Within Our Gates
Summary
Amid the burnished mahogany and brass of Melbourne’s Commonwealth Defence Offices, a whisper of betrayal threads itself through the corridors: an Australian clerk—his cradle rocked by the anthems of two warring empires—stands at the crossroads of bloodline and birthplace. Herr Henschell, a silk-hatted merchant whose ledger columns mask a clandestine empire, lures the young man into a velvet trap of gambling IOUs and attic transmitters. Above their heads, copper aerials hum lullabies to the Reich while Anzac transports steam toward the Dardanelles like steel leviathans. Yet the spy’s adopted daughter—her eyes the colour of eucalyptus sap—smuggles love letters to the War Minister’s son, only to stumble across ciphered cables that taste of iron. One midnight, silk kimono flapping like a wounded flag, she sprints through the Fitzroy Gardens to the telephone exchange; switchboards ignite, rifles rattle across Port Melbourne wharves, and soon the same camera that caressed ballroom waltzes now recoils from shell-blasts on Gallipoli’s razorback ridges. Soldiers who once drilled beside the Yarra surge up shelled gullies, their shadows cruciform against the ochre dust, while Turkish machine-guns stitch death into the air like black confetti. In the final flicker, the wireless attic is stormed, the traitor’s cufflinks scatter like spent cartridges, and a girl’s trembling finger points to the horizon where transports dissolve into a blood-red dawn.
Synopsis
The opening scenes are designed to represent the Commonwealth Defence Offices, where the Minister in busily engaged dealing with dispatches from the Imperial Government. There is in the employ of the department, in a responsible position, an Australian born of German parents. He is discovered by a German spy, Herr Henschell, a Melbourne business man, and through being helped out of a card entanglement by the latter's manager he is forced to copy official documents from the War Minister's cabinet. In the spy's house a wireless plant is concealed in an attic. Messages are being received from Berlin, and information dispatched there concerning the movements of the Australian transports. The German spy, however, has an adopted daughter, in love with the War Minister's son, who is about to go to the front. She discovers her father's treachery, and in forms the authorities, who quickly deal with the situation. Throughout the picture the military element is introduced. Soldiers are seen drilling in Melbourne; on board the transports en route to Egypt, and finally storming the heights of Gallipoli. In the first plane the Turks are shown on the hills, and then the actual assault by the Australians takes place. Shells are seen bursting in the water, throwing spray into the air, land mines are exploded, soldiers fall as they rush across the sandy strip and up the rugged cliffs.
