Meat pie Western

The term "kangaroo Western" is used in an article about The Man from Snowy River (1982) in that year,[1] and Stuart Cunningham refers to Charles Chauvel’s Greenhide (1926) as a “kangaroo Western” in 1989.[2][3]

Grayson Cooke attributes the first use of the term "meat-pie Western" to Eric Reade in his History and Heartburn (1979),[4] referring to Russell Hagg's Raw Deal (1977).[2] This term is again used in 1981 in an Australian Women's Weekly column by John-Michael Howson (about a film planned to be made in Australia by James Komack, but apparently never made). Howson compares the term to the "Spaghetti Western".[5] Historian Troy Lennon (2018) says that meat pie Westerns have been around for more than a century.[6]

Cooke (2014) posits that the Australian Western genre never developed a "classic" or mature phase. He lists the following as broad categories: "the early bushranger and bush adventure films; Westerns shot in Australia by foreign production studios; contemporary re-makes of bushranger films; and contemporary revisionist Westerns, noting that most fall into the bushranger category (with only The Tracker and The Proposition falling into the latter category at that time). Other recent films, such as Ivan Sen's Mystery Road (2013), a crime film, also uses some of the Western themes.[2]

Emma Hamilton, of the University of Newcastle, refers to the Australian Western, kangaroo Western and meat-pie Western as alternative terms, in her exploration of the development of the Western genre in Australia comparing film representations of Ned Kelly. She refers to the work of Cooke and other writers, paraphrasing Peter Limbrick's view that the Western is basically "about societies making sense of imperial-colonial relationships", and considers the parallels between American and Australian histories. Hamilton lists a number of films which can be termed Australian Westerns by virtue of being set in Australia but maintaining elements of American Western conventions. The list includes, amongst many others, Robbery Under Arms (1920), Captain Fury (1939), Eureka Stockade (1949) and The Shiralee (1957).[7]

The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) could be said to be the first in the genre (and possibly the world's first feature film[7]), with "good guys, bad guys, gunfights [and] horseback chases". In 1911 and 1912, the state governments of South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria all banned depictions of bushrangers in films, which lasted for about 30 years and at first had a significantly deleterious effect on the Australian film industry.[2][6][7]

Films in the Western genre continued to be made through the rest of the 20th century, many with Hollywood collaboration (such as Rangle River based on a Zane Grey novel in 1936), and some British (such as the Ealing Studios' The Overlanders in 1946).[6] Ned Kelly (1970) and The Man from Snowy River (1982) were the most notable examples of the genre in the second half of the century.[6][7]

Some films in the genre, such as Red Hill, The Proposition, and Sweet Country, re-examine the underbelly of colonisation and expose racism in early Australian history,[8][9] with the latter two of these being successful with both critics and box-office.[6]