Back on the Volunteer orientation day it was pointed out to us that the set contained things that were actually on the ground in Darwin and Broome between the mid-thirties and the early-forties, and that things were there because they fitted into the story line and that the chronology might not be totally accurate.
For example, The Pearl movie theatre, which is based on the outdoor theatre in Broome rather than anything in Darwin, is showing The Wizard of Oz despite the fact that the film had not been released in Australia at that time.....
So if night time bombing is going to work better on screen, night time bombing is the way to go...
For anyone lucky enough to live on a hillside overlooking the set, night time shooting provides some interesting viewing. On Tuesday afternoon I was informed that the church down on Mission Island had gone up in flames no less than five times, and that the cross on top presented quite a spectacle each time it went up in flames.
Not that any of that is visible from the Little House of Concrete. Vacant hillside allotments were way outside the budget when I was in the market for somewhere to build ten years ago. So we have (to paraphrase Elvis Costello) a very fashionable hovel snuggled cosily into a hollow rather than the mansion on the hill (Thank you Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen).
By the end of the week, despite the devastation around the set, the police station, from what I can tell, has remained more or less unharmed. The reason? Unlike the rest of the set, where buildings are (more or less) a shell, there’s a real building underneath there...
And with the night time shooting, there’s not all that much to see during the day, at least from a local’s point of view, though the crowds of out-of-town visitors have continued more or less unabated.
A week’s worth of overcast days with threatened or actual drizzle has helped to keep the locals indoors as well, though the suggestion that southern visitors like ex-AFL footballer Dermot Brereton brought it with them seemed to be wearing thin when I made it on Friday morning.
To me, the lack of fuss when Mr Brereton arrived, film crew in tow, to film a closing report for the Channel Nine Getaway program was pretty typical of the way the presence of out-of-town celebrities has been treated over the past five weeks. A few nudges in the ribs, the odd whispered aside, and leave them alone (more or less) to do their thing.