The cars that ate Paris has always connoted the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe to me, and I guess I expected this to pay some kind of tribute to Goddard. Heh, I couldn't be more wrong.
Like the Barry McKenzie movies, this is a celebration of bogan culture as perceived by the new wave Australian Film Development Corporation (now AFC) elite muppets. Taxpayers in 1974 would have been right to think that socialism is coming, and that it is mediocre and something to be feared; under socialism man acts abominably and the scripts are quite terrible. Thematically we have an Irish stew of lobotomies, experimenting doctors, isolation, Napoleonic tendencies, a tanking economy (a return to bartering), cars, bogans, bogan youths, bogan youths driving cars, and so forth. It is one of those movies where the cast and crew had the most fun.
Sofala itself is quite pretty, and the best shots are of the town from up high. It strikes me now that I don't think I've seen a Peter Weir film I liked.