They name him Sundowner and enter him, with Sean as his jockey, at local races on their travels after the shearing is done. Owning such an animal has been his longstanding dream. Paddy wins a lot of money and a race horse playing two-up.

Even though Paddy has agreed to participate in a shearing contest against someone from a rival group, he decides to leave six weeks into the shearing season.

Ida is saving the money the family earns for a down payment on a farm that they stayed at for a night on the sheep drive. When fellow shearer Bluey Brown's ( John Meillon) pregnant wife Liz ( Lola Brooks) shows up unannounced, she sees the young woman through her first birth. Ida enjoys the company of another woman, their employer's lonely wife, Jean Halstead ( Dina Merrill). Ida convinces Paddy to take a job at a station shearing sheep she serves as the cook, Rupert as a wool roller, and Sean as a tar boy. He takes to spending nights with her, but, like Paddy, he has no desire to be tied down. Firth ( Glynis Johns), who runs the pub in Cawndilla, takes a liking to Rupert. Along the way, they survive a dangerous bushfire. While passing through the bush, the family meet refined Englishman Rupert Venneker ( Peter Ustinov) and hire him to help drive a large herd of sheep to the town of Cawndilla. Ida and Sean want to settle down, but Paddy has wanderlust and never wants to stay in one place for long. They are sundowners, constantly moving, pitching their tent whenever the sun goes down. Irish-Australian Paddy Carmody ( Robert Mitchum) is a sheep drover and shearer, roving the sparsely populated outback with his wife Ida ( Deborah Kerr) and son Sean ( Michael Anderson Jr.). Īt the 33rd Academy Awards, it was in the running for Best Picture, while Kerr was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Johns for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Zinnemann for Best Director, and Lennart for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, with no Academy wins. In 2019, FilmInk cited it among “50 meat pie Westerns”. The screenplay was adapted by Isobel Lennart from Jon Cleary's 1952 novel of the same name it was produced and directed by Fred Zinnemann. The Sundowners was produced and directed by Fred Zinnemann, adapted by Isobel Lennart from Jon Cleary's 1952 novel of the same name, and starring Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum and Peter Ustinov, with a supporting cast including Glynis Johns, Mervyn Johns, Dina Merrill, Michael Anderson Jr. The Sundowners is a 1960 Technicolor comedy drama film that tells the story of a 1920s Australian outback family torn between the father's desires to continue his nomadic sheep-herding ways and the wife's and son's desire to settle down in one place.

Pony Play by Sean Michael