Reviews

Legendary Alby never fails to entertain. This slightly more planned adventure starts in with Alby traveling through the middle of Australia whilst promoting and screening his first World Safari to locals. He is joined by a mate and introduces his faithful dog Sam. Early film hijinks involves mostly drunk larrikins in the outback messing around spear fishing, horse riding, and boxing, with one guy getting gored to the bone by a wild boar, but we get to see some footage of genuine aboriginal cowboys throughout. Alby's mate helps him mine for opals in Coober Pedy and he ends up with a handful of rare rocks that he hopes will fund the new World Safari. He finally finishes the new boat which he names The Gretta Maria and sets sail but almost immediately, one of his ship mates has a 'long fall into shallow water', breaking his neck and leaving him a paraplegic and ultimately dead within a year. The curse of Alby is in high gear from this point on, but as Alby himself seems invincible, he sets sail again but not for long, The Gretta Maria burns and sinks off an island, taking the opals to the bottom of the sea with it. Alby is devastated but is determined to travel, so he sends his dog home and heads for Papua New Guinea. The film becomes increasingly haphazard with random events that will plague this adventure for its entirety. During all this, we see Alby pick up chicks every step of the way, from the Amazon to Peru, and much more, but it is in South America that an Australian model Judy Green is nearly killed when their jeep collides with a bus, leaving Alby with a smashed shoulder and neck injuries. He is completely doped up slurring his way through an interview on the hospital bed explaining how Judy is worse off than he is with severe head injuries. After he slumps slowly back down to rest we see Judy being transported for further medical attention in a stretcher. To add insult to injury Alby arrives home in Australia to find his loyal dog had been shot. A moving little montage of Sams escapades with Alby is shown, accompanied by music. I believe the same music is later used at the end to signify Alby falling in love with a young Michelle that he meets, when a heartfelt goodbye is given and the credits roll as he journeys forth into the unknown on motorbike. Most of the people Alby joins up with in this film become severely injured or dead, but there are many legitimate highlights and rare tribal footage from all over the world, such as the 'smoked dead', which are corpses of loved ones posed on a mountain side. This Safari is much different to the first, plagued with bad luck and Visa problems, but a very real sense of danger. Whether that danger is staged, self imposed by stupidity, bad planning or circumstance is hard to distinguish but is still very entertaining.