Lyndall Barbour

Dawn! is a 1979 Australian sports biopic about the three-time Olympic gold medallist swimmer Dawn Fraser.

Fran, the assistant to university professor Paddy, is about to turn 30. She is having an affair with a married minister's aide, Stephen. She returns home to the country town she grew up in and has a fling with an old flame, Alan. She also begins sleeping with Paddy.

Frankie McCoy (Ken Shorter) is a born loser from the Sydney suburb of Newtown, and a gambler and a bit of an SP bookie. When he's conscripted into the army to fight in the Vietnam war, he deserts, but in pursuit of money, he falls into debt with SP bookies at the local pub.This film, shot at Kapooka camp, contains one of the only depictions in Australian cinema of soldiers training for Vietnam.