Last Stop Larrimah

The town of Larrimah is about 400 kms south of Darwin in the middle of Australia’s Northern Territory.  Back in the 1970s it was the hub of a thriving Outback community but time and the highway passed it by and gradually it has withered away, leaving a pub and a cluster of 11 fringe-dwelling inhabitants. On December 16, 2017, one of these, Paddy Moriarity, and his dog went missing. They haven’t been seen since.

Debut director Tancred, stumbled on his story on the internet. Although now living in America he was born and grew up in Australia and so had some idea of its potential and was intrigued enough to ring the pub and talk to the proprietor who assured him he would tell him all he wanted to know if Tancred came to Larrimah, which he did not on the trail of a rattling good yarn.  

Although Last Stop Larrimah which was filmed over a five year period is marketed as a true crime documentary there’s no body, no murder weapon, let alone clues, the police don’t seem that interested or even competent and everyone has an idea who the perp was but no-one is willing to say what they know outright. Tancred, however, is more engaged by teasing out the town’s vexed dynamics - a mixture of the famous Aussie bonhomie known as “mateship” and its disturbing underbelly, a potentially violent suspicion or fear of one's neighbours.

With an apparent innate taste for the ironic and no doubt to provide a frame of reference for his American audience Tancred opens his film with a touch of Wild West stylings then introduces us to each of the town’s inhabitants most of them on their last leg and self-medicating with a continuous intake of amber fluid. Via archival footage we meet, Paddy, a blow-hard who arrived in Larrimah some twelve years earlier It all starts cheerily enough with seemingly everyone attesting to what a hail-fellow-well-met chap he was.

As it turns out however there's another side to the story. Relatively soon (in film time) however the tone changes as Paddy is revealed to be a more or less large thorn in the lives of a good many of the townsfolk. With his apparent murder the seams holding the town together start unraveling with some willing to defend Paddy but others avowing their utter hatred for him and, by extension, his supporters who in turn have their theories about who killed Paddy and why.

The result is a Crocodile Dundee (1986) meetsWake in Fright (1970) portrayal of a disappearing Australia, a deftly constructed and serendipitously entertaining revelation of what really goes into the Great Australian Meat Pie (an allusion to the infamous barber-cum-baker, Sweeney Todd, feels only slightly overplayed). If you know those films, and the bygone ethos they embody you should enjoy Last Stop Larrimah which for many of the town,s occupants is, or will be literally their last stop.

Tancred brings down the curtain with hope for the town’s survival but even if it does you’ll never see the likes of its current residents again.

 

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