North East Regional Extra, Wednesday, October 22, 2025 - Page 1
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DRIVING FORCE I
T’S the most conventional entry yet in the Mystery Road legacy, but this second season of outback detective Jay Swan’s (Gold Logie nominee Mark Coles Smith) prequel story is far from straightforward. Expectant parents Swan and Mary (AACTA Award winner Tuuli Narkle, NCIS: Sydney) returned to her home town to raise her niece, Anya (Shardae Pitt), and prepare for their new arrival, but have instead found themselves at the centre of a 30-year-old mystery. Nurse Mary is now working at the Loch Iris hospital, where she was born, a place enveloped in its own long shadow. In searching for answers about her own adoption, she has uncovered links to the local Catholic church, its shuttered orphanage and the systematic removal of Indigenous children from their mothers at birth. “Mary’s searching for connection to herself, her past, her culture and a sense of family that is so brutally ripped
from her at every turn,” says Narkle of her character’s arc. “Her, and little Anya’s, lives are irrevocably fractured by the lingering policies of the stolen generations and whilst there might be new language we use to describe removing children, the effects are still the same. “This felt particularly poignant given the number of First Nations children currently in care is at an all-time high.” In Sunday’s entrancing conclusion, emotions run high as Swan continues his hunt for missing teen Swayze (The New Boy’s Aswan Reid), while sergeant Simmo (Robyn Malcolm) confronts ghosts of the past, and Mary finally learns the truth about her adoption – just in time to meet her own child.
MYSTERY ROAD: ORIGIN
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