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Alan Battle is a regular Australian farmer until one day his wife Matilda and their two children vanish while on a trip into town. Alan, mad with grief, leaves his farm and takes to the outback and the highways of Australia to try and find them. He doesn’t - instead he finds injustice everywhere and it angers him.

One night he is beaten up by thugs and left for dead in a disused mine shaft in the Glasshouse Mountains. It was this shaft, an ancient ceremonial cave for the father of all the Aborigine tribes, Tibrogargan. It is a place of great power from the beginning of time, and Alan Battle’s near-dead body is taken and inhabited by spirits of that old power.

Battle survives, awakes daubed in ochre and blood. He re-emerges as 'The Battler', possessed of curious powers and intuitions. He can summon the attributes of the dingo and the kangaroo, the emu and the kookaburra. He can move through the night unseen, and blend into the natural world. He is able to live in the Dreaming.

But he now also has a nemesis, The Swagman, who has powers equal to his. As the Battler’s quest unfolds, he realizes that he is living out many of the old Aborigine myths. He represents the path of justice, and the Swagman the path of evil.
 
He also realizes it is the Swagman who abducted his wife and children, and that they may still be alive. He is destined to wander the roads and plains of Australia until he finds them, and to find them he must triumph over the Swagman.  And that final confrontation will determine what powers will prevail in Australia.
 
In the vein of Spiderman and Superman, Australia's Battler has the potential to bring the potency of the world’s oldest mythologies to a hungry, global audience.
 

director: brent chambers
client: flux animation studio
agency: flux animation studio