Four amazing outback Australia film sets

In case Australia didn’t already have enough to offer you, what with the endlessly beautiful outback, the stunning and often empty beaches, the mountains to climb, the surf to ride, and so on, here are some reasons that might give the film buffs out there some extra excuses to visit on top of everything else.

Below are four films that you may recognise which were predominantly filmed in Australia. In my opinion these showcase some of the best scenery and locations that outback Australia has to offer. I was lucky enough to visit all of these locations on my recent trip down under.

Film – Pitch Black. 
Location – Coober Pedy, South Australia.
Highlights –Underground living, opal mining, Painted Desert, moon plain.

A cult horror / sci-fi classic starring Vin Diesel, this film is set on a barren desert planet. Handily, the empty desert like landscape surrounding the already surreal town of Coober Pedy in the South Australian outback fits perfectly.

This is the opal mining capital of Australia and there are something like 200,000 holes in the ground dug by hopeful miners. As there are so many holes already, it seems only natural that most of the local residents choose to live underground too, a sensible choice as it avoids the scorching heat and freezing cold of the desert climate, and results in a pleasant 24 degree ambient temperature year round.

You can find churches, a camp ground, pubs and even a golf course underground. Wander around town a bit, and it won’t be long before you start coming across props from the film, including a giant chunk of spaceship. Or, you could head out of town a few kilometres to the aptly named Moon Plain, a seriously barren bit of land which looks, as you would expect, like the surface of the moon might.

A bit further on and you come to the absolutely surreal painted desert, a pile of oddly coloured sandy dunes that look like they actually did fall out of science fiction.

Film – Crocodile Dundee.
Location – Northern Territory, Kakadu National Park.
Highlights – Aboriginal art, stunning natural scenery, rockpools to cool off in 

This film is about as Australian as you get. Like Kangaroos, barbies (the grilling kind, not the doll kind) and XXXX, it’s instantly recognisable as an Australian classic.

The Australian parts of the film were mostly filmed in Kakadu National Park, in Australia’s Northern Territory. Two key scenes were filmed at Ubirr (pictured), a massive bit of rock overlooking a floodplain (conveniently full of crocodiles) and Gunlom, a waterfall featuring a pool, handy for a bit of spearfishing (in the film at least!).

Both of these sites are absolutely worth the visit, Crocodile Dundee aside: Ubirr for the vistas across the floodplain and huge numbers of ancient aboriginal paintings, Gunlom for the refreshing swimming hole and huge waterfall.

Film – Mad Max 2.
Location – Silverton, New South Wales.
Highlights – The spookily abandoned ghost town.

Once a booming mining town playing host to over three thousand inhabitants, Silverton has now become a ghost town with less than fifty permanent residents. This hasn’t stopped an absolute multitude of films being shot here, with arguably the most famous being the post-apocalyptic Mel Gibson-a-thon that is Mad Max 2.

The pub, one of the main features of the town, has details on all the films that were filmed in the area, with photos of cast, crew and productions. It also has Max’s car from the film parked outside. Which is pretty cool. The small town, now home to a number of artists as well as tea shops, is worth a wander around, although it won’t take long, and the views of the barren landscape surrounds are breathtaking.

Film – Australia.
Location – Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Highlights – Staggering outback scenery.

Whilst perhaps not the box office smash that Baz Luhrmann may have hoped for, one thing this epic did manage to achieve was a demonstration of quite spectacular outback scenery. The film focuses particularly on the scenery of the Kimberley region in the north-eastern part of Western Australia.

There are a myriad locations featured, as the Kimberley region is roughly the same size as the state of Victoria, so there is a lot to choose from, including the amazing Gibb River Road and Purnululu National Park. Once I had given up on the plot of the film, and focused instead on viewing it as a giant tourist brochure for Australia, I enjoyed the whole thing a lot more.

Those were four films that, in my opinion, showcased some amazing Australian scenery. If you happen to be passing by these areas, and need an extra excuse for a visit, hopefully this will have swayed your opinion! Let me know if I've missed your favourite Australian film location off my list in the comments below.

Technology – brilliant stuff

I am not a technology luddite by any means, in fact, I would say quite the opposite, but for various reasons, mostly involving living in a tent for a year like some sort of hermit, I have been away from changes, and in particular the rapid pace of Smartphone evolution.

I was, of course, aware of the iPhone - the book of Jobs is hard to ignore wherever you are - and certainly the technology has been available for longer than a year and a half. But quite how ubiquitous this device has become only became apparent when I got to London and met up with all my friends, where it turned out that everyone I know now seems to have one. And it was quite amazing really, a large group of people converging in London, and all it took for us to find each other was the Google maps location feature pinged between each other, and folks who weren’t so familiar with the intricacies of London parks were still able to locate us. No doubt the Google equivalent phone OS, Android, would have been just as good at this. Still, it was quite handy, and good to see that technology is moving beyond the gimmicky to the genuinely useful. The rest of the day, technology aside, progressed nicely, moving from park to bar, we even managed to take in a cocktail in one of my favourite London cocktail bars, the underground, and excessively warm Frevds. Worth checking out if you are ever in the area for the cheapest and deadliest Long Island Iced Teas known to man.

Whilst speaking of technology incidentally, I had some other encounters with its darker side. My brothers car, for example, vexed no doubt that he had left me in it whilst he went off on his final office based errand, severing his five year blackberry noose, decided to lock me inside and set the alarm off, convinced I must be up to no good. Phil returned and turned it off, naturally some time after some people had wandered past and given me odd looks. I was also nearly thrown out of Tesco's for using my camera, apparently capturing images in store is against store policy. Rock and roll folks.

The final piece of the technology update was a rapid fire walkthrough of some of the key Playstation 3 games that my friend Craig had acquired over the last year or so. I used to be an avid gamer, so it was nice to get a quick overview of what had come out. A quick blast through Heavy Rain, a game which is essentially an interactive film (and therefore hard to blast through, but we touched on some of the more interesting parts, such as where I had to hack my characters own finger off), some platforming fun with Nathan Drake in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and then a bit of a beat-em up in the massively huge scale God of War 3 (the scale really is quite dizzy in the game, as you battle the gods themselves. Also fairly violent it must be said, as I pounded Poseidon's Head into a bloody pulp.)

Finally we all settled down to some racing in the frenetically paced Split/Second, which seemed to involve less actual racing, and more blowing everything up around us. Tremendous fun.

This was all set to the backdrop of the hottest day of the year and the smells of gently barbequing meat, which we enjoyed at Craig’s new house, which was lovely. We sat outside for the rest of the day, and partook of some American beer to keep ourselves cool, before settling in for the evening to watch Germany defeat Uruguay in one of the better games of the tournament, keeping Paul safe in his tank to face another prediction day. He has tipped Spain to win tonight as I understand it, in a dramatic break from his usual role of only predicting Germany games. I expect a lottery prediction helpline to be set up shortly.

After this we had fun watching Zombieland, an enjoyable road trip movie with Woody Harrelson (and a brief cameo with Bill Murray which really made the film) and distressingly dark humour, before I hopped on the night bus back to my brothers house, and enjoyed listening to the leather capped Special Brew clutching passenger wax lyrical on a number of topics close to his heart. Night buses clearly have not evolved since I left.

Today will be a relaxing Sunday, watching the British Grand Prix, perhaps some scrambled eggs and then Phil plans to whip something up for dinner tonight. Should be good. Enjoy yours, whatever you are up to.

Something for the weekend?

An update on our ongoing attempts to align our cultural knowledge. Thus far this is proceeding well. I fear I should admit that up to this point in my life I had never watched the The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and whilst I know that I should have, I didn’t feel entirely that my life was somehow more complete having watching it. Presumably everyone in the world has already seen it, and I should be stoned and/or burnt for heresy. Maybe I need the full stage show experience complete with fishnet tights, flour and water pistols to truly appreciate it’s splendour.

More interesting, and in fact about the only film I feel I can recommend in its entirety, (other films were decent but not noteworthy, the sort of films everyone who wasn’t living in a landcruiser for a year in the outback has probably already seen) from the swathe of films we have gone through of late, was an indie type film set in Australia, about an English bloke searching for the perfect colour of paint, and the various things that happen to him on his journey of discovery. Having now travelled in Oz I can confirm that many of the stereotypes portrayed in the film are not entirely accurate, but the humour is pleasantly black, the film happily surreal and the ending wonderfully Magnolia like. Plus any excuse to goggle at the Australian outback scenery (it’s filmed on a drive through the middle from Adelaide to Darwin, the scorched earth look at its best) is good with me. The film is called Siam Sunset, it’s probably not that easy to get hold of, but I’d deem it worth a moment of your time.

In non media related news, the weather today is absolutely glorious, so we will be popping into the town of Bonn to see what that is all about. What it is all about, I will no doubt update you with at some point soon. Culture, villages, cycling. It’s all here folks.

Ode to a dead chilli tree

I would be the very first to admit that I am not entirely botanically minded. Plants do not respond to my touch with love and care. I am more of the hack, slash and burn mentality when it comes to gardening, my success is usually measured by the pile of dead things I have removed from a garden rather than the swathe of growth that others may measure by.

That said, I have had a number of minor successes on the gardening front. My window boxes of geraniums in my flat in London were a source of pride and joy, the fact that they survived a whole winter outside was impressive to me. My crowning glory on the gardening front, however, had to have been my chilli tree  (plant?) that I had grown from seed. Four seeds came from the packet, two plants grew, one survived the first harsh winter in my flat and grew to produce countless small fiery red chillies. I was immeasurably pleased with it. Naturally, when departing the shores of the UK in the summer of 2009, I needed someone to tend to it carefully, to fill it with love, to continue to harvest it’s rich fruit. My brother stepped forward. All would be well I supposed.

Tragically, as the title of the post suggests, this was not to be. Yesterday, via Skype video call where I was wishing my father happy birthday, the topic of the chilli tree came up, and a withered dead stick in a pot was displayed on the screen. My brother did at least have the good grace to look fairly sheepish. Thus endeth a botanical relationship, thank you, chilli tree, for all those fine chillies you provided me with, sorry I was not able to find you a safer home.

In other news, we watched Across the Universe last night, in an ongoing attempt to synchronise our cultural memes. It’s a musical, in the same sort of style as Moulin Rouge, but all the songs in it are by the Beatles. So if you are into the Beatles, and/or decent musicals (I’m sorry Mother, but I’m not including Mamma Mia! in that list), then it’s worth a look! Enjoy your Sunday.