"When I started working on Wake in Fright, I was often asked how I could make a film about a people, a country, a culture I knew nothing about and was experiencing for the first time. Rightly or wrongly, I would say, "Well, that’s easy, I'm Canadian and Canada has the same British colonial background as Australia." There is the same lack of self-confidence, which, in Canada's case, it's to the extent of a rampant inferiority complex. Australia has a different kind of energy but, more important, is that the countries are geographically the same. They have the same vast empty spaces, which don't liberate, they imprison. And I also understood the men of the outback – their camaraderie, their support of each other and their generosity – because I had met the same type of men in the north of Canada. I've actually described Canada to some people as Australia on the rocks!"