Peter Weir had wanted to make a film about the Gallipoli campaign since visiting Gallipoli in 1976 and discovering an empty Eno bottle on the beach. He wrote an outline of the script and gave it to David Williamson to turn into a screenplay. The script went through many variations, the South Australian Film Corporation did not like an early draft and said they did not want to fund the film, which then had a proposed budget of A$4.5 million. In May 1979 Weir asked Patricia Lovell to produce. The script then began to focus on the story of two runners. Lovell managed to raise $850,000, which was not enough to make the film.