The Sergeant from Burralee

In the 1830s an aboriginal is charged with the spearing of a white settler, but was about to be released by the Captain convinced of his innocence after questioning him. But, during a party that night, a drunken officer shoots and kills the prisoner, and is charged with his murder.

Thomas Morland, the acting Attorney General, is sent from Sydney to Newcastle to investigate.

Captain Alcot wishes to keep on the good side of the land-hungry Carlton so they attempt to defend the drunken lieutenant who has shot a native. Neither believe the prisoner Jacko had anything to do with the murder of a white settler, since he was captured 60 miles away from the crime. So they bribe Sergeant Constantine, who arrested Jacko, into saying that the place of arrest was close to Newcastle.

At a trial in Sydney, the lieutenant is charged with murder by the Acting Attorney-General. False testimony by Constantine brings a verdict of not guilty; but the playwright makes it clear that it is as much a victory as a defeat—"people will have second thoughts" about molesting aborigines after this.

• Alistair Duncan as Thomas Morland, the acting Attorney General
• Deryck Barnes as Sgt Constantine
• Gordon Glenwright as Captain Alcot
• Candy Williams as Jacko
• Stewart Ginn as Nathaniel Carlton
• Fernande Gynn as Constantine's wife
• Hugh Stewart as Robert McDonald
• John Gray as Sgt Lane
• Fernande Glynn as Bessie
• Reg Lye as Joshua Beer
• Keith Buckley as Jack Salisbury
• Noanie Roathsay
• Edward Hepple
• Jon Dennis as Newton
• Douglas Bladen as Sentry
• Lance Bennett as Taylor
• Noanie Rothsey as Martha
• Phillip Ross as Gaoler
• Edward Herple
• Max Meldrum as the lieutenant
• Nigel Lovell
• Moray Powell

The play was based on a real life trial in the 1830s when a soldier was charged with the murder of an aboriginal.

It was written by Philip Grenville Mann, an Australian writer who was living in England. He got the idea for the play after reading historical records at Australia House in London. He wrote it originally under the title The Sergeant from Lone Pine.[8]

The play won equal first prize in the 1959 New South Wales Journalists' Club Award out of 250 entries.[9] (The other winner was J.V. Warner's World Without End.) President of the Journalists' Club was Kenneth Slessor and the judges, representing each of the three Sydney television stations, were Brett Porter (ATN-7), Raymond Menmuir (ABN-2) and Peter Benardos (TCN-9).[10][11]

Mann returned to Australia in 1961 after six years in England and replaced Rex Rienits as the ABC's drama editor. He would later write the historical ABC drama series The Patriots.[8]

It was shot live at the ABC's studios in Sydney. Alistair Duncan was an English actor who had recently settled in Australia and had played Captain Bligh's secretary in Stormy Petrel. Sets and costumes were by Geoff Wedlock.[12]

The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that "it is an admirable play, dealing searchingly with the impulses, compulsions and motives of a gallery of characters...The production... was quite gripping; the play itself, most notably in the courtroom scenes, showed how telling a medium TV can be... this play was one of the best the A.B.C. has done."[13]

Val Marshall from the Sunday edition of the Herald said it "let me with that rather unsatisfactory feeling of a good piece of material well handled, but which could have been a great deal better than it was" saying that "it got first rate treatment from Raymond Menmuir" but felt 90 minutes was too long and Duncan was miscast."[14]

In May 1960 the BBC announced they would film the play, then known as The Sergeant of Lone Pine.[15] The play was filmed by the BBC in 1961 as The Attorney General It was directed by Harold Clayton.[16]

It was also adapted for radio.[17]

• List of television plays broadcast on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1960s)

• The Sergeant from Burralee at AustLit
• The Sergeant from Burralee at National Film and Sound Archive