WORKING IT: YOWIE MOVES

Summer ripened into weeks of blistering heat - I was amazed at the stamina of the players in the tennis open on TV. Tar melted, baby birds fell out of their arid little nests. Kylie emailed me and said are you on for late January? I was on. I applied to my jobs (two of them - to pay for the film) for some time off. 28th and 29th january it was. Unfortunately the director told us at the last moment that he couldn't make it. I got up at 4am on the morning of the 28th and left the house at 5. Got to windsor at 830am and felt a little surreal wandering round the little Hawkesbury town as it woke up. Kylie arrived on the train and we went to the farmhouse of her friend Naomi the scriptwriter, who'd helped edit the Yowie. Naomi is energetic and sensitive to every mood - she gave us Cokes in her lounge area, then took us down into the bush woodland, which was static with heat and screaming with cicada's. Rocks and trees galore, and also snakes. A black wallaby stood up and pounded off. Perfect Yowie country. Almost as good: Naomi's mother's house is right there too and it has a swimming pool! It must have been around 40 celsius. Naomi then took us along to her friends compound in the bush: about ten old cars resting quietly amid grazing horses in several acres of grass. The whole lot enfolded in some of the wildest and best Yowie country I've seen: boulders, steep slopes, creeks and ferns. Sweating fluidly, I declared my satisfaction with the country. We trundled up the hill to Bilpin: apple country on the ridge - and much cooler up here. Strung out along the highway, this little place is picturesque enough but because of its linear layout seems to have no heart. We got permission to film in a fabulous isolated flower stall and shop called tutti fruitti. Locals abound in facial hair. Lunch at the Kurrajong hotel - ask for the small size and you get a country helping you can hardly see over - my kind of tucker. That arvo we dropped back down the ridge and i found myself on various unknown roads, but keeping the sun on my Right and behind me i knew I was heading fro the sea. In fact we ended up on the North shore and went through the Lane Cove Tunnel; I dropped Kylie off in Kings cross and went to the home of my friends in Coogee. Fred is a professor of neuropsychology and Fiona assesses gifted children: they gave me Dom's room: a teen cave with a mattress on the floor. I crashed after a pizza in a film of sweat. In the middle of the night a speaker fell off the wall and scared me awake. Next morning back out: this time to Lawson - the other end of the blue mountains. Lawson is being transformed - at the moment it looks wonderfully shabby - perfect for the film. We got permission from a hotel and the local cafe owner and council member named David, but missed my friend Rick, who had been in his country shop all the time though I only got an answerphone message. Driving out along a little winding road we thought it might do for the Yowie-crosses-the-road-scenes. Mission accomplished; we went back down into Sydney and debriefed at a little cafe near Victoria st - scene of my earliest meeting with Richard Shepherd at least five years earlier! No-one can say I'm not persistent. I hit the road about three and took ten minutes to go the one kilometer onto South Dowling Street - must be an accident ahead - I thought, but no, it just the same old Sydney jam session. Got into Canberra at 7pm and had a full day at the practice next day.

in the next week Kylie began to send me headshots of potential actors - seems impossible to find Aboriginal women actors, though there is a great oversupply of white guys - strange that. SE Australia is still on fire, literally and figuratively, temps in the late 30's - I only pray the weather will be cooler when we film in late March.