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Professionally, I’m a retired professor of accounting and former chair of the School of Accounting at the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business. My academic work explored how people make decisions in complex systems, especially when information is imperfect or overwhelming. I’ve published in a fair number of journals that few people read voluntarily, and I spent decades thinking about how technology shapes human behavior. These days, my time is divided between managing a small flock of chickens, herding goats, chatting on amateur radio (KO4LMP), and living just on the edge of the grid—literally and metaphorically. I’m a father to five daughters, a grandfather to 17, and a great-grandfather to three. Somewhere along the way, I realized that what I enjoy most is simply talking about the world we live in—and how to make sense of it.

🍿Can You Help Me Identify that Film?

Bush Christmas

I watched a film a long time ago, I believe it was black and white and produced by something like the Australian Film Institute. It had a group of children who rode to school on their horses. My recollection is that the children helped solve a crime. Can you help me identify that film?

Note: The cover is in color, but the film is black and white. This film is the popular Australian equivalent to “It’s a Wonderful Life” in the sense that, for many people, watching it is a Christmas tradition down under. You can find it on YouTube.

ChatGPT said:

[Your] clues—Australian Film Institute / older / black-and-white feel / kids + horses + crime—points very strongly to one film:

🎬 Bush Christmas

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Bush_Christmas.jpg
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/image_w1280_0.jpg

Why this fits your memory almost perfectly

  • Australian children’s film (non-Disney) ✔️
  • Produced in the era often associated with AFI / early Australian cinema revival viewing ✔️
  • Black-and-white (or remembered that way) ✔️ (it has that classic monochrome/early-film look)
  • Group of children ✔️
  • Horses central to the story ✔️
  • Children actively pursue criminals ✔️

In fact, the plot is almost exactly what you described:

A group of kids in the Australian bush track down horse thieves who have stolen animals from their family.

🧠 Why your memory matches so well

What you remembered as:

  • “kids riding to school on horses” → rural Australian life + lots of horse travel scenes
  • “helped solve a crime” → they literally hunt down the thieves themselves

That’s not a loose match—that’s basically the core story.

🎯 Confidence level: very high

Of all Australian films:

  • It uniquely combines kids + horses + crime
  • It’s old enough to feel black-and-white/educational
  • It’s exactly the kind of film often circulated through film institutes, schools, or cultural programs
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