Pat Edwards (author of the original story) was kind enough to grant the rights to turn her story into a short film. The first step was to translate the children's book into a filmable document or a film script. Before starting this process, Phil researched the original Speewah yarns . He also spent time out in the country working on a sheep farm and watching how people on the land behaved and spoke.

Above: Gus and Sam battle through a sheep carcass during a terrible duststorm

After that was finalised, the script editing phase of the writing began. Phil worked with Luke Eve (producer) to continue developing the film script. After a while, Luke and Phil took the project to Billy Marshall-Stoneking.

The trio would then meet and discuss the script, make notes and Phil would go and do rewrites to discuss again at their next meeting.

Some elements from the book were changed to better suit the medium of film, and some of the old myths about the Speewah and Crooked Mick were reintroduced to the story. After several meetings it was felt the script was ready. The film then went into pre-production.