The Moth of Moonbi was written, produced and directed by Charles Chauvel, an Australian filmmaking pioneer who was committed to telling Australian stories and developing a local film industry. 

In a career spanned over 30 years, Chauvel produced nine feature films – including the Australian classics Forty Thousand Horsemen and Jedda – and has the distinction of being possibly the only Australian director to have successfully transitioned from silent films to talking pictures to working in television.

The Moth of Moonbi was Chauvel’s directorial debut and was made when he was just 28 years old. The film was based on a 1924 novel, The Wild Moth, by Brisbane author, Mabel Forrest.

Despite limited resources and no organised support for filmmaking in Queensland, Chauvel envisioned an epic story that would capture the rugged natural beauty of the Australian landscape and promote Queensland industry. To achieve this, he adopted a grassroots, DIY approach to producing the film, electing to shoot largely on location in Queensland’s Fassifern Valley, where he had grown up, and enlisting the help of family, friends, and locals in the production. He also integrated scenes of Queensland’s beef industry and railway transport into the film and highlighted the State’s modernity and economic progress by featuring the state capital, Brisbane, in the film’s city scenes.  

Many of these features – an Australian story told on an epic scale; a preference for location shooting; and the melding of drama and scenes of documentary realism – became fixtures of Chauvel’s work and arguably make his films the most recognisable of any filmmaker in the first sixty years of Australian film.