From A Town Like Alice to Outback Odyssey: Why Australia’s Great Stories Belong on Screen.
This article originally appeared in Bullet Magazine (UK)
What if the greatest journey of your life had nothing to do with the distance you travelled?
For 17-year-old Jimmy Brown, leaving Yorkshire for Australia in the 1950s was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime. Instead, he found himself on a remote sheep station, confronting racism, prejudice and beliefs he had never thought to question.
It’s a very different journey from those found in Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice and Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds, yet all three stories share something that has long fascinated readers and television audiences: what happens to people when the world they know is turned upside down.
Australia’s landscape has provided the setting for some remarkable fiction. But in Outback Odyssey, Paul Rushworth-Brown uses that landscape to explore something less visible. Jimmy’s struggle is not simply to survive in an unfamiliar country. It is to understand the people around him and, ultimately, himself.
The enduring appeal of A Town Like Alice
The 1950 novel A Town Like Alice by British author Nevil Shute is one of the major postwar stories about life in Australia.
Shute’s blend of romance, hardship, and the main characters’ ability to build a new life for themselves in a foreign land is classic. The Australian setting provides more than a pretty backdrop; it offers an opportunity, and a challenge, to build a new life in an uncertain environment and to find meaning in a strange place.
The novel was also adapted into a very successful TV series in 1981, which further highlighted the effectiveness of Australian historical storytelling on screen for international and Australian audiences alike.
For international audiences, they provide insight into a country that is both welcoming and tough.
For Australian audiences, A Town Like Alice and The Thorn Birds offer insight into the lives of many of the people who were instrumental in the country’s development.
Those questions remain relevant today.
The Thorn Birds and the power of the Australian landscape
Australian historical fiction stories of past decades reached an international audience with a sweeping family saga of love and personal sacrifice set against Australia’s distinctive landscapes: Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds (1977).
Made into a big-budget TV movie in 1983, The Thorn Birds became another globally successful story set against Australia’s unique landscapes.
Drogheda, the fictional station, feels as much like a character as the people in it.
Many of Australia’s most memorable stories explore the complex relationship between Australians and their landscape, especially in Outback stories and historic settings.
Australia’s landscape offers freedom and opportunity but also hardship, prejudice, loneliness, and despair.
These contradictions are very rich material for historical drama.
Outback Odyssey and a different migrant perspective
The historical fiction novel Outback Odyssey by Paul Rushworth-Brown was published by Historium Press in 2025. The story is told from the perspective of 17-year-old Jimmy Brown, from the Yorkshire Dales, who travelled to Australia as a ‘Big Brother’ on the RMS Orion.
The action quickly shifts to Victoria, the 17-year-old becoming familiar with the rigours of a massive sheep station.
The work is gruelling, the environment strange, and the social divides within the community far more apparent than he imagined.
Jimmy’s voyage to Australia is only the beginning of his odyssey. The greater journey takes place within him as he begins to question the attitudes and beliefs he grew up with. Life on the station exposes him to racism, prejudice and a way of understanding the world that is very different from anything he has known.
The relationships Jimmy forms with the station’s Aboriginal stockman, Dhirrari and Aboriginal Elder Jarrah reveal different perspectives on Country and the responsibility to it.
The Australian landscape becomes a character in its own right. Readers encounter the heat, the isolation and the struggle to find water through Jimmy’s experiences. In one memorable scene, Dhirrari shows him how a water-holding frog can provide water in the bush. It’s a small moment, but it reveals how little Jimmy understands about the country and how much he has to learn from those who know it. The land is no longer just somewhere the story takes place. It begins to shape the way Jimmy sees the world.
Central to Jimmy’s struggle for belonging to Australia is his growing awareness of his relationship with the beautiful Amanda, the daughter of a family on the station, whose own circumstances and responsibilities on the station become a constant feature of Jimmy’s life.
Much of the tension comes from Derek Olsen, Amanda’s Dutch uncle, who believes the station should have been left to him. His resentment of Amanda’s authority and his racism towards the Aboriginal workers reveal a darker side of station life. Derek is also a troubled man, increasingly affected by his bitterness, emotional distress and dependence on alcohol. Alongside these conflicts, the mystery of Wiberg’s Gold adds another danger to Jimmy’s new life.
The novel has also received a positive response from readers, with an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars on Goodreads and 4.3 out of 5 on Amazon. It has also reached No. 1 on Goodreads Listopia lists for Australian Historical Fiction and Outback Australian Mystery.
Why these stories still matter
Successive generations of writers have written much Australian historical fiction, and although A Town Like Alice, The Thorn Birds and Outback Odyssey differ in many ways, they also share similarities.
All three novels show people dealing with strange circumstances, relationships developing in isolation, and how a person’s choices are shaped by the society they live in.
There are also important differences.
Shute’s novel was written at the end of the post-war period and captures the hopes and uncertainties of that time. McCullough’s family saga, by contrast, is a study of human desire and the emotional effects of the choices we make as we strive to fulfil our sense of duty.
Rushworth-Brown takes the migrant story further by examining the changes occurring within Jimmy himself. The relationships Jimmy forms with Dhirrari, an Aboriginal stockman, and Jarrah, an Aboriginal Elder, reveal different perspectives on Country and the responsibility to care for it. His encounters with Derek expose him to racism, resentment and prejudice. The contrast between these men becomes part of the novel’s allegory, forcing Jimmy to consider the kind of person he wants to become.
This distinction matters.
Australian historical fiction is interesting not only because it can recreate the past but also because it highlights the experiences of people who would normally be at the margins of the typical historical story.
Contemporary historical fiction can explore familiar historical settings from new perspectives, including experiences of past events that the bulk of literature has largely ignored.
From the page to the screen
The phenomenal success of the screen adaptations of A Town Like Alice and The Thorn Birds has shown that Australian historical fiction can reach a far wider audience than its printed form.
In each case, the landscapes are unique, yet they share common human elements such as love, conflict, and the search for belonging for people who have been displaced in some way.
Outback Odyssey also has cinematic possibilities.
The screenplay follows Jimmy from postwar Yorkshire to a sheep station in rural Victoria, but much of its drama comes from the people he encounters. His growing affection for Amanda, his friendship with Jarrah and Dhirrari, and his confrontations with Derek Olsen all contribute to his changing understanding of the world. Beneath the adventure lies the story of a young man learning to recognise prejudice and challenge what he once accepted without question.
Rushworth-Brown has completed a screenplay adaptation of Outback Odyssey, and discussions are currently underway with producers about the possibility of bringing the story to the screen.
Like any story about migration to Australia, rural Australia, or romance and mystery, the book will have wide appeal to audiences from around the world, across cultures.
Jimmy arrives in Australia knowing next to nothing about Aboriginal culture. Jarrah and Dhirrari challenge much of what he has been taught, often without saying very much at all.
Australia’s stories have not finished being told.
Australian historical dramas, such as A Town Like Alice and The Thorn Birds, were never about scenery.
That is why audiences around the world connect with stories about people’s struggles, searches for identity, and attempts to create life in extremely difficult circumstances.
The themes of difficult choices, the search for identity, and difficult lives in A Town Like Alice and The Thorn Birds still resonate today.
Australian historical fiction, including the many historical novels set in the Outback in recent years, continues to be written, and it is clear there is still much land to cover and many experiences to explore and relate to.
Jean Paget had her own ideas about the life she wanted in Australia. The Cleary family in The Thorn Birds had rather different problems, with love, family loyalties and old grievances constantly getting in the way. Neither story needed a perfect hero or a happy ending to hold an audience’s attention.
Jimmy Brown arrives in Australia expecting hard work and a chance to make something of himself. What he isn’t prepared for is the racism he encounters, the resentment dividing the people on the station, or the influence Jarrah and Dhirrari will have on him. By the time his story unfolds, the question is no longer whether Jimmy can make a life in Australia, but how much his experiences will change him.
Read the Full Article
Published in Bulletin Magazine UK, this feature explores how Outback Odyssey follows in the footsteps of Australian classics A Town Like Alice and The Thorn Birds, bringing stories of migration, identity and belonging to a wider audience.
With a completed screenplay, Outback Odyssey is now being explored for its potential as a screen adaptation.
Read the full feature in Bulletin Magazine:
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