Music by Peter Best

Music Recording AAV Australia Pty. Ltd.Ern RoseRoger SavageMartin Fripp

(NB: the DVD of the film includes the movie score as a standalone extra, running 35'09", though there are no individual cues marked).

In the DVD 'making of', composer Peter Best and director Igor Auzins made some comments about the way the scoring of the film was approached:

Peter Best: The sense of the vastness of the landscape was really significant in the way I approached the score. The situation with musical styles in those days … there was much more freedom, well for me certainly but I suspect for all composers … it was considered to be your line of expertise and you were essentially - obviously directors had views - when I worked with Bruce Beresford and Barry Humphries for instance, they would give me very lengthy lists of operas and piano works and orchestral pieces that they thought everything should sound like and I'd throw them in the bin and ignore them and get on with it - um, in the case of We of the Never Never, Igor, I don't recall him having sort of strong views, right from the outset I thought I wanted to try and make it not sound like a Hollywood piece or an English piece, I didn't want it to sound like a David Lean film … I wanted to try and give it an Australian flavour and I think Igor was very keen on that idea and then he just left me alone and I just got on with it and luckily he was happy...

Igor Auzins: So the choice that Peter made really was in the music, as in everything else in this production, to combine a sense of the European involvement and a sense of the Aboriginal involvement … so you had the substantial use of didgeridoo sounds for example in amongst orchestral sounds and sort of some of the rhythms of the kind you ... basic earthy rhythms of his music, which are then sort of taken over by more traditional orchestral sounds, so his music was a wonderful complement to the pictures and the intent of the piece really …

Peter Best: There's a scene where there are brumbies in the yards and the boss is breaking - you know all the old hands think this city guy's bit of an idiot - and he impresses the daylights out of them on a horse. I used a lot of col legno where the string players belt their strings with the back of the bow, with the wood of the bow, and as well as click sticks and didg, and stuff like that, and there's a vigour and a liveliness in that, but mostly the music was conveying alienation, separation, sadness, you know there's a bit of joy in the film but mostly they're kind of lost …

Composer Peter Best

Peter Best cut his feature film teeth as a composer by working with feature film producer Phillip Adams on the low budget experimental 1970 drama Jack and Jill: a postscript.

Best went on score the two Barry McKenzie films, produced by Adams.

Best would become one of the major contributors to the revival of screen music in Australia, with scores for films such as Muriel's Wedding, the first two Crocodile Dundees and Bliss. He has also had a successful career in the advertising game.

He did several scores for Tim Burstall's films, starting with the score for Burstall's The Child episode of the four part portmanteau feature Libido, followed by Petersen and then End Play.

Best had taken a break from composing for the screen after doing the SAFC telemovie The Sound of Love in 1978, but after doing We of the Never Never in 1982, he followed with Goodbye Paradise, the Alex Stitt animation Abra Cadabra, Rebel, The More Things Change, and then in 1986, Crocodile

Dundee.

Best has a short (at time of writing) wiki here, and he should not be confused with the original drummer for The Beatles.

(Below: Peter Best)

(Below: Best as he appears in the DVD 'making of')

The score was released on an LP:

Adams Packer Film Productions. 1982. Director: Igor Auzins. Music: Peter Best. LP (stereo) Festival L-37932 1982 Gatefold.Music Composed, Arranged and Produced by Peter Best All (P. Best)

SIDE 1:Opening Theme (1'56")Crossing The Creek (1'28")The Journey Begins (1'38")The New House (2'19")The Maluka Rides A Horse (2'09")Tears In The Tent (0'58")Jeannie Alone (1'23")Bathing The Goannas (2'48")The Muster (2'04")Sunset In The Never Never (0'20")

SIDE 2:We Of The Never Never (3'51") Vocals: Steven Wade.The Stockmanʼs Funeral (2'02")A Walk In The Grass (0'45")The Wagons Arrive (1'13")Misunderstandings (0'34")Goggle-Eye Is Dead (1'10")Aeneas Loves Jeannie (0'22")Jeannie And The Birds (1'14")Poor Jeannie (1'33")Farewell To The Maluka (1'14")Instrumental Theme (2'55")

A 45 was also released:

45 (stereo) Festival K-8911 1982Composed, Arranged and Produced by Peter Best

Side A: We Of The Never Never (3'35") (Edited version) (P. Best) (P. Best) Vocals: Steven Wade

Side B: Instrumental Theme (2'55") (P. Best) (P. Best)

The main closing theme also turned up on an assortment of Australian movie themes, as in this Phonogram/ABC 1992/1995 CD compilation:

The music also turned up in a 1M1CD1012 pressing which is now rare and expensive, which combined Philippe Sarde's work for Devil in the Flesh with Best's score for We Of The Never Never:

Track listings and other details were at 1M1 here at time of writing. The track list and timings appear as for the LP above.

The site provided this accompanying pitch:

This is a very rare soundtrack recording.

The great Philippe Sarde whose memorable scores for Quest for Fire and Pirates haunt the memories of film music enthusiasts, was asked to write a score for an Australian film based on a stunning French novel, Le Diable au Corps. The story is transposed into Australia during World War II by writer-director Scott Murray. The music enhanced the powerful and unsentimental aspects of the original novel to a film about the moving love story of sexual discovery. The score provides the basis for this exploration of young love, and an immature boy's discovery of desire, and finally an understanding of his sexual longings.

We of the Never Never is one of Australia's great films. Based on the autobiography of Aeneas Gunn, who travels from the comforts of the city to the barren Australian outback, this film has one of the all time great Australian scores, composed by Peter Best, with a theme that is so breathtaking in its beauty that not only does it sum up the great Australian outdoors, but it provides the most lyrical and transcendental statement of the paradox of the beauty of the Australian landscape and its inherent loneliness.