Excerpts from biography:

“Their two landrovers amusingly bore number plates commencing with the words BAN and BAD, perhaps not the best choice for a filmmaker. My father said that it was lucky he was not superstitious. He was driving the third vehicle, a Holden utility. On the sides of each was a large inscription, ‘Charles Chauvel’s Television Unit – Australian Expediton’. Canvas water bags hung from the front, ready for the drier places outback, and there was a battery trailer to supply light.”

“The first sight of Coober Pedy seemed surreal – just a landscape of pale-coloured mounds, with a few gaping holes and tiny tin chimneys the only evidence of habitation. A water tank accommodated the annual six inches of rain, and the only sound was the dull thud of picks below ground.”

“We flew northwest again, over the Birdsville Track to Muloorina…….we were flying low over the roofs, ready for touchdown, chooks, dogs and goats scattering in all directions. At Muloorina, the runway was marked out with sun-bleached camel bones, but I remember the plane taxiing to the front gate and the pilot tying it to a powerful hitching post. He was well acquainted with the fierce dust storms that can unexpectedly sweep in from the Simpson Desert.”