NULLARBOR NYMPH HOMEPAGE
JIM ROBERTS HOMEPAGE
BACKGROUND

 

 

DRAFT SCRIPT FOR DOCUMENTARY

TELEVISION NEWS REPORT

Fade in a black and white television news report A newsreader presents the latest bulletin.

NEWSREADER

There have been unconfirmed reports today that roo-shooters from the isolated town of Eucla on the Nullarbor Plain have spotted a young, half-naked, white woman living in the bush with a mob of kangaroos.

Grainy amateur film footage shows a wild woman dressed in roo skins hanging onto a roo by the tail. She gets startled and runs off.

No one knows for who she is, or how she came to be living with the roos. This Nullarbor Nymph remains a mystery.

 

EUCLA

Cut to black and white footage of the isolated town of Eucla on the Western Australian border. The Amber Motor Hotel, roadhouse and a few houses constitute the lonely outpost. A couple of interstate trucks roar by on the highway. The heavy silence returns in their wake.

A lizard skitters across the bitumen.

In a dark corner of his small hotel room, Pearce types away on with two fingers on his Olympia typewriter. A ribbon of smoke curls up from the ashtray.

Outside, a lone crow cries in the heat.

At the roadhouse, Geneice bends over a hot engine. She squints up at the sun when a bird's quick shadow skates over the car.

Beneath the car, a long snake slithers away .

Steve slowly polishes glasses in the Amber Hotel, waiting for customers in the empty bar.

In the heat-crazed distance, a feral camel looks up, suddenly wary.

Laurie cleans his rifle in his small caravan.

A roo bolts explosively through the mulga.

Jonas projects some Super 8 films in his blacked out kitchen. The images are grainy, amateur home movies of Nullarbor people like Ron Sells on a roo shoot. They hold up rifles, bunches of dead rabbits and roos.

They shoot their rifles. The gun shots echo and reverberate, slowly decaying...

Dissolve to:

 

TITLE

...the grainy image of the nymph from the Super 8 footage. We go closer and closer, seeking to discover more details -- but the image just gets grainier and more obscure the closer we get.

Weird harmonic cello music evokes a mysterious unknown...

Super title: The Nullarbor Nymph

 

EUCLA

In modern colour, outside the roadhouse, Dora streaks half-naked across the Nullarbor Highway. Beside her are three yellow traffic signs warning motorists of crossing kangaroos, camels, and wombats. She has painted a fourth sign showing a running nymph.

The camera sees a flash of light in the background. It pans off Dora and zooms towards the flash. In the mulga, hidden by the bushes, Jonas is filming with his Super 8 camera.

Geneice watches from inside the roadhouse. She lets the curtains slide back across.

Steve is on the verandah of the hotel. He drops his head back down to pretend he is reading a tattered paperback Western.

 

AMBER HOTEL

At the Amber bar, Pearce reads aloud a telex announcing the sighting by shooters of a wild woman living with roos.

Sells smiles.

 

LIGHT PLANE

High above the Nullarbor, a light plane drones through the deep blue.

Jonas looks up quickly with his camera, catching a glimpse of the plane on Super 8.

In his kitchen Jonas winds the image back and forth through a viewer, looking at it speeded up and slowed down.

Two journos are talking as they fly along. They are Murray Nichol and Kevin Childs

JOURNOS

[They discuss their expectations of finding the Nullarbor Nymph.]

A cutaway shows the vast plain unfolding below them, wild and untamed.

Dissolve to...

 

ART STUDIO

...a tracking shot of a floor, painted in dots, as the camera cranes up to reveal a full-size, white, classically-styled nude sculpture of Dora.

 

AMBER HOTEL

Geneice opens the bottom drawer of her cupboard and removes some clothes. At the very bottom is something wrapped in muslin. She lifts it out carefully.

Footsteps outside the door panic her into quickly putting it back into the drawer.

 

AMBER HOTEL

Night.

Laurie wakes up with a start, hearing a strange harmonic sound. The thin curtains blow in through the open window on a cool desert breeze, revealing a full moon. Laurie clears his head and looks for Geneice.

Her side of the bed is empty. Her nightie is folded neatly at the foot of the bed.

 

NEWSPAPER MONTAGE

A montage, complete with spinning newspapers, shows the flurry of articles about the Nullarbor Nymph.

 

AMBER HOTEL

The hoaxers are drinking at the bar.

HOAXERS

[They read various tabloid articles that claim the Nymph was a missing British tourist, a runaway daughter, an alien left by UFOs, an artist living in an abandoned car, and a descendant of survivors of a 1600's Portuguese shipwreck. Who knows -- she could've been anything?]

 

NYMPH FOOTAGE

Cut to the frozen Super 8 image of the nymph holding onto a kangaroo's tail. It moves in single frame advances. She struggles to hold the roo...

Match dissolve to...

 

ART STUDIO

....a deeply etched, visceral, full-sized sculpture of the same moment -- the nymph holding onto the roo's tail. The raw flesh-coloured fibreglass is strong, raw, bloody, earthy, and wild.

Dora stands back and looks at it.

 

EUCLA

Stowing guns, ropes, and nets, the hoaxers drive battered vehicles into the bush. Shooting roos is one thing, catching them alive another. They do the tough work necessary to chase down, round up, and catch several big red kangaroos. It's a chaotic, hectic, noisy, dangerous drive, captured with all its energy.

 

NIGHT CAMP

That night around the campfire, everyone chews roo meat off bones, and the remains of a carcass hangs on a spit over the fire.

Against the full moon, a silohouette of a nymph appears, warily watching the men at the camp. Then she darts away, accompanied by a weird harmonic sound....

 

AMBER HOTEL

Back in the hotel at the bar, Laurie talks to the other hoaxers as he downs a schooner of beer.

LAURIE

[He asked a local waitress, now his wife, Geneice,to get her gear off and slip on the roo skins. He had just skinned the roos, and the skins were warm and sticky.]

 

AMBER HOTEL

Geneice carefully opens the parcel of muslin from her botttom drawer. Inside it is a roo skin.

 

EUCLA

Back in the bush, Patupis, Scott and Sells manhandle hessian bags out of the vehicles. Inside them roos kick and thrash.

A few mates help them hide behind some scrub, and they wait for a signal.

Geneice, dressed in skins, grabs hold of a roo's tail, still in the bag. Laurie eases the hessian off the roo, ensures she is okay, and then steps away.

Hermann Jonas, takes a couple of quick shots with a stills camera.

JONAS

[He claims he shot the original ones soft to give the impression of hunters on the run].

Then he grabs a Super-8 camera and shouts, "Action!"

 

ART STUDIO

In extreme close up, fingers place a tiny clay model -- the nymph hanging onto the roo's tail -- into the middle of a tiny set of the mulga grove.. Dora peers at the other tiny figures she has made -- the other hoaxers standing in position.. Quick cuts to each of them accelerates to...

 

EUCLA

All the guys let go of their captive animals. The bush explodes with hopping, running roos. Geneice hangs onto hers for a moment longer, and then releases it.

 

AMBER HOTEL

Cut to the original black and white footage, handheld and grainy, yields a tantalising glimpse of the Nymph living wild with kangaroos. These are the images that transfixed audiences around the world. Everyone applauds in the Amber pub where it is being screened on a wall.

 

FILM EDITING ROOM

In an editing room, the film editor shows the film clip to the documentary crew. He runs the clip again, this time playing the whole original scene. At the head and tail of the shot, the hoaxers are clearly visible, holding the roos.

 

TELEVISION NEWS REPORT

Cut to the black and white television news report A newsreader presents the latest bulletin.

NEWSREADER

There have been unconfirmed reports that roo-shooters on the Nullarbor Plain have seen a young, half-naked, white woman living in the bush with a mob of kangaroos.

Grainy amateur film footage shows a wild woman dressed in roo skins hanging onto a roo by the tail. She gets startled and runs off.

No one knows for who she is, or how she came to be living with the roos. This Nullarbor Nymph remains a mystery.

 

ART STUDIO

Working in her studio on a life-size sculpture of the Nymph, Dora talks with passion about it.

DORA

[She asserts that the hoaxers stumbled onto something far bigger than they understood. For her, the nymph as a myth resonates with meaning about feminine archetypes, and explores the Wild Woman in us all. That's what she is exploring in her art.

 

AMBER HOTEL

As the hoaxers talk at the bar, Dora listen to their stories.

HOAXERS

[The men talk about how they invented the Nullarbor Nymph -- partly to put Eucla on the map -- but mainly to have a joke with passing tourists. They can't agree or remember who specifically thought of the hoax, and they argue about it. Time and conflicting memories blur the truth]

From outside the pub window, someone (an unidentified POV) watches the doco crew filming the hoaxers.

We see Jonas notice something at the window. He goes outside with his little Super 8 camera and catches a fleeting glimpse of the person who is watching: she is an actual nymph, though an ephermal one (superimposed from a blue screen shot) -- a young, wild woman wearing roo skins.

Caught in the act, she runs off like the wind, accompanied by an other-wordly harmonic sound.

 

ART STUDIO

Dora shows Geneice her tall fiberglass sculpture of the Nymph hanging onto a kangaroo's tail. The actual nymph appears fleetingly in the background (blue screen), an ephermal presence eavesdropping on their conversation. Her signature harmonic sound marks her transitory presence.

DORA

[She explains her idea about the Nymph being a Wild Woman archetype. Many women want to discover her and many men want to tame her. In a way, the tabloid reportage that followed the hoax was a symbolic hunt.]

Listening to all this from behind a canvas painting, the actual nymph slips quietly away.

 

EUCLA

Utes tear through the bush, kicking up dust, doing doughnuts. Laughter and yelling mixes with gun shots.

 

AMBER HOTEL

The hoaxers continued to elaborate their yarn.

LAURIE

[He tells us how he conned a bus driver into slowing down as he entered Eucla, and to wake everybody up in case they saw the Nymph. Geneice did a moonlight flit across the highway and all the people on the bus saw her. The story ran like wildfire across Perth after that.]

 

EUCLA

Dora streaks half-naked across the highway.

 

ART STUDIO

Dora is covered in paint and clay as she makes another full size Nymph sculpture.

DORA

[She talks about her obsession with the Nullarbor Nymph....]

Cut away to full-scale nymph sculptures, site models, drawings, plans for an elaborate shrine, and shots of Dora's Master's thesis. The evidence of obsession is all around.

 

AMBER HOTEL

According to the hoaxers in the Amber bar, everyone wanted a piece of the Nullarbor Nymph. They show some of the clippings. CBS, the BBC, Time and Newsweek all reported the story.

Reporters and film crews arrived from America and Europe. Archival footage tells the story. Australia was suddenly hot news, and everyone was heading for Eucla.

HOAXERS

[Geneice laughs as she recalls the influx of reporters into the town. The other hoaxers laconically agree that they had fair success in putting Eucla on the map].

 

EUCLA

Jonas looks up at the plane in the sky.

 

LIGHT PLANE

Nichol and Childs talk about the Nymph as they fly over the Nullarbor Plain.

NICHOL

[He admits that within hours of arriving in Eucla he smelled a hoax, yet he kept sending back reports to The Advertiser. It was a slow news week and this was a good yarn. Why not go along with it?]

 

ADELAIDE AIRPORT

A camera approaches a light plane on the tarmac at Adelaide Airport -- and finds the reporters inside, mocking up the supposed in-flight interview. A crew member gently rocks the wing to simulate turbulence.

 

EUCLA AIRSTRIP

The hoaxers revist the lonely Eucla airstrip, boasting only one plane.

HOAXERS

[They recall how busy it was for a few days in January 1972. They never dreamed their bush yarn would grow so big.]

PEARCE

[He reckons the Americans loved the wild west flavour of the Nymph story. Several famous people telephoned Eucla, including LBJ -- or maybe it was another hoaxer? The message he left was: "The Nymph can go all the way with LBJ!"]

But eventually the bubble had to burst.

[They argue with each other about how the hoax was revealed, and who revealed it.]

In the background, the actual nymph (blue screen shot) runs over to the plane.

Dora sees her, but no one else does.

 

AMBER HOTEL

The hoaxers gather for the last time in the Amber bar, the birth site of the Nullarbor Nymph.

HOAXERS

[They have no regrets, and plenty of happy memories of their hoax. None of them have made a penny from it.]

 

EUCLA

Shots of Eucla show that, although world-famous for a few weeks, it remains much as it was then, a roadside stop on an isolated highway.

But now the film crew and Dora are off on their own dreams. They walk around the roadhouse, making plans.

DORA and CREW

[They all start arguing about the merits of building a giant ferro-concrete statue -- The Big Nymph -- on the highway, and making a feature film about it]

 

EUCLA MONTAGE

Outside the roadhouse, Geneice lifts her head from under the car engine she's working on. She talks toward the camera and crew.

GENEICE

I wouldn't know a spark plug from a flywheel.

OFFSCREEN CREW

Just pretend....

In his hotel room Pearce stuffs up his two fingered typing when the typewriter keys jam. He looks off camera.

PEARCE

I haven't used one of these old things in twenty years.

OFFSCREEN CREW

It looks great, like a Humphrey Bogart movie...

 

In the pub, Steve stops polishing glasses. He look at the camera.

STEVE

When was the last time you were in a pub? We never polish the glasses.

OFFSCREEN CREW

It's an image thing...

In his kitchen, Jonas screens his Super 8 movies. He looks up at the crew.

JONAS

I've had a camcorder for ages.

OFFSCREEN CREW

We like the graininess of Super 8...

In the little caravan, Laurie stops cleaning his gun. He looks off camera.

LAURIE

I'm a fisherman now. I sold my rifle in 1973.

OFFSCREEN CREW

Do you think the Nymph could be real?

He smiles.

LAURIE

Did I ever tell you about the one that got away?

 

AMBER HOTEL

The hoaxers are still at the bar drinking with Dora and the film crew.

HOAXERS

[The roo-shooter, rabbit trapper, hotel owner, and public relations man are bemused by the interest shown by artists like Dora, and by the filmmakers, especially after 26 years. For them, it was just a yarn they dreamt up for a joke. Dora tries out her Wild Woman theory on them, but they don't accept it for a moment.]

The barmaid brings another round of drinks. She looks suspiciously like the actual nymph. No one notices, not the hoaxers or the crew.

She goes around the bar and out a back door. Outside, she doffs her waitress dress to reveal roo skins underneath. She kicks off her shoes and throws back her hair.

She looks back once. Then she turns and runs away from the pub, into the Nullarbor.

END