Although officially the star, Peter Finch as bushranger Captain Starlight is really only peripheral to the narrative, whose myriad twists and turns clearly mark it as an adaptation of a novel.
Probably the closest Rank ever came to a western, many of the staple ingredients - prospecting for gold, cattle stealing, robbing stagecoachs - are included; but thanks to Matyas Sieber's score it certainly doesn't sound like one.
As usual we get no sense of the oppressive heat and enormous creepie-crawlies found Down Under, but the presence of a pair of aborigines in the cast makes a refreshing change.