This movie has been used in school curricula in Australian classrooms for the teaching of sex education to students in Australia.
One of the main reasons that actress Nell Schofield was cast in the movie was because in real life she could surf.
Australian singer and actress Kylie Minogue has said of the film's source 'Puberty Blues' novel: "I don't recall reading 'Puberty Blues' so much as devouring it. I was about thirteen, alone in my bedroom with the door firmly shut. I was fascinated".
In an 18th January 2012 article in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' about the television series Puberty Blues (2012), entitled "Show true Puberty Blues, not whitewash", source co-novelist Kathy Lette said of this original 1981 cinema movie that "the film sanitized the plot by omitting central references to miscarriage and abortion. The movie depicts a culture in which gang rape is incidental, mindless violence is amusing and hard drug use is fatal, but it was unable to address the consequences of the brutal sexual economy in which the girls must exist".
For Australian censorship classification reasons, the ages of characters in the movie were increased from the source novel to sixteen, which was the legal age of consent in Australia at the time. Not doing so would have meant characters depicted as having sexual intercourse would be classified as minors, the film could then have been cut or banned by then Chief Censor Janet Strickland's regime at the Australian Censors, as had been the fate of some films, such as Privatunterricht (1981) and David Hamilton's Zärtliche Cousinen (1980).
Mark Egerton: Uncredited, the first assistant director (1st A.D) as a lifeguard during the beach fight sequence.
Cordelia Beresford: Uncredited, the daughter of director Bruce Beresford, as one of the high school girls.