It was his second novel, the first having been withdrawn because of a threat of legal action. It was a publishing success, appearing in England and America, translated into several languages, and a prescribed text in schools. It might be forty years since the novel appeared yet it retains its freshness, its narrative still compels, and its bleak vision still disquiets. The film version, directed by American Ted Kotcheff and with a cast that included the evil-exuding Donald Pleasance, also met with critical approval on its release. Outside Australia, the film was called Outback (and probably set Australian tourism back at least twenty years). Its opening sequence remains in the mind—the 360-degree panorama of a flat, empty landscape, the lonely, flyspotted and comfortless pub, the toy train inching across the plain, the open-faced young man waiting on the crude platform. Wake in Fright is about a young teacher’s five days in a rough outback mining town called Bundanyabba (‘the Yabba’ to the locals).
