Synopsis

Based on the real life experiences of two Aboriginal bands on the road, "Us Mob" and "No Fixed Address", gigging between Port Adelaide and Point Pearce, SA, Wrong Side of the Road is an uncompromising documentation of Rock’n’Roll, life on tour and racism in early 1980s Australia.

Wrong Side of the Road opens with scenes of police breaking up a performance of the two groups, arresting a band member and his subsequent escape from a police vehicle. It continues with run-ins between the musicians and the establishment.

The racism encountered when the bands turn up at a gig and the white hotel manager discovers they are black, the insensitivity of the police and bureaucrats, and the difficulties in tracing one's family after being adopted out ("Stolen Generations"), reflect the problems encountered by many urban Aboriginal people. Wrong Side of the Road (named after a song from Us Mob) reveals the injustices Aboriginal people constantly face.

The thread that runs through Wrong Side of the Road is the story played by Les Graham in the film, of a young man looking for his mother. The film's script comes from the life stories from members of the bands, and people around the bands and at the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music.

They weren't necessarily playing themselves — Les was in fact playing someone else's story in the film.

But if you look at the significance of the Stolen Generations and the way that that has become part of the whole public debate — it wasn't in those days, but that's what that story was about. It was about a kid who had been taken away from his family, and in fact right through the 1970s that was still happening.