Forty years on from its premiere at Adelaide’s Fair Lady Theatre on the 18th of November, 1976, Storm Boy remains an important piece of Australian film culture. Storm Boy’s release was heralded by a handful of awards, largely from Australian institutions – most notably the Best Film gong at the 1977 AFI Awards (Safran, Dalaithngu and screenwriter Sonia Borg also nabbed AFI nominations). But the idyllic rhythms of lagoon life are challenged by the encroachments of the real world, and all that implies for Storm Boy’s unconventional childhood. Storm Boy forges a friendship with Fingerbone and one of the pelicans, named Mr Percival. ‘Storm Boy’ is thus named by Fingerbone Bill (David Dalaithngu), with whom he rescues a trio of pelican chicks, abandoned after their mother’s death. It takes place in a remote South Australian lagoon system and national park called the Coorong. The film stars prepubescent Greg Rowe as the titular ‘Storm Boy’, better known as Mike to his dad Tom Kingsley (Peter Cummins), whose own nickname, ‘Hide-Away Tom’, effectively summarises his hermitic tendencies. (The G-rating and supplementary education kits can’t have hurt, either.)
Its message of environmental conservatism and social acceptance has ensured that generations of kids have been treated to fuzzy VHS transfers of the film. Henri Safran’s adaptation of Colin Thiele’s 1964 novel established its reputation with a then-impressive haul of $2.6 million at the local box office, since maintaining a cultural foothold thanks in large part to its ubiquity in primary school classrooms.
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