We cross these roads every day, but what lies beneath the bitumen?

Jenna Rain Warwick’s father used to work on the roadways. It was a tough, labour-intensive job, and the pungent smell of freshly poured bitumen would cling to him. When driving, he would sometimes point out the roads he’d helped construct.

Growing up on Kabi Kabi country in south-east Queensland and Kuku Yalanji Country in far north Queensland, Warwick recalls how, on long family road trips, her Luritja mother would tell her own highway stories, about the Country they were on and how the routes were once used. “We’d stop so my mother and I could get out to look for middens.”

Warwick is now a First Nations curator at ACMI and recently finished making Beneath Roads, a short, three-channel video work that explores connections between ancient Aboriginal pathways, contemporary highways and Australian road movies.

Her research revealed that some highways, roads and paths are built on top of ancient walking, trading and songline routes. Those routes, she says, were often exploited to transport natural resources, connect infrastructure and advance colonialism.

While she loves Australian cinema, and the trope of the outback road movie, she laments what she calls “this kind of purposeful voiding … how general knowledge doesn’t recognise these histories”. And she thinks about what is missing for First Nations people watching those films.

Beneath Roads, screening at ACMI from June 25, takes in historical footage about Australia’s road-making, plus new footage of the Southern Warriors Aboriginal Motorcycle Club. The bikers, from Victoria, are known for their community support work, and headed up the 2022 funeral procession for singer and activist Archie Roach.

Warwick’s installation also includes clips from Indigenous-themed road movies such as Ivan Sen’s Beneath Clouds (2002), Backlash (1986) and Stone Bros (2009). In Sen’s film, Lena (Dannielle Hall) and Vaughn (the late Damian Pitt) travel mostly by foot. In one scene included in Beneath Roads, a farmer yells at them to get off his land. Vaughn responds angrily: “Your land? This ain’t your land; you stole this f---in’ land.”

Non-Indigenous Australian road movies – from Roadgames (1981) and the Mad Max films to The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) – are diverse. Among those that most interested Warwick are Wake in Fright (1971), The Overlanders (1946), Kiss or Kill (1997), The Goddess of 1967 (2000), Running on Empty (1982), In Search of Anna (1978), Quigley Down Under (1990) and Travelling Light (2003). Their themes of alienation, isolation and outlaws often borrow from the tradition of US road movies.

The documentary footage in Beneath Roads blithely promotes modern highway construction, but fails to extend this history very far into the past: “In 50 years, roads have developed from bush tracks to highways and freeways,” one voiceover declares. Some of the most telling documentaries Warwick viewed during her research were made by the Country Roads Board (now VicRoads).

“I was searching for what people’s thinking was back then, about how these roads were made, the people visualising them and how they were being talked about,” Warwick says. Some referred to roads being built over old cattle tracks, “but they were actually Aboriginal walking tracks”.

Warwick also examined books such as Peter Kabaila’s High Country Footprints, which explores the long history of tracks in the High Country of south-eastern Australia. Kabaila, an archaeologist, describes how, long before horse-drays and then motorised vehicles began penetrating the High Country, it was crisscrossed by ancient Aboriginal foot-tracks. These pathways changed as explorers, stockmen, miners and others struggled to traverse the challenging terrain. Many ancient tracks, which may have followed those of prehistoric animals, lie directly beneath modern highways.

Aboriginal people, Kabaila writes, rarely consulted the sun or stars to determine location or desired direction, but used their knowledge of Dreamtime tracks, camps and Creation places, recorded in songs and stories, to help them picture the landscape in their minds. “This mental map was developed to such a degree that they had almost total recall of every topographical feature they had ever crossed.”

John Blay’s book On Track: Searching out the Bundian Way includes accounts of how Aboriginal clans showed colonial explorers and squatters ways to go into the continent, most notably by following pathways used for thousands of years. “Following Aboriginal footsteps has been such a rich experience for me,” he writes. “I feel I now see the land with fresh eyes, as though it opened a doorway on how to truly know Australia.”

Warwick explored more contemporary culture and usage when she and a film crew accompanied the Southern Warriors during a January 26 ceremony remapping William Barak’s famed campaign journeys between Coranderrk (near Healesville) and Melbourne’s Parliament House.

“They see themselves as a healing space for Aboriginal men and aim to support the community in different ways,” says Warwick. “They talk about bikes, life experiences and they are not only staunch and strong but loving and kind.”

This footage is sensitively worked into Beneath Roads, reflecting the bigger story that lies beneath Warwick’s initial interest in the ancient history of pathways: that under so much of contemporary Australian culture, there is a vast amount of pre-colonial tradition and storytelling to be exposed and celebrated. “You can’t bury things,” Warwick says. “They will come back.”

Highlights from the journey of Indigenous road movies

Mystery Road (2013): Ivan Sen directs Aaron Pederson, Hugo Weaving, Jack Thompson and Tasma Walton in a story about Detective Jay Swan returning to his outback hometown to investigate the murder of a teenager.

Backroads (1977): Philip Noyce directs Bill Hunter and Gary Foley in a story about two strangers who steal a car and drive around the coast.

Road (2000): Catriona McKenzie’s short film, starring Tim Bishop, Molly Howe and Mary Johnson, follows one night in the lives of four young Aboriginal people in Western Sydney.

Samson and Delilah (2009): Rowan McNamara and Marissa Gibson star in Warwick Thornton’s film about two 14-year-olds living in a remote Aboriginal community who steal a car to escape their difficult lives.

Shit Skin (2003): Nicholas Boseley’s short film, starring Freda Glynn, Kirk Page, Max Stuart and Emily Hayes, follows an Indigenous woman and her grandson as they travel to Central Australia to find long-lost family and the truth about her stolen life.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002): Philip Noyce directs Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, Laura Monaghan and David Gulpilil in a film about three girls trying to get home while being pursued by a tracker.

Sweet As (2022): Directed by Jub Clerc and starring Shantae Barnes-Cowan and Tasma Walton, the film follows Murra, from a troubled family, as she discovers a passion for photography during a youth retreat.

Beneath Clouds (2002): Sen follows two unlikely companions (Dannielle Hall and Damian Pittget) as they travel by foot and car to Sydney.

Top End Wedding (2019): Directed by Wayne Blair, and starring Miranda Tapsell and Gwilym Lee, the film follows Lauren, a lawyer planning to wed her fiance in her hometown, Darwin, who embarks on a road trip to find her mother, who has abruptly left the family.

The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson (2021): Leah Purcell directs and stars in this searing reimagining of Henry Lawson’s classic short story.

Beneath Roads is at ACMI, June 25 -August 25; acmi.net.au