“My grandfather saw first white man here. He came in [on] a camel. Then the Chinese man came. They said they all look for the Goldstone. And they all follow the same God. Money God.”
– Jimmy (David Gulpilil)
The opening of Goldstone plays like a Ken Burns carousel of history and memory. Unlike Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974), this photo montage is not orchestrated for interpretation; its thesis is clear. The montage-as-thesis focuses on the significance of the Australian Gold Rush and attempts to orient the audience to the historical foundations upon which the layers of dirt rest. Alongside the hypnotic score composed by writer/director/editor Ivan Sen, images from the 1850s Australian gold rush flash across the screen. The score soars, using tryptic note patterns, ascending and descending; the beginning, middle, and end are storytelling scales, approximating the film’s circadian rhythms. Fade to black. A title card: Goldstone.
A black asphalt vein diagonally dissects the screen, the baked, arid landscape seasoned with jutting rock outcroppings, hills, and wild brush decorated with red, gristly dirt. A dark car streams from left to right, closely pursued by a silent white police truck. We cut to the inside of the cop car, framed directly out the windshield; we see a discerning scrunched face from Goldstone’s solitary police presence, Josh Waters (the fresh-faced Alex Russell). The car ahead pulls onto the gravel as the road straightens. Josh gets out of his vehicle, reflexively armed with a breathalyzer in hand, blue jeans, and a checkered shirt rolled at the wrists—a modest, country-plain uniform.
He walks to the car steadily, inquisitive. His head is tilted, and he peers around the corner of the door to the driver. Our first look at the man he’s pulled over is, in profile, askew. A tank top covers his caramel chest, and a ragged mullet and unkempt beard roughly outline the rest of his torso. The camera cuts to view the landscape of the truck. Grubby leather seats are blanketed by rotting takeaway wrappers and empty, brown, long-neck beer bottles. An open and likely freshly stale roadie stands erect in the cup holder. At Josh’s request, the driver rummages through the center console for his license. As we see his face, gestures and expressions take shape in slow motion, like a video call over a lousy internet connection. The delay allows the shock to register for audiences familiar with the series. It’s a nearly unrecognizable Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen, in the role of his career), the outback’s Aboriginal Detective and the protagonist of writer-director Ivan Sen’s previous film, Mystery Road (2013).
In Mystery Road, Swan returns from a lengthy stint in an unnamed Australian city to his own small town, where the investigation into the death of an Aboriginal teen—a friend of his estranged daughter—uncovers a drug operation that has hooked its spiny tendrils into the corruptible elements of the police force, greedy truckies, and an incredibly hostile local populace whose deep-seated racism is triggered by the very prospect of an Aboriginal man empowered—rather than exploited by—the law. The clean, sober “white hat” of the first Mystery Road feature (and protagonist of three subsequent television series expansions—two of which star Pedersen) is barely recognizable here. It’s hard not to burst into equal parts sorrow and curiosity.
Jay gets breathalyzed, and it’s almost miraculous his car was steering straight. Their exchange lacks all hostility; Jay resigns to the other officer of the law, who is simply doing his job. Jay is cuffed and stuffed into the caged hold in the back of the police truck.
As Josh drives Jay back to town, a wooden sign appears: Welcome to Goldstone.
*
“Looking for that girl? Chinese one, ay?”
– Jimmy
Pedersen’s Jay Swan rolls into Goldstone like a beer-soaked tumbleweed. On the heels of a report of a missing woman in the desert, he lands in the middle of a government-endorsed mining conglomerate’s expansion activities. This behemoth, Furnace Creek, uses its all-encompassing power, influence, and sanctioned impunity to strangle Indigenous peoples out of the land for its wealth. Furnace Creek wretches minerals explosively out of the ground with no care for the impact on their lives, the natural environment (fish bobble with deathly stillness to the top of the creeks), or cultural history (sacred spaces stare stoically toward mounds of earth discarded in the excavation process). Jay arrives in town looking for Maria (Ursula Yovich), the resident ‘Aunty’ who filed the report. Jay starts his search at the last place the missing girl was seen, a lonely tree in the arid scrub, taking refuge from the blistering heat.
Like David Milch’s Deadwood series, Sen uses the mining industry as a petri dish of Western civilization in the tiny, fictional Goldstone. Miners are squeezed to produce mineral value, and industry (booze and prostitution) spawns in their wake. Desired sex work to meet the demands of the miners results in a boom in the human trafficking of Chinese migrants, who raise money to pay for their passage to Australia by servicing the miners. Mrs. Lao (Cheng Pei-Pei) plays the stone-faced madam, an instrument of fear and punishment for the mining company who exemplifies the migrant experience in Australia: assimilate or die—and assimilation means squashing and dehumanizing newly minted “others” to survive. The only candid person in town is Mrs. Lao’s competitor Pinky (Kate Beahan). Pinky drives into town to supply the overflowing demand that Furnace Creek’s indentured sexual servants can’t. Pinky and Jay’s encounter is the most unguarded of the film; a raw, confessional “there is no next time” sexual tryst that provides an oasis for Jay in this largely hostile place. While Pinky’s neon-sign-adorned van is a sanctuary, Mrs. Lao’s place is an enclosure, and finding a missing member of this stable brought Jay to Goldstone.
The fictional town of Goldstone is built on the facade of an outwardly more enlightened Modern Australia. Contemporary Australian society is built atop the oldest living culture globally, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) culture. When British colonizers invaded the Australian continent in 1788, they implemented a legal doctrine of terra nullius, claiming that the land they “discovered” belonged to no one. It did not have the markings of a European civilization, and therefore was ripe to be claimed. It wasn’t until the landmark High Court “Mabo” decision overturned terra nullius in 1992 that Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders were granted native title—recognizing their land ownership—by validating unique Indigenous signifiers that existed prior to and endured during British occupation.
In Goldstone, we learn that the last bureaucracy standing is an Indigenous Land Council, which ought to protect their land from industry impacts, and oversee and monetarily benefit from decisions to license their land to industries like mining. Practically, the Land Council becomes just a minor impediment to Furnace Creek’s hydra of monetary influence, plaguing, agitating and disrupting the community to execute their plans. No one is incorruptible; all tools (sex, money, battery, murder) are at their disposal. Goldstone is the battleground for Australia’s morality.
The rubber stamp of approval from the presiding Indigenous council led by Tommy (Tommy Lewis—star of Australia’s answer to Blaxploitation: The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith) is clearly in the pocket of Furnace Creek. Tommy is already hooked by the town’s Mayor (Jacki Weaver), and pressured by the mounting bricks of cash coming indirectly from slimy mining middle manager, Johnny (David Wenham).
Maureen The Mayor (Weaver) is a survivor, a sexual manipulator, past her prime but no less willing to do what she needs to do to get her way. When Jay first meets her, she’s reapplying her lipstick, and the inference couldn’t be more apparent when she implores Jay to reach out for anything at all, punctuating this reassurance with hungry, suggestive eyes. And while Johnny may dress like a primary school teacher from the 1990s and couch every interaction in passive-aggressive, ill-timed attempts at humor, his orders imply action and progress. When Johnny says, “Deal with it,” there’s no more time for negotiation—biker gangs on retainer will turn up to your temporary housing and rain shotgun fire upon you. The relationship between Mayor and Johnny is strange and essential. They rule over Goldstone; she’s the sexual scalpel, and he’s the quirky hammer.
David Gulpilil’s performance as Jimmy is immeasurable. As another member of the land council, he has power and commands respect, yet prefers to quietly oversee his mob. When he’s forced to listen to the courtesies and self-flagellation from Furnace Creek, he walks away; he’s the film’s conscience, no matter the consequences.
The moment he encounters Jay, it triggers a haunting recognition.
*
“I know why you came here. I know your face, just like your father… He was taken away when he was a young boy, then he came back a man… and he said he has a son; must be you.”
– Jimmy
From the late 1800s until the 1970s, the heinously cordial concept of “assimilation” was weaponized into Government-sanctioned cultural erasure and destruction, removing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their country (homelands) and families. These children—known as the Stolen Generations—were institutionalized, placed in public or private foster care or adopted by white families, with the Government feeling that it would be easier for them and they’d be better off.
This profound generational trauma reverberates throughout Australian society to this day. Jay’s almost desperate tone to Jimmy when he connects with someone who knew his father as a young man typifies the loss of family, culture, and identity. The removal of Indigenous children resulted in abuse, exploitation, slavery and second-class citizenship in plain sight. It did not end with the Stolen Generations; trauma is now intergenerational, permeating the lives of their descendants, disrupting essential cultural and family structures. Substance abuse, mental health issues, and more significant instances of youth suicide and violence plague Indigenous communities. The cruelty of the policy is that, either by design or ignorance, it dismantled the foundational pillars of the Aboriginal community, which operates as a collective, sharing responsibility to raise and socialize children. Larger family dynamics promote safety, self-confidence, and trust while also providing practical childcare support. Aboriginal communities encourage children to be free to explore the world around them as an essential milestone in their transition from childhood to adulthood. In the isolation and disconnection from family, they were existentially rudderless. Since the practice was abandoned, Indigenous leaders have guided the reconnection with the community and country. This hinge point, a target for corruption, manipulation, and covert attempts to disrupt the community, is Goldstone‘s subtext and text.
When Jay encounters Jimmy, he addresses him as ‘Old Man’ – a term of endearment and respect. When Jay is asked by Tommy where he’s from, he answers, “Here and there,” a response not so much a deflection as a symptom. So many Indigenous people have a place where they were raised—a place they call home—but still cannot precisely pinpoint where their country is, or where they belong.
After Jimmy defies Furnace Creek and the land council’s pressure, he takes an opportunity to escort Jay to a place of cultural significance. They travel down a river carved through a rock outcropping. As the men paddle in wooden canoes, the choral textures of the undulating rock harmonize with Jimmy’s song. The song supersedes the sounds of their ascent to a higher sacred place, where their ancestors’ stories and dreams are painted onto the rock. Jay’s heaving chest is in awe of the view and of Jimmy; this spiritual salve will propel him to complete his task. Gulpililil makes a profound impact during his brief screen time here. As an actor, he’s embodied the Australian Indigenous experience, starring in seminal films like The Last Wave, Walkabout, Charlie’s Country, The Tracker, Ten Canoes, and Australia. In Goldstone, he binds the past to the present through dreams (the stories of his people) and history.
*
“See that bird?! You hit him with the car. Next time, be careful. Look after him. Protect him. They need more time to understand. But when you need ‘em, they save your life. They’ll find the water, just middle-o-nowhere in the desert. Clean water too [laughs]. Yep.”
– Jimmy
Over the course of his investigation, Jay comes to know Josh (Alex Russell), the Mayor’s messenger boy unaware of the flagrant abuses of power that surround him. The relationship between Jay and Josh is one of begrudging fraternity. Josh is young, on the cusp of manhood, taking his lead from the misguiding forces of the power brokers of Goldstone. He’s a pawn to the grandmotherly patronization of the town’s Mayor and soft towards the quirky, eccentric exterior of Johnny, whose flagrant offers to line Josh’s pockets seem so innocent and easy that deflecting them is somehow poor manners. When Josh becomes the messenger boy for the Mayor, he’s not the referee in a combat sport outlining a fair contest; it resembles the colonial beginnings of the country, one whose reflexive behavior is to perform the hierarchy of a prison.
Jay Swan’s Indigenous cop is an outlier in a disenfranchised Indigenous population. He carries the weight of his profession’s statistical bias against Indigenous Australians; as he’s driving through Indigenous neighborhoods, he can’t escape apprehensive looks filled with unease and betrayal. Jay’s role in the police places him squarely between protecting his communities and upholding the law. Decades of over-policing, overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in prison, and harassment from peers leading up to accreditation make the position fraught, and his character’s perspective key. Jay’s listen first and talk less approach helps him navigate the complexities of the world. He represents a horrific statistic: that despite making up only 2 percent of Australia’s population, 33 percent of the full-time adult prison population are Indigenous. In Allanah Hunt’s piece published in IndigenousX in May 2024, she outlines how “not one police officer was ever convicted of murder, manslaughter or even negligence at the bare minimum in relation to these deaths. In fact, in the history of Aboriginal deaths in custody, not one police officer has ever been held accountable.” Despite 99 deaths in custody between 1980-1989, Hunt catalogues “an anthology of victim-blaming and presumed police innocence.”
Russell’s Josh provides the perfect contrast to Jay. Unlike Jay, who in Mystery Road found a way to be a bridge between the communities that he serves and the law, Josh is ill-equipped to navigate the treacherous waters of working within an Indigenous community he doesn’t understand and alongside a mining group that is willing to suffocate him with money to look the other way. Jay antagonizes Josh and makes him aware that what’s happening is happening on his watch.
*
“I show you something…what you really came here for. Don’t worry not far, that way…”
– Jimmy
Sen’s action direction is cinematic calligraphy. As Jay’s presence accelerates the investigation, inspiring and awakening Josh to duty, Furnace Creek reacts. When Jay drives his car along an empty road, a two-man gun team tries to take him out. Sen’s camera doesn’t panic, the tension ratcheting up. The cars speed up alongside each other and ram into one another. The metal bodies bash and dent, and the expanse allows the drivers to barely maintain control. The distances stretch, and the obstacles take time to encroach, heightening and exploiting our impatient anticipation. As Jay intervenes to save Josh’s life from a batch of biker assassins, Sen largely stays in Jay’s rifle scope, steadily breathing, winging bad guys to allow Josh to escape. In the shootout that closes the film, the camera is graceful, floating to appreciate the synchronicity of trained police gunfighters as they snake through the building’s treacherous blindspots to take down a gang of foes.
Following the home entertainment release of Goldstone, I spoke with Sen, who felt satisfied that the film’s themes were getting out there “in an artistic but digestible way.” Sen’s creative pursuit has been towards “getting the themes and the accessibility at the same time.” Sen called Pedersen’s Jay “a dynamic vehicle to show the many facets of this country as it relates to the Indigenous experience. The police story is always there; you can get into the issues that surround Indigenous issues as much as you like because [Swan’s] part of the Indigenous world and part of the establishment. And you can make a film about land rights as a police investigation story.”
In the set piece finale of the film, Jay takes Josh’s car and races towards the airstrip. Jay had previously stumbled upon the airstrip’s existence to see the changeover between trafficked Chinese girls; now he knows it’s being used for Johnny’s escape. As he races to the plane, the imposing figure of the head henchman, Bear (Aaron Fa’aoso), stands firm. Bear unleashes a stream of fire at Jay’s vehicle, causing it to flip and stop its pursuit. With an assault rifle in hand, Bear stalks up to Jay, lurching out the car window. Wheezing and stiff, ignoring his injuries as best he can, Jay struggles through the dirt to gather his gun. Bear recognizes an ongoing fight. Something happens. This giant, powerful Torres Strait Islander man—plucked out of the photographs in the opening montage, so far compliant to a contemporary colonizer, dehumanizing both men for the film’s duration—chooses to observe Jay’s determination. For Jay, there’s no plea, backward step, or thought of self-preservation. They see each other. Bear turns away. Jay opts not to take him down. Jay cranes his physically broken, psychologically traumatized body to the arcing flight of the light aircraft, charting the escape route of this architect of sexual slavery, corruption, and death get away. There he stands, swaying in defiance.
As Jay makes his way out of town, he’s still battered. Off into the sunset, he catches a feather clinging to his windshield wiper despite the lapping breeze. He heeds Jimmy’s reminder, and sets off on a detour. Gulpilil’s singing echoes in the ancient reverberant cavern of rocks. Sen’s score fuses itself to the very pattern of your breath, the beating of your heart. Jay’s face, while taking this journey alone, is pained.
In the final shot of Goldstone, Sen’s camera sits where the rock face is, the rock art, the symbols of ‘Dreaming.’ We’re not looking at the pictures; we’re looking at Jay. The emotional entanglement is overwhelming. It’s seconds, but it could be years, millennia. Seven stages of grief over a daughter lost, a marriage dismantled. Weary beyond understanding that his life’s purpose is to endure and face the horrors that humanity inflicts upon one another. The loneliness that those fleeting connections he makes with guiding older men like Jimmy are universally designed to be snatched away. He stands at this intergenerational, spiritual tuning fork, and we’re graced to bear witness as he comes treacherously close to breaking. His chest heaves. Sen chooses the frame-perfect moment to cut to the black title card. He permits Jay to break, knowing we’ll never see it.
As Maria shares at Jimmy’s funeral, this is Jay’s land; he belongs to it. Now, Jay carries the messengers from his ancestors.