This is one of a handful of mid-late 1970s Australian feature films that were road movies. The pictures include High Rolling in a Hot Corvette (1977), Summer City (1977), Twentieth Century Oz (1976), Cosy Cool (1977), In Search of Anna (1978) and Backroads (1977).
Indigenous Australian Aboriginal activist Gary Foley agreed to appear in the film if he would be allowed responsibility for the film's Australian indigenous Aboriginal content.
According to the 'Koori Web' website, this was the ''first Australian film where the only people payed award wages were the local indigenous actors and extras, because the entire budget for the film was $25,000'' as well as the ''first film featuring Aboriginal people where Aboriginal people had a significant say in the making of the film...in both the manner in which they were portrayed and also whether they even wanted the film made in their midst. ''
The title of the film lends its name to a biography about the movie's director. The book is called ''Phillip Noyce: Backroads to Hollywood'' (2004) by Ingo Petzke.
Director Phillip Noyce said of the film in his interview on the DVD: "I made the mistake of showing it to David Stratton. It was a bad thing for our plans to lengthen the movie because he thought it was great at that length and agreed to launch it at the Sydney film festival as a feature film."