Mystery Road

Mystery Road is a 2013 Australian crime film with neo-Western elements and setting, written and directed by Ivan Sen. It was screened in the Special Presentation section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. A film sequel entitled Goldstone was released in 2016, and TV series in 2018, all featuring Aaron Pedersen as the brooding Indigenous Australian detective Jay Swan. Plot Near the rural town of Winton, Queensland, a truck driver finds the body of a teenage Aboriginal girl named Julie Mason inside one of the drainage culverts under the road. Newly promoted Aboriginal Detective Jay Swan, recently returned from training in the city, investigates the murder. He learns that Julie used to exchange sex with truck drivers for money. He attempts to question another local Aboriginal girl, Tarni Williams, who was friends with Julie, but she refuses to speak to him. A boy gives Jay Julie's phone, which has several text messages to Jay's teenage daughter, Crystal. He visits his ex-wife, Mary, and speaks to Crystal. Jay searches a farm near where Julie's body was found and meets its owner, Sam Bailey. Jay later finds out that another teenage Aboriginal girl had also gone missing earlier. One morning Jay goes to the radio tower where truck drivers would take girls, and Jay observes men taking something off a truck and driving it to what appears to be a drug lab. As he drives away, his police colleagues, Johnno and Constable Roberts, flag him down. Johnno attempts to intimidate Jay. Jay later asks his boss about Johnno and is told that Johnno had some unspecified trouble in his previous assignment and had to transfer here, but that he is close to making some big arrests.