I seem much more attuned to structures and spaces. People think that the outback, the bush, is never changing. But it is. It constantly changes as you drive through it. It's the urban landscape that never really changes, just replicates itself as it expands with one similar structure after another.

Suburban streets at night are the best: empty, they reveal life through sound the sound of motion life, in the shadows, behind fences and closed doors, in the slow cruise of a motor making its way home. Like the sounds out there. You can't see the life, but you know it's there. Every kilometre you travel you know that you're passing through wide flat plains teaming with life. Sometimes you see evidence: wedge tail eagles and crows feasting on roo road-kill; wild goats, in herd, trotting away into the bush; a lone wild horse somewhere on a track. Beyond the wildlife you know that there are people out there as well because you see the gates to vast properties. There's no sign of a house, just a gate and fencing, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. On the road from Menindee to Wilcannia, a dusty red track running beside the lakes, some of the gates are adorned with brightly coloured tin sculptures of sheep and other strange, comical structures; undoubtedly the physical manifestations of the sense of humour needed to survive out there.

On long hauls the best thing to do is stop on a straight stretch of road, step out of the car and just listen: to the silence, to the sound of nothing, teaming over the vast space. If there's a breeze up, it howls through your ears. You can turn slowly and change the howl to a whisper, but it is the only sound you hear, save for the occasional caw of a big black crow. It is the most wonderful sound in the world, the sound of the desert in the wind. Close your eyes and it's a little like the ocean. I grew up on the beach, live on the beach, surf all the time, but out there, with the wind, it's a deep red ocean, as vast as the lost horizon of any coast. Here you can't dive in but you are totally immersed, embraced in the land the way the oceans swallow you up.

When you travel through the ever changing landscapes of this country you begin to understand, or sense, the connections of artists and filmmakers. How inspiring these vast tracts of red gum forests, or desert brush, or monumental rising and ancient ranges, or languid flowing rivers and their banks, must have been to those European eyes who first captured them so perfectly. The Heidelberg School first laid on canvas those landscapes that would later launch our cinematographers onto the world stage: Australia's own version of pastoral mythology, steeped in the fantasy of Hanging Rock, the impotent masculine rage of the shearer's lament in Sunday Too Far Away, the powerful and as yet unresolved conflict of Jimmie Blacksmith, the post-apocalypse of Mad Max.

We still can see ourselves though a European sensibility, with a European eye, but when you spend time in towns with the cultural heritage of Aboriginal populations, Chinese, Greeks, Italians and Anglos, cheek to jowl, and ride the lore of each place, you realise that the lives upon which our myths are built have shifted perceptibly. In the cities we define it as multiculturalism, a pluralistic utopian vision of harmony. In the bush it is the harshness of the land, the devastation of drought and tyranny of distance that forges a connection within these small communities, one often lacking in the protected, manufactured, environment of the metropolis. In a country town you have to become a 'citizen' of that very small world; usually a town ringed by a vast and physically isolating environment. In the hot pot that by necessity melts all the groups together, the stories of who we are begin to rise. And they are not stories driven, as they first were, by a fear and awe of the landscape, by a wild west ethos, but by those who survive and prosper in the quietest, most ordinary, of ways.

Love Serenade, Mullet, Peaches, A Man's Gotta Do, Somersault, The Oyster Farmer, Beneath Clouds, Australian Rules: all reclaim the bush, the ranges, the rivers, the oceans, small country towns, for contemporary cinema. But they reclaim these places first as locations. They un-clutter the landscapes of drama to distil their universal stories of conflict, retribution, love, escape. What of the Greek communists and partisans who fled to Coober Pedy and stayed, living in very remote isolation, and the Indigenous communities who live there with them? What of the unemployed kids of Sale? And the Indigenous communities of Wilcannia? What of Port Augusta, and Baxter? There are new stories, new universalities, being born out of these places and these people.

These are the things I have a strong sense of, the truths of the road that instil the desire for a new way of seeing and telling. A view of the world uncluttered by an urban sensibility, a European view of landscape, an anthropological understanding of the architecture of life, the narrow reading and creation of mythology.

I can see how some would find life on the road depressing and lonely, but I don't. I think of myself sometimes as a travelling salesman, but a lucky one. I have a 'boot' full of movies and just about everybody usually wants to at least sample my wares. Everyone I meet is dedicated to the towns they live in, and desperate to see Australian films and share that with their towns. Towns like Broken Hill and Coober Pedy are great fun to be in with films. Because so many films have been shot around those two places, just about everyone in town has a memory of a crew being there, or they worked on a film, or know someone who worked on a film. Australian film is part of the folklore of places like this, so standing round the bar at the end of the day you usually end up having a pretty slurry natter with some ol' chook who did this or that on Mad Max, Priscilla or Red Planet with a strong opinion on this or that star.

It is also interesting to share the memories of Australian films in these places. Most of the people I meet have a memory of seeing great Australian films on the Big Screen and they want to see them again, and they want their kids and grandkids to see them. They know that their children can have no memory of Australian cinema because they don't see it.

Big Screen is probably the most travelled film festival in the world. I mean think about it: the largest island, the smallest continent, with the world's most remote capital city (Perth) and a NATIONAL touring film festival!

Peter Castaldi
p.castaldi@afc.gov.au