Saw Beneath Hill 60 today.
It was a very good movie, but unfortunately they completely re wrote the history of the main character to make it a better story.
I'm distantly related to Oliver Holmes Woodward, so i've looked into his actual history.
In the movie they portrait him as a battler from Queensland who charms his men by being 'one of the boys'.
He was in fact the nephew of the richest man in Australia who was a national sporting hero as a top winger for Newington in the GPS Rugby (when that was a big deal in the early part of the century). He had also graduated from Uni in England as a mining engineer, set up one of the first mines in PNG, and was the chief Engineer at Mount Morgan mines, one of the biggest mines in the world.
In later life he was chairman of North Broken Hill for decades.
He was basically the Lachlan Murdoch of his day.
In the movie they go close to telling a few facts about him, like they show he got heaps of white feathers, but they don't say it was because he was seen as a rich bastard getting out of war service (despite his job being essential), or a nationally known sportsman when others were making a big show of joining up.
Anyway, it's a good movie, if you don't mind the real guy being almost the opposite of the movie character.
