AFTER a 47-hour flight from home, Everlyn Sampi, a 13-year-old Australian actress, found herself surprisingly close to her roots yesterday.
The teenager arrived in Edinburgh for the gala premiere of her debut feature film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, then left for Glasgow, hoping to meet her great-aunt for the first time.
Although she was raised in an Aboriginal community in Western Australia, Everlyn's paternal grandfather is a native Glaswegian, Maurice McCarron.
Just before his 16th birthday, he went to Yorkhill Quay and stowed away on a ship named the Cameronia, which took him to Australia, where he still lives.
His sister, Jessie McCarron, lives in Glasgow and hopes to meet her young grand-niece for the first time.
''Maurice was a bit of a wanderer,'' Miss McCarron said. ''He always liked to visit people - I was the quiet one. He spread his wings.''
Once his parents had given permission for him to stay down under, Mr McCarron travelled on the west coast, taking work at farms and cattle stations.
''Anywhere there were animals - he was a country lad at heart,'' Miss McCarron said. Eventually, Mr McCarron met and married a local woman, whose name was also Everlyn. The couple had eight children.
The tale of mixed origins is only too relevant to the themes of Rabbit-Proof Fence. A stunningly realised historical epic, it tells the true story of the ''Stolen Generations'' - half and quarter-caste children who were forcibly separated from their Aboriginal families by the Australian government.
This policy - in place from 1905 through to 1970 - was intended to dilute the Aboriginal bloodline until the racial characteristics of the indigenous people were eliminated. Everlyn's mother was one of those Stolen Generations. ''My mum got taken away when she was four, until she was 14,'' her film star daughter said.
The film is based on a book by Doris Pilkington, whose mother Molly fled capture with her younger sister and cousin and travelled 1500 miles on foot to return to her village.
In the film, directed by Philip Noyce (Clear And Present Danger, Patriot Games, Dead Calm), Everlyn Sampi plays Molly. Kenneth Branagh co-stars as A.O. Neville, the government official who instigated the policy.
Shane Danielsen, the Sydney-born artistic director of the Film Festival, spoke of the responsibility of Australians to acknowledge the past. ''This is an issue that has gone unremarked upon in our artistic culture,'' he said.
Rabbit-Proof Fence is screened at the Glasgow Film Theatre on Wednesday at 6.30pm. The documentary Following The Rabbit-Proof Fence is at the UGC, Edinburgh, tonight at 6pm.
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