Quigley Down Under

Quigley Down Under, with Tom Sellick is a movie which takes place in Australia. It is the story of the European people who come to Australia as they did in America. Instead of the characters being Europeans and Indians, it is Europeans and the Aborigine people of the outback. Quigley is the best long distance shot in America. He can shoot the bucket off a man’s head form 1200 yard. Quigley is from Wyoming and is commissioned to come to Australia for his shooting skills. He goes to Australia 3 months by sea for 50 gold coins (perhaps $20 gold pieces which were are oz of gold each). When he gets there he runs into a gal I’ll call Crazy Kate who upon Quigley’s arrival is saved by him from some men who want to take her somewhere against her will. Quigley fights for Kate only to find out after the fight that the men he was fighting had come to town to pick him up and get some supplies for the ranch. He is then taken along with Kate and some American girls of pleasure three more days by wagon teamed with oxen to a ranch. Here he meets the ranch owner who commissioned him to come. He is then told that the Aborigine won't be killed off peaceably and they stay out of the reach of rifle fire and he needs Quigley's skills to kill them off like was done to the Indians in America. At this point Quigley kicks his ass out of his own house with a good old fashioned beat down. But the land owner like all other cattle men of the west have paid ranch hands who come to his rescue. After they have rescued the land owner and whipped Quigley to an inch of his life they tie Quigley and trouble maker Kate up and take them 2 days into the desert and drop them off.

This is when the story begins. Quigley and Kate are found by Aborigine and nursed back to health. Quigley and Kate stay with the Aborigine for a few days to a couple of weeks and become friends of the Aborigine. Quigley want revenge for his treatment. He witnesses the Aborigine people who nursed him and Kate to health run off a cliff. This scene is so very violent about 30 or so men, women and children were ran off a cliff to their deaths. (It is the slaughter of this people by white men that is repulsive to me as an African American black man with Black Foot Indian as a part of my heritage.) All were killed except a baby boy who was saved from the impact by his mother on who protected him from the fall with her dead body. Kate ran down to stop the masequer but was too late. She found the boy and took him. Now what made Kate crazy was that a year or so earlier she suffocated her infant son to quiet him during an attack. Her husband put her on a boat and sent her to Australia to die. With the logic saying that he could not be married to a woman who would kill her baby to save herself. So now with this boy she has a chance to perhaps redeem herself in her own mind by having courage. She always has dreamed of her husband coming to get her and fantasizes that Quigley is him "Ron". Kate and Quigley are now on a mission to get revenge on the rancher for the people. Quigley along the way has killed several whites to protect the Aborigine from death in an uneven fight. As he would always say "All me were not created equal but Smith and Wesson changed that." So when the Aborigine was fighting with just spears against rifles Quigley evened the odds. In the end Quigley killed the rancher and his men, Kate defended the baby against dingoes successfully which then gave her a peace of mind. Quigley was surrounded by British troops on the ranch after his dessimation of the rancher and his men, who was lead by a captain that had no love for Americans. The same captain who he had a brief conversation with. The conversation went something like this
Captain: “England had kicked all he unsavory Brits out and they started America. Quigley : “ America kicked all it unsavory out and they were called Brits.
So now Quicgley is surrounded by this captain and his men . The captain assures Quigley that he will come to trial according to the warrant peaceably or hung there. Then in the background he Captain sees a nation of Aborigine surrounding the ranch on the horizon with spears. The British Captain and his men are forced to let Quigley go. Kate and Quigley go back to America to start a life together. From this I get that men can live in peace with love if we chose to.