Introduction

The Nullarbor Nymph is one of the greatest hoaxes in Australian history. On Boxing Day, 1971, shooters on the Nullarbor Plain saw a half-naked white woman living in the wild with a mob of kangaroos. News of the sensational story grabbed headlines across Australia, Canada, the US, Britain and Germany.

For several weeks the Nymph captured the world's imagination. Though the joke was soon revealed, the Nullarbor Nymph became an Australian legend that lives on today.

The Nullarbor Nymph will celebrate the larrikin spirit of the original pranksters by taking a cheeky look at their intriguing story. It will explore the theme of representation through three layers in the film: 1) the original creation of the hoax via the media, 2) the current obsession of an artist, Dora Dallwitz, in exploring its meaning, and 3) the documentary reconstruction and presentation of the story.

All three strands of the story rely on the presentation of images in their construction of truth. All three seek to influence or manipulate an audience.

The documentary will open to scrutiny the process of filmmaking itself. By incorporating a making-of-the-doco within the doco, it will playfully question whether a ‘true' story can be told, and ask whether documentarians aren’t the real hoaxers today.

Treatment

A black and white television news report announces that roo-shooters on the Nullarbor Plain have glimpsed a half-naked white woman living in the bush with a mob of kangaroos. Grainy amateur film footage shows the wild woman hanging onto a roo by the tail. She gets startled and runs off. The newsreader dubs her the Nullarbor Nymph -- and a legend is born.

The isolated town of Eucla on the Western Australian border is about as far from civilization as you can get. The pub, 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.

Just before Christmas, 1971, four lairs sat drinking in the Amber Motor Hotel -- owner Steve Patupis, roo-shooter Laurie Scott, rabbit trapper Ron Sells, and a visiting public relations consultant, Geoff Pearce. Together they invented the Nullarbor Nymph -- partly to put Eucla on the map -- but mainly to have a joke with passing tourists. They were born larrikins and bush jokers.

Now older and wiser in 1997, these hoaxers re-enact the pub scene for the documentary. They can't agree or remember who specifically thought of the hoax, and they argue about it. Time and conflicting memories blur the truth. The director probes them, asking, "Who created the Nullarbor Nymph?"

From outside the pub window, someone watches the crew filming the re-enactment scene. A second camera, operated by the artist Dora Dallwitz, catches a fleeting glimpse of the person who is watching the re-enactment: she is an actual nymph, though an ephermal one -- a young, wild woman wearing roo skins. Caught by Dora’s camera, she runs off like the wind, accompanied by an other-wordly harmonic sound.

Darting back inside, Dora cannot convince the doco crew that she saw a real nymph: they are too busy doing re-enactments of the myth to look beyond its surface.

Dora's obsession with the Nullarbor Nymph fuels her art, including full-scale nymph sculptures, site models, drawings, plans for an elaborate shrine, and a Master's thesis. Her presence in the film is both as a sculptor interpreting the Nymph, and as a subversive filmmaker, recording the making-of-the-doco, and providing an alternate viewpoint within the film.

Outside the roadhouse, Dora does a playful performance piece. She 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. As a six-foot, blonde, athletic woman, she is a willing metaphor of her subject.

At the Amber bar, Pearce reads aloud the telex he sent to Adelaide's The Advertiser and The News. It was enticing enough to spark two young reporters to charter the first plane to Eucla -- and it still attracts laughter today.

Interviewed in a light plane above the Nullarbor, Murray Nichol and Kevin Childs, now journalists with ABC radio and The Age, recount their expectations of finding the Nullarbor Nymph. A cutaway shows the vast plain unfolding below them, wild and untamed.

But it's all a ruse revealed by Dora’s independent camera. She approaches their light plane -- not in the sky, but on the tarmac at Adelaide Airport -- and finds them inside, mocking up the supposed in-flight interview. A sheepish grip gently rocks the wing to simulate turbulence.

Back in his ABC studio, and interviewed by the doco director on air, Nichol 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?

Who was the Nullabor Nymph? On one level she was pure tabloid. The doco recreates a classic 1940's film montage, complete with spinning newspapers. It shows the flurry of articles published in the first days after the sighting.

The montage suddenly stops. In the cutting room, the director probes the editor’s motivation for constructing a 1940's montage for a 1990's film about the 1970's. The editor just shrugs.

The first Nymph picture was published by Rupert Murdoch's The News. They hired a 17-year-old model, Janice Beeby, and posed her wearing roo skins in Adelaide’s sand dunes. It was the start of a tabloid reaction that typified media attitudes to women at the time. But how much has changed in twenty-five years? Janice, now 42, returns to the sand dunes and tells us what she thinks.

Other tabloid article highlights, read in voice over by the hoaxers, claimed 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 be anything.

Back in the Amber bar, the hoaxers explain how The News photo prompted them to regain control of the yarn, and push it alone. They were getting phone calls and telegrams from all over the world. They decided the feed the hungry media monster: it was time to produce their own Nymph.

Stowing guns, ropes, and nets, they drive battered vehicles into the bush. Shooting roos is one thing, catching them alive another. They show us the tough work necessary to chase down, round up, and catch several red kangaroos.

That night around the campfire, everyone chews roo meat off bones, and the remains of a carcass hangs on a spit over the fire. Dora captures the sound recordist asking the DOP, "I can see it now in the end credits -- ‘No animal was hurt in the making of this film.'"

Once they'd caught the roos, Laurie asked a local waitress, now his wife, Geneice Scott, to do something for a bit of a laugh. He wanted her to get her gear off and slip on the roo skins. He had just skinned the roos, and the skins were warm and sticky.

Now a 50 year-old grandmother, Geneice sits in the roadhouse, draped in roo skins. She reflects on the experience of being the Nymph. For her it was a lark that was never meant to have serious repercussions.

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

Geneice laughs at the memory. "This is just how I remember it," she says. Dora shows her the grainy black and white photograph that was published around the world in early 1972.

Back in the bush, Patupis, Scott and Sells manhandle hessian bags out of the vehicles. Inside them roos kick and thrash. It was just like this on New Years Eve, 1971. A few mates help them hide behind some scrub, and they wait for a signal. Some Aborigines, willing helpers, laugh at the absurdity of it all. The actual nymph appears momentarily to spy on the proceedings.

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, a mate of Patupis, takes a couple of quick shots with a stills camera. He claims he shot them soft to give the impression of hunters on the run. Then he grabs a Super-8 camera and shouts, "Action!"

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.

It's a magic moment. The director, tense with excitement, asks the DOP "How was it?" The DOP replies, "Can we do it again? I missed part of it."

But 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.

Back in the editing room, the editor stops the film. "Look at this," he says to the director. 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.

The director shakes his head.

The hoaxers continued to elaborate their yarn. Scott 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.

Dora's work draws on the potency that helped spread the Nymph myth around the world. She uses art as a means of exploring the unconscious, symbolic, and personal meanings that flow from her involvement with the myth.

Far from believing that the Nymph's identity is fully developed, she thinks it is open to new ideas. She would like to see women reinterpreting the myth that was presented by the media in a stereotypic way. In her view, the media haven't changed a lot in twenty-five years.

A montage of foreign language press and television surveys the international coverage. Everyone was fascinated by the story of a half-naked white woman living in the wild with kangaroos in the middle of the most remote plain on Earth.

Working in her studio on a life-size sculpture of the Nymph, Dora asserts that the hoaxers stumbled onto something far bigger than they understood. For her, the myth resonates with meaning about feminine archetypes, and explores the Wild Woman in us all. Women want to discover her and many men want to tame her. In a way, the reportage that followed the hoax was a symbolic hunt.

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

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.

"I'd be serving these reporters tea and coffee and they'd be asking me questions about where they could find the Nymph. I didn't tell them she was standing right in front of them!" Geneice laughs as she recalls the influx of reporters into the town. Sipping beers, the other hoaxers laconically agree that they had fair success in putting Eucla on the map.

But the ownership of the Nymph was appropriated as fast as the hoax itself. Many countries claimed her as their own. Over a sequence of foreign articles, a Canadian voice proclaims that she must be Canadian. A German argues that she was theirs. The Israelis said she must be one of them to survive so well in the desert. The Arabs countered that she could only be an Arab.

Back in the Amber, Pearce 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!"

The hoaxers revist the lonely Eucla airstrip, boasting only one plane. They recall how busy it was for a few days in January 1972. They never dreamed their bush yarn would grow so big.

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 runs over to the plane.

Dora tells the crew she just saw the actual nymph run behind the plane. When they go over to inspect it, there is no one there. The director suggests that Dora must be desperate to perpetrate the hoax.

In their city offices, the journos who reported the hoax recount its end. There were articles about safaris chasing the Nymph to Ayers Rock, and hunting parties of shooters going spotlighting for her in the bush. The Hunt was on.

Dora works on her sculpture as she explains that many people wanted the Nullarbor Nymph to remain free. For them, the idea of a wild woman living in the bush was exciting. It combined the mystery of the bush and the feminine, and suggested survival in an environment that was often hostile, especially to women.

The hoaxers gather for the last time in the Amber bar, the birth site of the Nullarbor Nymph. They have no regrets, and plenty of happy memories of their hoax. None of them have made a penny from it. Eucla, although world-famous for a few weeks, 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; arguing about the merits of building a giant ferro-concrete statue -- The Big Nymph -- on the highway.

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 all these years. For them, it was just a yarn they dreamt up for a joke.

The barmaid brings another round of drinks. She looks suspiciously like the actual nymph. No one notices.

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, and gestures -- follow me.

Then she turns and runs away from the pub, into the Nullarbor.

Stylistic Approach

The Nullarbor Nymph will differ from standard documentary treatments that encompass one viewpoint in vision and sound. The ‘fourth wall’ or omniscient perspective will be challenged by the use of multiple viewpoints. These will be defined by different visual formats.

The film crew will use Super-8 film, Dora will shoot on Hi-8 video, and DVC video will be used to capture their interactions. Varied framing, lensing, and filtration will accentuate the differences. All the sources will be transferred to Betacam SP videotape prior to editing.

The actual nymph should remain somewhat intangible. She is not of this world, being a mythic figure. Her shadowy, ephemeral representation will be achieved in post-production. A human nymph model will be shot against a blue screen and matted into background plates shot on location.

The intention will be to use cinematic techniques to create an enigmatic film nymph. Her transitory presence will be enhanced by manipulating her speed, degree of blur, and degree of half-mixing. Her point-of-view might also be represented by a highly-stylised visual treatment.

Another element that will support this is the use of a harmonic cello and voice motif every time the nymph appears. The eerie overtones of this Tibetan singing technique are perfectly suited for creating an other-worldly plane.

The film will not have a traditional musical score, since that would support the omniscient documentary approach that is being questioned. Rather, it will have moments of music that will then be subject to scrutiny.

For example, the music for the 1940’s montage could employ a standard orchestral treatment ala the March of Time newsreels. The editor and director could quarrel about it and then replay the scene using a different, equally tacky piece of music -- perhaps pan flutes or accordion.

A similar technique will be used for sound effects and atmospheres. The sound editor might use the effects of a cattle stampede to beef up the sound of kangaroos hopping away from camera. A kookaburra’s laugh is mixed into the Nullarbor landscape along with rainforest atmospheres from South America.

As far as possible, the stylistic approach for the film will be to continually find ways to challenge the orthodoxy of conventional documentary practice. Anything that pokes fun at documentary cliches will be considered, whether they concern camera, sound, editing or narration devices.

Conclusion

The Nullarbor Nymph will be a subversive look at cultural representation, and it will also be entertaining. It will play with the truth, creating its own mythology as it goes. By satirising the process of documentary filmmaking, it will debunk the notion of objective truth, and the convention that the media is neutral.

The film will hold fast to the original motivation of the hoaxers, which was to tell a good yarn, while also aiming to provoke thought about substantial cultural issues. The story rewards serious attention, and it also invites irreverence, for the trickster spirit of the Nymph lives through a persistent quality of Australian culture -- our larrikin humour.