is actually really tricky. It's not
1:12.5	like he can go, and seen, because there are none. It's just this continuous on the road.
1:18.1	Author Darcy Nileand took the rough-hewn lives of Australia's itinerant Swagman or Swaggies,
1:24.0	who tramped the baking vastness of the outback from Dimbula to Dubbo to shear,
1:28.9	slaughter, drink and fight, and he wove a darkly moving road story of McCauley, a swaggy
1:35.4	full of rage and bitterness, bound for everywhere and nowhere, and alongside him, dragged,
1:41.9	cajoled and resented, is his Shiralee, his burden.
1:45.7	Four-year-old daughter Buster, whisked away from a slum home in Sydney's King's Cross
1:50.2	to spite his wife Marge.
	...

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