What should have been a dramatic tale of life on the river Murray turns out to be a silly, soppy romance about an English refugee (Sigrid Thornton with Aussie accent) who falls for the larrikin first mate (John Waters) of a paddle-steamer.The first half of this four and a half hour mini-series shows some promise, but it soon falls flat as it becomes predictable and thin. Some real verve and spark was needed in the plot to give the movie some life. Gus Mercurio's early exit didn't help as his character seemed to me to be the only interesting one.Perhaps the longer T.V. version has more depth, because this video translation certainly lacked it.Sunday, June 27, 1993 - Video

The first series was quite true to the Nancy Cato book, but here the writers have gone their own sweet way, concentrating on a fairly youthful Delie and Brenton. The trouble is too much of the story is away from the river, and concentrates to a large extent on Brenton. It's very episodic - we don't see the children noticeably age. Although we loosely cover the children's stay at Mrs Melville, we lose the detail about Meg staying on because she's infatuated with their older son - well, Meg here is only a little girl rather than the teenager she ought to have become.All in all it's a good yarn, although the ending seems hurried and (without giving away the plot) unreasonable. I'd recommend reading the book in which Delie is a real three dimensional character, rather than a fairly cardboard figure. If you can find it, it's still worth giving this sequel a viewing - the acting and camera-work is brilliant, and the producers have done a fine job in creating turn-of-the-century Echuca.

This was a great family movie with all the elements of good entertainment. There was action, drama, a touch of comedy, love, family, romance, intrigue and villainy, and triumph of right. The only thing I didn't like was the ending. It would be lovely if, all these years later, a sequel could be done bringing Cyrus and Philadelphia together again. After all she and her family had to go through at the hands of her charming but irresponsible husband, and after all Cyrus went through to rescue her over and over again only to have his heart broken over and over again, it would be great to see them finally be able to have the relationship both really desire to have. It would be great fun to see her travel as a mature woman now to the States and run into Cyrus and see if the sparks still fly between them.

I first saw this movie on HBO. It thought it was a great story and followed the book very well. It is one movie that I can watch over & over, in fact it was just on Cinemax this week. I wish it would get a release on DVD. I found the story beautiful and of course the scenery was even great. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone that enjoys seeing something done from Australia.