Chips Rafferty

Shearer, roo shooter, drover, opal miner, boundary rider, screen idol. Chips Rafferty, at six foot six inches and ‘lean as a dingo’ seemed unlikely as an early Australian Hollywood star. His acting style closely reflected the man himself - irreverent and with a wry wit. Rafferty was, on and off the screen, the embodiment of the Australian bushman - a bit of a larrikan, resourceful and self-reliant in a time when the post-war world needed every-day heroes.

John William Goffage (‘Chips’ to his school mates) was the son of a miner. Born in Broken Hill in 1909 as the ‘Big Strike’ triggered ongoing conflict between unions and mining companies, the lockouts and hardship in the first two years of his life would have hit his family hard. The Goffages moved on and settled in Sydney where Chips learned to surf and box, and he started painting in water colours and writing poetry which he sold to several Sydney publications.

Chips Rafferty was offered his first role as an extra when he was thirty and living on a boat in Sydney Harbour. He probably met Cinesound director Ken G. Hall at the Black & White Club at Circular Quay, a haunt of bohemians, actors, and artists where Rafferty was a regular drinker. Hall, who gave him his first role as an extra, immediately saw raw talent. His break came when he landed a lead role as a soldier in Forty Thousand Horsemen, a WWI film. His life and his film career seemed to run parallel, because Australian troops were already fighting in the Middle East when the film came out.

Rafferty enlisted in the Air Force. He was permitted to film while on leave and his next starring role was in The Rats of Tobruk, about the Gallipoli campaign. It was The Overlanders that made him an instant star. Rafferty plays a drover who drives 1000-head of cattle from Wyndham in Western Australia to Rockhampton in Queensland, around 1200 miles, to prevent them from being captured by the Japanese. At the height of his career, he was called the Australian Gary Cooper.

Chips Rafferty starred in over forty films in the U.S. and Australia and produced many more until he died unexpectedly at the age of 62. His last film was the classic Wake in Fright, filmed in his hometown of Broken Hill. The perfect swan song. Wake In Fright was the first of many major cinema releases filmed on location in Broken Hill, making the town and its atmospheric desert landscape into a destination for film producers. Chips Rafferty, legend of the Australian screen, is Broken Hill’s own.

Audio transcript available.