"Sons of Matthew" is a 1949 Australian film directed by Charles Chauvel. The film was shot in 1947 on location in Queensland, Australia and the studio sequences in Sydney. Filming took 18 months to complete, but it was a great success with Australian audiences when it finally opened in December 1949.
"Sons of Matthew" is a legendary film in the history of Australian cinema, partly because of the adverse conditions in which it was made. Maxwell Dunn wrote later in his book "How They Made Sons of Matthew" that, during filming, it was the wettest season in 80 years in Queensland. For UK and US release Universal-International cut the film by 30 minutes, added some American narration and renamed it "The Rugged O'Riordans".
Casting took several months, with most of the actors being unknowns.It was the first lead role for Michael Pate, Wendy Gibb and Ken Wayne. Boxer Tommy Burns was given an important supporting role.
In March 1947 a unit of about 70 people set off for the main location near Beaudesert. Filming coincided with near-constant rain - the first three months of shooting saw only three weeks of weather suitable for filming. Locations sometimes had to be reached by pack horse and foot. A second unit under Carl Kayser was brought out to location to assist production.
After six months on location, the unit moved to the studios of Cinesound Productions in Bondi. They filmed there for two months then returned to Queensland for a further five months. In March 1948 they returned to the Bondi studio and reshot several scenes. Shooting took eighteen months in total. Charles Chauvel then shot an alternative ending in the Blue Mountains. This ending was eventually discarded.
Chauvel had long wished to make a movie about the O'Reilly family, who had settled in the mountains in south east Queensland. In the mid-1940s he bought the rights to two books O'Reilly had written about his family, "Green Mountains" (1940) and "Cullenbenbong" (1944) and announced plans to film them. Grant Taylor was mentioned as a possible star