s activity, exploiting its domination of the market whilst it still could. Twentieth Century Fox soon sent crews around the world to make outdoor pictures, primarily adventure stories and westerns, in Technicolor. It was not long before Australia was in its sights with the company beginning development on The Bushranger (a working title for Kangaroo) in early 1949.
In Australia, the Commonwealth Film Laboratories and Cinesound both planned to move into processing colour features. Solarchrome, still used for documentaries, would be available for features. Whilst Technicolor used three negatives, Solarchrome only used two with orange and blue added at the processing stage, the Adelaide News explained to readers. This gave the effect of additional hues including yellows and greens. The result was “a subdued and quite pleasant colour effect”. A Smith’s Weekly reviewer wrote that “the Solarchrome colours were comparable to those in American films.”  Whilst Arthur Higgins continued to explore the possibilities of Solarchrome, Eric Porter used the system for the live-action The Joy of Living (1948) which advertised the tonic Milo. In the Solarchrome films I have viewed, warm tones – lemon, gold, orange, russet and maroon – are especially prominent. As if Australians of that era lived in an endless late summer.
The race was now on to make Australia’s first feature-length film in ‘natural colour’. Early 1950 Twentieth Century Fox announced that its upcoming feature film Bushranger would be in colour.  While the film was initially to be shot in northern New South Wales or Queensland, weather conditions soon became a concern due to heavy rainfalls and flooding on the east coast. Enter South Australia. The feature Bitter Springs (1950) had been shot in the Lower Flinders Ranges the previous year with considerable assistance from the South Australian Government. To out-bid Queensland and secure the production, South Australia offered ever more ‘carrots’ and concessions.
Meanwhile Charles Chauvel and his wife and filmmaking collaborator Elsa Chauvel, announced they were moving their cameras and writing pads to the outback. America had more than its fair share of stars. But for Australians, the landscape deserved star billing. Inspired by a year-long trek across the country supported by the Federal Government, the duo would make Australia’s first all-colour, all-Australian feature in the country between Alice Springs and Darwin.  The project was tagged The Northern Territory Story and the Chauvels initially looked to the U.S. for financial backing and colour processing. In something of a David and Goliath story, the Chauvels’ Northern Territory Story and Fox’s Australia Story (another working title for Kangaroo) slugged it out for the title of ‘Australia’s first natural colour feature’. The odds though, were stacked against the Chauvels in comparison to their Hollywood studio rivals.
Leveraging profits from exhibiting pictures in Australia during the war, Twentieth Century Fox ultimately secured generous support from both the Australian Commonwealth and South Australia Governments and relocated its production to Port Augusta and the Lower Flinders Ranges. The cash and concessions helped the Hollywood studio beat its local rivals to the finishing line for the first colour feature film made in Australia. (The project was also known as The Australian Story, The Sundowners, The Bushranger and The Land Down Under before Fox settled on Kangaroo.) A stagecoach western, penned in Hollywood and transposed to Australia, Kangaroo was set around 1900, during one of the worst droughts the country had experienced since European settlement. In the script, the rain-making ceremony staged by Aboriginal performers would break the drought. But in the storyline of post-war Australia, Kangaroo would break the nation’s feature filmmaking drought.
Announcing the deal in Parliament, South Australian Premier Tom Playford said that the first full-scale Technicolor film ever produced in the country would “convey to the world an idea of the scenery to be found in