The film was made and released about twenty-five years after its source novel of the same name by Morris West had been first published in 1960 and about twenty-eight years after the book had been first written by West in 1957.
Prior to this picture, the movie's source novel "The Naked Country" by Morris West had been optioned many times, but never made.
This motion picture's opening title card read: "Northern Queensland, Australia 1955".
Actor John Jarratt played a character named Mick Conrad. Jarratt would later play a famous fictional outback serial killer with the same first name, Mick Dundee, in Wolf Creek (2005) and Wolf Creek 2 (2013).
Penultimate theatrical feature film directed Australian director Tim Burstall whose final cinema movie would be Kangaroo (1986) made and released a couple of year later.