22 Films & TV Shows Set In Australia During The 1970s
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The Dirt
California Washington New South Wales The 1980s The 1990s The 1970s The 1960sTheir Music Made Them Famous, Their Lives Made Them Infamous — The story of Mötley Crüe and their rise from the Sunset Strip club scene of the early 1980s to superstardom.
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Swinging Safari
🇦🇺 Australia The 1970sStaying alive was harder than you think. — 1975: A 200-ton blue whale gets washed up on a local beach and the kids think it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened in Australia. Behind closed doors, the Mums and Dads of a quiet suburban street are going to celebrate in their own special way, by joining the sexual revolution and throwing a wife-swapping key party. And like the rotting whale, it’s all about to go spectacularly wrong.
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Breath
Western Australia The 1970sA pair of teenagers in Western Australia looking to escape the monotony of life in a small town take up surfing lessons from a guy named Sando.
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Holding the Man
Victoria The 1970s The 1980s The 1990sA love story for everyone — Tim and John fell in love while teenagers at their all-boys high school. John was captain of the rugby team, Tim an aspiring actor playing a minor part in Romeo and Juliet. Their romance endured for 15 years in the face of everything life threw at it - the separations, the discrimination, the temptations, the jealousies and the losses - until the only problem that love can't solve tried to destroy them.
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Girl Asleep
🇦🇺 Australia The 1970sFifteen is going to turn a corner. It has to. — The world is closing in on Greta Driscoll. On the cusp of turning fifteen she can't bear to leave her childhood, it contains all the things that give her comfort in this incomprehensible new world. She floats in a bubble of loserdom with her only friend Elliott, until her parents throw her a surprise 15th birthday party and she's flung into a parallel place; a world that's weirdly erotic, a little bit violent and thoroughly ludicrous - only there can she find herself.
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Drift
Western Australia The 1970sTwo Brothers. One Dream. No Rules. — In the 70s two brothers battle killer waves, conservative society and ruthless bikers to kick-start the modern surf industry.
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Tracks
🇦🇺 Australia The 1970sLeave everything behind. — Accompanied only by her faithful dog and four camels, an Australian satisfies her craving for solitude by embarking on a solo trip across the desert from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean.
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Mabo
Queensland The 1970s The 1980s The 1990s The 1960s The 1950sThe true story of one man's epic fight to change a nation. — Mabo tells the story of one of Australia's national heroes - Eddie Koiki Mabo, the Torres Strait Islander who left school at age 15, yet spearheaded the High Court challenge that overthrew the fiction of terra nullius.
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Red Dog
Western Australia The 1970sHe's Been Everywhere Mate. — The legendary true story of the Red Dog who united a disparate local community while roaming the Australian outback in search of his long lost master.
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The Eye of the Storm
New South Wales The 1970sIn a Sydney suburb, two nurses, Maria and Flora, a housekeeper, Lotte, and a solicitor, Arnold, attend to Elizabeth Hunter as her expatriate son Sir Basil, a famous but struggling actor in London, and daughter Dorothy, a divorced and down at heel princess, convene at her deathbed. They come to make sure they can leave Australia with their hefty inheritance.
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Mary and Max
New York Victoria The 1970s The 1980s The 1990sSometimes perfect strangers make the best friends. — A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York. In the mid-1970s, a homely, friendless Australian girl of 8 picks a name out of a Manhattan phone book and writes to him; she includes a chocolate bar. He writes back, with chocolate. Thus begins a 20-year correspondence. Will the two ever meet face to face?
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Balibo
🇹🇱 Timor-Leste Northern Territory The 1970sOne Man Searches For The Truth. One Man Fights For Justice. — As Indonesia prepares to invade the tiny nation of East Timor, five Australian based journalists go missing. Four weeks later, veteran foreign correspondent Roger East is lured to East Timor by the young and charismatic José Ramos-Horta to tell the story of his country and investigate the fate of the missing men. As East's determination to uncover the truth grows, the threat of invasion intensifie
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Frost/Nixon
California District of Columbia New South Wales The 1970s The 1960s The 1930s The 1920s400 million people were waiting for the truth. — For three years after being forced from office, Nixon remained silent. But in summer 1977, the steely, cunning former commander-in-chief agreed to sit for one all-inclusive interview to confront the questions of his time in office and the Watergate scandal that ended his presidency. Nixon surprised everyone in selecting Frost as his televised confessor, intending to easily outfox the breezy British showman and secure a place in the hearts and minds of Americans. Likewise, Frost's team harboured doubts about their boss's ability to hold his own. But as the cameras rolled, a charged battle of wits resulted.
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Travelling Light
South Australia The 1970sSometimes the only way to find yourself, is to get a little lost — Set in the early 70s, Travelling Light follows the story of two sisters growing up in surburban Adelaide.
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Shine
England Western Australia The 1970s The 1980s The 1960s The 1950sA true story of the mystery of music and the miracle of love — Pianist David Helfgott, driven by his father and teachers, has a breakdown. Years later he returns to the piano, to popular if not critical acclaim.
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Dogs in Space
Victoria The 1970sThe place is Melbourne, Australia 1978. The punk phenomenon is sweeping the country and Dogs In Space, a punk group, are part of it. In a squat, in a dodgy suburb, live a ragtag collection of outcasts and don't-wanna-be's who survive on a diet of old TV space films, drugs and good music. And the satellite SKYLAB could crash through their roof at any moment...
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The Dismissal
Australian Capital Territory The 1970sThe drama surrounding the dismissal of Mr. Gough Whitlam as the Labor Prime Minister of Australia - on 11 November, 1975 - by the then Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr - and the subsequent installation, in Parliament, of the Liberal 'caretaker government' and Mr. Malcolm Fraser as the 'caretaker' Prime Minister.
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Puberty Blues
New South Wales The 1970sThe coolest things to do are the things they say we can't do. — The mating rituals of two teenage surf chicks from the southern suburbs of Sydney. Meet Sue, an Australian teenager in the late 70s, whose life mainly consists of doing what all the other girls do: watch the surfing boys and have sex with the same surfing boys. The girls have to follow lots of strange customs, e.g. do not eat or go to the bathroom when a boy is around. Ugly girls have two choices - being bitches and hate boys, or being generally cheap and looked down upon by everyone. The afternoons are spent on the beaches, in the backseats of cars or at home-alone parties where sex and alcohol are the main ingredients. Parents and teachers are trying to straighten the kids out, but that is not easy.
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Dawn!
🇦🇺 Australia The 1950s The 1960s The 1970sThe movie reveals what the headlines concealed. — Dawn! is a 1979 Australian sports biopic about the three-time Olympic gold medallist swimmer Dawn Fraser.
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The FJ Holden
New South Wales The 1970sSuburban Australia in the late 70s. It was the era of the drive-in movie, the Chico Roll girl and the beloved FJ Holden. Boasting drunken fist fights, back seat sex, illegal drag racing, a classic Oz rock soundtrack (featuring Ol'55, Skyhooks and Renee Geyer) and the screen debut of future star Sigrid Thornton. THE FJ HOLDEN forged a strong connection with 70s mainstream youth audiences and today
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Betty Blokk-buster Follies
🇦🇺 Australia The 1970sA film record of Reg Livermore's successful one-man stage show, featuring characters and sketches centred around Betty Blokk-Buster, a bare-bummed German maid who entertained the troops during the war. In April 1975 Reg Livermore stormed the stage of Sydney's Balmain Bijou Theatre with his groundbreaking show Betty Blokk Buster Follies. A tour de force, an irresistible blend of music and comedy, the show caught the imagination of audiences all round Australia filling theatres wherever it played. This record of the show was released in cinemas during 1976. Songs include Family Of Man, Hello In There, Captain Jack, What Makes A Man A Man, The Entertainer and Celluloid Heroes, with well known characters, Betty Blokk Buster, Tara the Incredible, The Old Man and Vaseline Amylnitrite - a football star who joins the Australia Ballet.
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A Girl in Australia
Queensland New South Wales The 1960s The 1970sThe film is about an old fashioned Italian with moral values of the 1930/40's ,who has to find a wife in the modern, woman's liberated society of Australia of the 1960/70's.
