1. Source:

The script was written by Scott Hicks, who also acted as producer and director on the film. The script editor, Jan Sardi, would later co-write the screenplay for Shine with Hicks.

2. Cast

Sales agent Beyond's press book provided these details on the casting of the film:

More than 700 teenage boys were auditioned for the title roles. 

The first was Jeremy Angerson,and the last was Alexander Bainbridge. 

Now, in Scott Hicks' film they are, respectively, the Sparrow and Sebastian. Hicks is a believer in John Huston's maxim that to cast well is 70% of the director's task.

Casting for Sebastian and the Sparrow took a period of four months across the whole of Australia. The challenge was to find two 15 year old boys with no prior experience, but with the talent to sustain the demanding lead roles of a feature film.

Creative Consultant to the film, Kerry Heysen, spotted Jeremy Angerson spruiking on a hatstall outside the gates to the 1986 Australian Formula One Grand Prix, long before casting was schedule to start. "He was very eye-catching", Hicks says now. "He was drawing a lot of attention to himself, in a huge crowd of people".

His parents were approached, and eventually, he was screen tested. 

"He was tremendously keen. I think he would have 'killed' for the part," says Hicks, "But I couldn't believe the first person we looked at could possibly be right. It was a true case of looking a gift horse in the mouth. After we'd looked at over 700 kids, I realised what a special talent Jeremy has for projecting his personality, and that's what I was looking for - someone natural, not necessarily an actor.

During the months between that initial screen test and the first day of shooting, Hicks' anxieties grew. "I was worried that he would grow up too much before we started shooting. As it happened, we caught him at just the right time."

Jeremy Angerson was 15 when the film was shot. Of Eurasian parentage, he's doing his matriculation year at an Adelaide school. He's a self confessed "sports nut", being proficient in tennis, football, horse-riding, swimming and surfing. On top of that, he's a former Australian Junior roller skating champion, a skill which Hicks wrote into the character of Sparrow after casting Jeremy.

Angerson and Bainbridge are on screen for virtually the entire film. Hicks compliments them now on their remarkable professionalism for a pair of novices.

Alexander Bainbridge was auditioned after his stepfather happened to hear a radio interview with Scott Hicks, whilst riding in a colleague's car on his way to work in Perth. And he was literally the last of more than 700 hopefuls who lined up around the country."He was quite different to my image of Sebastian." Hicks says. "But the second I spoke to him, his face lit up - there was tremendous life and vitality."

"He surprised me with an excellent reading and his screen test confirmed the potential we'd seen initially."

Again, Kerry Heysen was instrumental in the selection; viewing tapes of dozens of screen tests at the Kino Film Company's Adelaide base, she said; "That's Sebastian!" as soon as she first saw Alex's test. 

At school Alexander is in the gifted student's stream, and he performs around Perth as a singer/guitarist. He's 15 years old.

3. Key Crew and Cast:

The Beyond press book also provided these snapshots, frozen in time, for the key cast and crew:

Scott Hicks Writer/Producer/Director:

Scott Hicks worked as an assistant director to directors of the calibre of Peter Weir and Bruce Beresford on several of their films during the late seventies. He directed his first feature film Freedom in 1981, produced by Matt Carroll for the South Australian Film Corporation.

In 1985, Hicks co-wrote and directed the telefeature Call Me Mr Brown for Australia's Network 10, starring Chris Haywood and Bill Hunter. Based on the Qantas bomb hoax of1971, the film caused considerable controversy and earned a nomination as Best Telefeature in the Australian Film Institute Awards.

Scott had already won an AFI Award for his work as director of the short drama One Last Chance in 1984. A short film for children Family Tree, which he wrote and directed, also enjoyed success, winning a Silver Medal at the 1985 International FIlm and TV Festival of New York, and the ATOM Award as Best Children's Narrative for 1986.

His work has included a number of television commercials for national campaigns and several rock clips, most notably a series of three which helped to launch rock band INXS on their successful international career.

Scott Hicks' latest feature film Sebastian and the Sparrow- which he wrote, produced and directed - was invited to the Swedish Film Festival, and opened the Adelaide Film Festival in November 1988. The screenplay was nominated as 'Best Children's Screenplay' by the Australian Writers' Guild. In July 1989, the film won the Gold Medal in competition at the Giffoni Film Festival, Italy.

In 1988-89, Scott directed and co-wrote the four hour documentary mini-series The Great Wall of Iron, about the People's Liberation Army of China, a Beyond International - BBC co-production.

Scott Hicks has a number of projects in development, including a film based on the life of David Helfgott, a former child prodigy pianist who spent a tragic decade in psychiatric institutions before emerging from the shadows to play once again on the concert platform in1984.

Much has happened in Hicks’ career since the failures of Freedom and Sebastian and the Sparrow, and he has a relatively detailed wiki here which covers his subsequent, much more successful career.

Anni Browning Production Designer:

Anni Browning's credits include Art Director on George Miller's stylish and influential Mad Max 3, and also The Coca Cola Kid. She was assistant Art Director on Peter Weir's widely-acclaimed Gallipoli, and last year she was Production Designer on the thriller telemovie Coda. She has numerous other credits in the art, production and props areas, including Peter Weir's The Plumber, Bruce Beresford's The Money Movers, and Scott Hicks' Freedom.

Browning would later move on to becoming managing director of completion guarantor Film Finances Australasia.

David Foreman Lighting Cameraman:

David Foreman's recent credits are as Director of Photography on the feature films Fever and The Dreaming, as well as the telefeature "Coda”. He has acted as Camera Operator on a number of features, including An Indecent Obsession and Playing Beatie Bow. He has worked extensively with Scott Hicks on award-winning short dramas, documentaries and rock clips, with his work being recognised more than once by the Australian Cinematographers Society. His extensive experience in the camera department stems from such films as Beresford's Breaker Morant (shot by leading cinematographer Don Macalpine), The Survivor (shot by John Seale), as well as the mini-series Cowra Breakout and Vietnam.

Robert Coleby: 

Robert plays Peter Thornbury, Sebastian's father - puzzled by his son's curious behavior and grappling with a successful career which threatens to alienate him from his family...

One of Australia's most respected performers, Robert Coleby is well-known in both Australia and the UK for his film, television and stage work. He has featured recently in two CBS Network Movies of the Week, The Blue Lightning and Now and Forever; on Australian television he is recognised for his long running roles in Rush, Chopper Squad, Patrol Boat and Carson’s Law. He played leading roles in The Anzacs and For the Term of His Natural Life. On British television, he's appeared in New Scotland Yard, John Halifax Gentleman, King Lear, Hamlet and numerous other productions for the BBC and Thames.

Coleby has a wiki which updates his career here.

Elizabeth Alexander:

Elizabeth plays Sebastian's mother, Jenny Thornbury, busy career woman and mother who finds herself coping largely single-handed, and is finding Sebastian's emergence into adolescence something of a strain. A graduate of the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Elizabeth Alexander has performed onstage in a number of Shakespearian productions, Patrick White's Signal Driver and A Season at Sarsparilla and a host of other productions. A very familiar face to Australian television audiences she's played leading roles in Singles, Ben Hall, Sporting Chance, Special Squad  and The Golden Soak.

In film, she was featured in the Walt Disney Production “Ride a Wild Pony”, played the lead in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. Her latest work finds her starring opposite Tom Conti in the forthcoming Two Brothers Running. 

Alexander has a reasonably detailed wiki here.

Vincent Gil (also Gill): 

Vincent plays the role of Mick the street pastor, in Sebastian and the Sparrow.His craggy face has adorned many Australian films and television series for the past decade.To international audiences, he is most recognised for his sinister character the Night Rider in the original Mad Max by George Miller. More recently he is featured in Fred Schepsi' Evil Angels, starring Meryl Streep and Sam Neil.

At time of writing, Gil had only a wiki stub here.

John Clayton also appears in a minor role (wiki stub here) and the film is also notable for featuring a few of director Hicks' family, including the then young Jethro Heysen-Hicks as the youngest in Sebastian's family, and step-son Scott Heysen (seen only in wide shot from above making out on the couch).

4. Scott Hicks on the film:

In a more extensive interview, available at Peter Malone’s essential website here, Hicks discussed his early career with Malone, beginning with his first feature Freedom :

Malone: You mentioned the word 'vision'. What was your vision of the film and what themes did you want to explore in the early '80s?

Hicks: It's such a long time ago now. I think at the heart of it there was a character that I liked and that I recognised, someone with enormous frustration - not unintelligent, but obsessed with cars and in some ways constrained by the unemployment experience that was so rife then and indeed is, of course, now. So it was about someone trying to break free and trying to define himself. It had shades of Walter Mitty about it as well.

I used the word 'schizophrenic' before. Freedom was a story that fell into two parts: one was about the whole environment, the whole milieu that Ron had grown up in; the second was about his hitting the road. When he tried to realise his dream, stole the Porsche, found the girl and did hit the road, it became another movie and I don't think those two elements were ever fully reconciled. So you had some people who loved the first half and hated the second and vice versa. When you have that happening with an audience, it's hard for it to jell.

This may be irrelevant, but I was looking for locations for Sebastian and the Sparrow; I drove across the Nullarbor and I stopped at various petrol stations along the way, and twice people said to me as they were pumping petrol into the car, 'So, what are you doing?' I said, 'I'm looking for locations for a film'. 'What have you made before?' 'I made this film called Freedom.' 'Oh, my favourite film!' So there were people out there who really got something from it but, in broad terms, it simply didn't work. Sometimes that happens.

Malone: With Sebastian and the Sparrow you moved from themes of freedom and frustration to something for children and the family?

Hicks: That really came about as my own son entered his teens, my elder son, and I became so forcibly aware, as you do as a parent, that your kids have a life that is quite separate from yours. It's like a secret life in a way, because there's the life they live with you and then there's the life they live with their friends. So the encounter between the rich kid and the street kid had something of that expressed in it. I wanted to explore the idea - it was a kind of junior buddy movie with the theme of two people who envied each other's life. To Sebastian, Sparrow has the perfect life: nobody's on his back, he can do what he likes. It looks like glorious freedom. But to Sparrow the constraints of that life are very real. There is Sebastian with the luxury of a home, a family and a very well-to-do existence which was Nirvana to him. I love the way those thoughts could jostle together.

In part the film becomes a road movie too, because they go and search for the street kid's mother. So, probably, it was the first expression for me of the theme of family, relationship, defining who you are and how you become yourself and how you establish your own identity.

One of the things I wanted to do with Sebastian and the Sparrow was make the kind of film I felt I could go and see with my own son, because I felt that as an early teenager, he was neither in the Rambo category or the Bambi category. There had to be something in between and there wasn't anything filling that niche. I think there was potentially a huge audience for the film, but I simply couldn't get distributors to commit to it and to pick it up properly. Where it played, it received fantastic reactions and at film festivals overseas it won several major prizes for a children's film. I distributed it personally in Adelaide and on its first weekend it out-performed Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanours and Tango and Cash. If only we could've parlayed that into a broader distribution, it would have been a different story, but the fact was that people didn't want to know about what they saw simply as a children's film. That was that.

More to the point perhaps, at least outside South Australia, distributors didn’t want to know about what they saw as a low budget, low quality and insipid children’s film, and that was that.

Hicks would learn his lesson, and later make better use of cast names in Shine and subsequent features. He would also make better use in Shine of the sentimental ending in Sebastian and the Sparrow which sees Sebastian hold his arms aloft in triumph at the end after playing the piano in a school concert.  

Other children’s films have tackled the journey theme - the 1963 Sammy Going South for example - or have gravitas, as with  Spielberg’s 1987 Empire of the Sun, and up against many of these films, Sebastian and the Sparrow appears lightweight, and it’s this which helps explain why it failed to attract marketplace support.

It’s always cruel to say it about a child actor who clearly tried his best, but Alexander Bainbridge as Sebastian simply can’t act very well, especially up against Jeremy Angerson’s Sparrow, and it’s a fatal flaw at the heart of the film’s drama, and therefore its commercial prospects. This isn’t the fault of Bainbridge, so much as the creative team.

5. Date:

The film is routinely dated to 1988, when it was out and about in the marketplace and also had its premiere screening in Australia at an Adelaide festival.

Yet the end credits have a copyright notice of 1989. It’s uncertain as to why this happened - perhaps there were revisions to the film or the end credits roller, or perhaps a year was added on to maintain the film’s perceived freshness and add a little to the copyright life.

In any case, given the film’s dismal commercial performance, it seems of little consequence, this site has broken its usual rule of following the copyright notice in the end credits, and has followed the traditional dating of the film to 1988, the year it was clearly finished and being screened.

6. Music:

The Beyond press book provided this short period CV for composer Allan Zavod:

From Melbourne, Allan Zavod has a formidable international reputation in electronic and experimental music, as well as being a pianist of some note. He has been Professor of Music at Berkley College, Massachussetts (sic), and for six years he toured the world and recorded with Jean-Luc Ponty. He has also recorded with Billy Cobham and played on world tours with Frank Zappa. His film scores include The Time Guardian, and Phillipe Mora's The Howling 3 and Death of a Soldier. In 1987, Allan Zavod won the Asian Song Festival with an original composition performed by noted vocalist Kate Ceberano.

An anti-nuke theme runs through the film as a visual sub-text, and the Midnight Oil song "Read About It" is part of this strand. It is heard in the body of the film and then reappears to run over the end credits. Lyrics for the song as they are heard in the film:

The rich get richer, the poor get the picture

The bombs never hit you when you're down so low

Some got pollution, some revolution

There must be some solution but I just don't know

The bosses want decisions, the workers need ambitions

There won't be no collisions when they move so slow

Nothing ever happens, nothing really matters

No one ever tells me … what am I to know …

So what am I to know ...

You wouldn't read about it, read about it

Just another incredible scene, there's no doubt about it

The hammer and the sickle, the news is at a trickle

The commissars are fickle but the stockpile grows

Bombers keep acoming, engines softly humming

The stars and stripes are running for their own big show

Another little flare up, storm brewed in a tea cup

Imagine any mix up and the lot would go

Nothing ever happens

Nothing really matters

No one ever told me what am I to know …

So what am I to know ...

You wouldn't read about it, read about it

One unjust ridiculous steal, ain't no doubt about it

You wouldn't read about it, read about it

Just another particular deal, ain’t no doubt about it ...

(Then instrumental, which fades over last end credit).

For more details about the soundtrack, see this site’s pdf of music credits.

7. Synopsis:

Sparrow (Jeremy Angerson) is a roller-skating, video game-playing street kid who roams around Port Adelaide’s dock areas.

When he tries to bunk down overnight in a charity clothing bin, some racist punks set the bin on fire …”always said there’s nothing like Asian cooking.”

Sparrow escapes the flames and the punks when the police arrive, siren blazing, and then roller skates away from the cops.

Cut to middle class, braces-wearing Sebastian Thornbury (Alexander Bainbridge) in the bathroom using an electric toothbrush and humming along to music, as his sister Maude (Alice Ramsay) impatiently waits outside.

After scrounging pizza and milk, Sparrow bumps into Sebastian, playing a video game in a corner store.

Sparrow discovers Sebastian is high scoring “Ace”, uses a paper clip to score a free game and cleans Sebastian’s clock as “Zero” …

As Sparrow endures more racial slurs and gets kicked out of the store, Sebastian catches the bus to his posh private school where he plays the piano with the school orchestra, and, distracted by the blonde Emma on flute, misses his entry point.

Meanwhile, Sebastian is being pursued through Port Adelaide streets by streetworker Mick (Vincent Gil).

Turbo (Chris Roberts) arrives in a car and drives off with him.

At school, Sebastian’s science teacher (Patrick Frost) wants to know if there are any problems, while another teacher (Bob Newman) calls him a clown and drags him off the field for wearing odd socks while playing centre half in a game of hockey.

Later, Sebastian rides up on his bike when the cops are hassling Sparrow about sitting in a tinnie, and pretends the boat is his, and Sparrow’s his cousin.

As an eight rows past, Sparrow yells “college poofters” at them, and then drops Sebastian at his plush West Lakes home where dad Peter Thornbury (Robert Coleby) has just arrived.

Sparrow peers through the window at this alien rich world where Maude is indulging in channel-hopping to the irritation of her mum Jenny Thornbury (Elizabeth Alexander).

Dad asks Sebastian about his problems at school, but Seb says he’s not going to a psychiatrist.

After Sebastian complains about the socks, his dad says he’s getting bored with his attitude, and Sebastian says he’s bored shitless and storms off.

Later Sparrow surprises Seb and he falls into the pool, bemusing his father, who asks the sodden Seb if everything is okay, before returning to Jenny to wonder about his son in the water up to his neck with all his clothes on.

Seb smuggles Sparrow into his room, and when Sparrow marvels “some room”, Seb offers to exchange it for Sparrow’s freedom any day.

Sparrow: “Give me the quiet life any day.”

“Quiet life? It’s a morgue and you’re welcome to it.”

Seb puts the Sparrow in the attic, and his dad catches him rapping the ceiling with a hockey stick to keep Sparrow quiet.

At Jenny’s urging, dad wants a heart to heart about having to be away again, but Seb is cool with it and goes on with his oral French lesson.

Next morning dad gets out the possum trap for the noises in the roof, but Seb takes charge of the cage.

The family leave, and Sparrow is left alone to put on Midnight Oil (the song is repeated over the end titles) and skate around the house, as a montage of activities unfolds.

Jenny returns home as Sparrow’s indulging in a bubble bath, producing a bum joke as he ducks under water for cover, while Sebastian frantically pedals home, and substitutes in the bathroom, with Jenny berating him about his room being a bomb shelter.

Then Sparrow turns up at the door in private school clothes and invites himself in for the night.

Over dinner Maude tries to recall where she’s seen Sparrow, who’s eating habits are a little bold.

Later in Seb’s bedroom, Sparrow admires his Polaroids of graffiti and says they were done by a mate of his, 'Didi' (phonetic spelling, name not in credits which attribute “Skee” as the graffiti artist).

Seb puts on his French oral lesson, and ducks out to roam Port Adelaide at night with Sparrow.

Mick catches up with them and grabs Sparrow, saying they’ve got to talk.

Sparrow breaks free and runs, then as Mick tries to explain it’s a shelter, not a prison, Sparrow dives into the water and swims away.

When he emerges, he shouts to Mick that his foster family didn’t care about him, they just wanted the bloody welfare subsidy.

Mick catches his attention by saying his mother called around, and tells the sceptical Sparrow she’s split up with Red. Mick urges him to sort it out - “you can’t spend the rest of your life running away from everything.”

Sparrow pretends he isn’t interested and doesn’t want to see his mother. He says he’ll think about it.

Seb persuades Sparrow to return home to sleep and Sparrow broods about his mother. The next morning, Sparrow tells Sebastian he wants to find out about his mother, see if she’s really been around.

Sebastian wants to come - skip school and live dangerously.

Sparrow doesn’t want him, but they end up in an abandoned warehouse space, home to Turbo (Chris Roberts) and drug-drowsy Didi. Sparrow says Didi’s going to kill himself and when Turbo spots Seb perving on his girlfriend, he tells him he doesn’t belong around there.

Turbo demands Seb take a Polaroid, and then leaving the junk-laden Didi behind, it’s off to the salt plains to the north of Adelaide as the pair cycle to a run-down rural property.

Seb discovers marijuana plants in the glass house, and takes a Polaroid, only to turn to see a double-barrelled shotgun pointed at him.

It’s Red (Peter Crossley), who confirms to Sparrow that the bitch has pissed off then when Sparrow threatens to call the clops, slaps him around, and turns on Seb - who picks up the shotgun and invites him to go ahead, “make my day”.

When Red says it isn’t loaded, Seb points it at the glass ceiling and blasts a hole through it, setting off the sprinkler system.

Throwing the gun in a water-filled keg, the pair race away.

Back in town, Seb talks to Mick, and the pair scarper before Mick can catch up with Sparrow - Seb realises he’s about to miss a rehearsal, then says ‘fuck it’ and returns to help Sparrow find his real father.

Walking through a cemetery near Holden’s Adelaide factory, Sparrow fills in the back story of his life and his board-making surfer dad, and his mum always wanting to go back to where they lived out west.

Sparrow looks at the grave of Martin (Phantom) Walker, accidentally killed July 20th 1982, beloved husband of Binh and father to his little Sparrow.

When told it’s the town of Cactus, Seb says that’s bloody miles.

At the rehearsals, Amanda takes Seb’s place at the piano.

When Seb’s family arrives, his anxious teacher asks if Sebastian’s alright, and the parents discover he hasn’t been at school all day.

They return home - the police tell them because he’s left a message on the fridge that he’s OK, he’s not a missing person.

The kids bunk down in sewerage pipes prior to making the trip out west, but no one stops when they try to hitchhike, except for Turbo, who pulls up in a gull-wing car.

They arrive at a service station, Seb tries to call home and gets an engaged signal, Sparrow shoplifts some energy chocolate and then a cop car pulls up behind the stolen car.

Turbo hides in a portable toilet, then the workers emerge and drive away with it, while the cops discover Seb’s bag and his Polaroid piccies.

A truckie catches the kids as they try to clamber into the back of his rig, and he suggests it’s more comfortable up front.

Seb’s in mourning for losing his life-support system, but Sparrow tells him it’s good for him to travel light.

Hiding in the rig’s sleeping berth, Seb says it was a wild goose chase, and he shouldn’t have come, they’re not going to find her …

Sparrow tells him to go home and Seb gets out of the truck as the truckie asks if he’s changed his mind.

Then as the truck pulls away, it stops, and Sparrow emerges and trudges back to him, explaining it was going the wrong way.

When Sparrow remembers his skates, Seb says he shouldn’t be so materialistic.

Thunder announces rain, and they race across to the garage.

Meanwhile, the cops are showing the parents Seb’s things, and revealing they were found in a stolen car.

The detective sergeant (Brenton Whittle) spots a poor snap of Seb while Maude reveals where she first saw Sparrow.

Cut to the boys in a car atop a two decker car-moving semi rig.

Dad heads off to the corner store and the owner explains about Zero and Ace, and Maude is also sprung when a kid rocks up and asks to bot a smoke.

The owner suggests the kids’ shelter, the dog pound for all the riff raff.

Dad says he’s cancelled Melbourne as mum almost breaks down reading a bed time story (Possum Magic) to Jethro (Jethro Heysen-Hicks).

Back in the car, Sparrow is admiring a photo of the blonde in the school orchestra. When Seb explains she plays the flute, Sparrow asks “is that when you put your lips together and blow?”

Seb says it’s not like that, he can never talk to her. If only he could get her to look at him, and start a conversation. It’s like he doesn’t exist, but then maybe after this, it’ll be like the silent hero returns.

Seb asks Sparrow if he’s ever done it, and Sparrow says heaps of times.

No bullshit? asks Seb and Sparrow admits two or three …

“So? What’s it like?”

“It’s alright. No big deal.”

Seb jokes “No big deal huh? This month, sex, it’s over-rated. Our interview with Sparrow. You sound like something out of Cleo.”

“Oh you sound like you’re jealous.”

“Who me? Nah, I’ve just got a more mature attitude for my age. I’m not obsessed. I mean, when it comes to the opposite sex, I could take it or leave it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Doesn’t mean I’m gay or anything.”

“Did I say that?”

“Yeah, I know, but I just wouldn’t have wanted you to think …”

Sparrow (interrupting): “Do us a favour Seb?”

Seb: “Like what?”

Sparrow (rolling over): “Shut up and go to sleep.”

Morning as the truck rocks through the desolate countryside, the parents turn up at the shelter and meet Mick.

Sparrow wakes to find Seb sticking up through the sun roof of the car imagining he’s flying.

Mick reckons they’ve gone to find Sparrow’s mum, as the naked boys race across the sand into the ocean and frolic together in the waves.

Later they tear apart Seb’s school jacket and tumble down a large sand dune.

After Sparrow reveals he ate all the chocolate, they finally arrive at a desolate beach shack, where they discover a tattered “when will they ever learn” anti-nuke poster. 

Seb notices a photo on the fridge - it’s the rest of the photo that Sparrow has carried with him, showing his dad, and they join the image of dad and mum together.

Around a fire that night, Seb wishes there was a phone to let his parents know he’s okay.

The next morning, Seb tries to get a car to start so he can head back to the town to call.

Sparrow helps but the car breaks down - Seb hadn’t checked the water, and a tyre went flat, and Sparrow blames him for wanting to call his stupid family.

Seb berates Sparrow’s mum for deserting him and suggests she’s probably shacked up with some other bloke.

An angry Sparrow lashes out at him, and when he rolls him on his tummy on the dirt, Seb loses his contact lens.

Sparrow: “You’re pissweak. You always were.”

Seb throws his jacket after him, and Sparrow throws his stinking jumper back at him.

“Didn’t stink before,” retorts Seb. “They’re my socks too klepto.”

Sparrow takes off the socks, and hurls them at Seb, then begins to walk away.

When Seb asks “anything else?”, Sparrow unzips his pants and gives him a moon job with his bottom, then walks away. When Seb asks about the bloody car, Sparrow shouts back it’s not a car, it’s a heap of shit.

Seb starts driving the clapped-out car, and country a cop (John Clayton) in a 4WD comes up alongside him and pulls him over, then points out the tyre’s a bit soft. “Looks like you ran out of rego just after you were born.”

Seb says he’s 18, produces a card for Mick’s shelter as his driver's license, and the cop tells him to get out.

Seb leans over the car, arms extended, and claims he has the right to remain silent, etc.

Meanwhile, Sparrow trudges along the road.

In the cop shop, the country cop is on the phone, explaining Seb’s not talking, says he wants a lawyer, as Seb languishes in a cell.

The cop jokes that if he doesn’t watch out, he’s going to need one.

Then the cop puts in a call to Mick, and lets Seb out.

There’s someone to see him. It’s Mick, with Sparrow’s mum, and he wants to know what the hell he’s doing there and where’s Sparrow.

Cut to the ocean and Sparrow watching the waves.

The cop’s paddy wagon drives up to the shack. 

Seb gets out and looks for Sparrow, then returns to the cop car to tell Sparrow’s mum there’s no sign of him.

The mother walks into the shack, explores and discovers Sparrow.

She gently touches Sparrow, and they hug.

Seb sees them and cries, Sparrow smiles and says “This is my mum.”

Cut to the school concert and Seb behind the piano, pleased parents watching, as the flute-playing blonde smiles at Seb, and he ends the concert with his arms raised in triumph.

The image freezes and end credits roll over black, accompanied by the Midnight Oil song heard earlier ...