This may turn out not to be the case. Oral traditions in Austrailia and New Zealand as well as the Pacific Northwest of the United States, indicate that at least two large tsunamis may have occurred in the Pacific basin in the not so distant past, a few thousand years at most. Can't find the article now, but I seem to rember something about evidence of one about every 500 years in the Pacific. If that's so, we are overdue, statistically speaking, but not much.
"Richard Chamberlain stars as David Burton, a mild-mannered tax attorney who is called in to represent five aborigines accused of killing another aborigine. Happily married (his wife is well played by Olivia Hamnett) with two beautiful daughters and a respectable middle-class home, Burton is a postcard of contentment. Although he is plagued with strange dreams, and his father (Frederick Parslow) reminds him that they have been a part of his entire life, Burton is more than happy to move through life unchallenged, relying on the rationality of the law and the comfort of Christianity to see him through.
"Yet, as the murder case unfolds, he finds himself increasingly drawn into the world of the aborigines, especially when he realizes that one of the leaders, Chris Lee (David Gulpilil), has been a recurring figure in his dreams. Despite being a white man, Burton feels drawn to the aborigines and their cultural heritage of putting the law above man, which is the exact opposite of his rational, modern understanding of the purpose of the law. When Burton tries to use his society's court of justice to defend the aborigines-arguing that they are tribal people and should be judged according to their tribal laws, an argument not without precedent in Australian legal history-he is faced with the disparity between his world and theirs.
"Weir makes expert use of the uniqueness of the Australian landscape. Even on his minimal budget, he creates impressive visuals of striking juxtaposition: a sudden torrential downpour of water and hail in the middle of the outback without a cloud in the sky; an aborigine in modern clothes painting symbols on the underside of a seaside cliff; an underground cave, long since forgotten beneath the streets of Sydney, filled with ancient statues and images that foretell the impending future. Weir fills the frame with water imagery, from the rage of nature in the form of constant blue-gray rain, to the banalities of everyday life in the form of an overflowing bathtub. If the image of the last wave of the title is somewhat of a letdown-not because of the purposeful vagueness of its reality, but the fact that its power and magnitude is restricted by the use of stock footage of a tidal wave, which was dictated by the film's budget-the symbolic weight of it has a grand force. It is a true climax, that which the film has been building toward from the very first frames. "
What the above review does not mention is that the aborigines recognize, through certain symbols displayed in Chamberlains house, relics of his father's church, that Chamberlain is the foretold precourser to tsunami. When this guy shows up, the wave is coming. More than the political stuff, the theme of the movie is that the tsunami is out there, it's a repeat of the Great Flood in the Bible. I comment only on the entertainment value of the film. Do not flame me on the Bible if you expect an answer.