was originally reluctant to work with Wayne and instead cast New Zealand actor Walter Brown. Brown had just appeared on stage in Teahouse of the Autumn Moon. (At one stage American star John Ericson was sought to play the lead role.) Jill Adams was imported from England to play the female lead. Robinson said he cast her on the basis of her performance in Doctor at Sea. She arrived in Sydney on 11 September 1956. Maureen Lanagan was a Sydney model making her first film – Robinson also used models turned actors in The Phantom Stockman and King of the Coral Sea. (He often expressed frustration at what he saw was a lack of good looking young women who could act in Australia.) This was Robert Tudawali's second film role after Jedda. His contract was negotiated by Southern International, Actors Equity and the Department of Native Affairs. In September 1956 he signed to play his role at £40 a week plus a bonus of £50 if the film was televised. Production Jill Adams flew out of Sydney on 13 September 1956 for seven weeks of filming near Alice Springs. Shooting took place in the studio at Bondi and on location near Alice Springs in October and November 1956. Three weeks into filming Robinson and Raffety decided to fire Brown because he seemed "too soft". They offered his role to Tingwell, who declined, and then cast Ken Wayne. Release The film premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in 1958 where the Bulletin called it "the worst film shown" at the festival with "a cheap, improbable story... crudely acted and edited, lapsing at times into absurd cliches." It did not achieve a general release in Australia and England until 1960. It did not perform well at the box office. According to Raffety's biographer "with television making serious inroads into movie attendances world wide and no Chips Rafferty to exploit for distribution, Dust in the Sun was just another badly made independent cheapie, and gathered its own dust on the shelf for some four years." Lee Robinson later said, "I don't think it was a good script and I don't think that we had a very strong supporting cast and it was the first picture that we had done in which Chips didn't play the lead... I think our mistake there was to make a picture not geared for Chips." Filmink later called