fired-up story telling

it's august in condo. sydney is a distant eastern imprint on now dust sullied tyres.

the locals here hate the slight suggestion of cold. people panic attack if the needle slides down below 30. indoors air con is pumped to almost 40 degrees celcius, outside fires burn. sometimes on street corners which attract a huddled few. it's practically spring but i'm sweating like a pig in a bikini with the abattoir in sight. condobolin does not do winter.

bank, my student/town guide has taken me to the local pub [the impy] after our first day of filmmaking class. she insists that this is the rough one and looks a little dubious i'm not up for the task. her protective instinct is adorable but her concern is misplaced. despite being the outsider, i'm worried for them. i take off the bikini & straighten my swine mask.

most people don't know, but i was spawned from the asshole of the universe in a tiny town [invercargill] at the bottom of new zealand. at least that's where i grew up. way back then in the era of right wing conservative rednecks & skinheads it wasn't particularly smooth. especially for misfits. the flavours might be slightly different but our infant feet have been dipped in the same unfiltered bath water.

i told her previously of my obsession for stories & the ongoing search of perfect characters. she gets it and this is her hood. we're documentary whores. the magical textured fabric of the truth always stranger & much more compelling than fiction. we find who we're looking for outside. introductions are made & within a few rounds boundaries are blurred and i'm practically one of them. i channel harmony kormine meets douglas coupland. this is the shit.

no OH&S here... a fire fueled on petrochemicals blazes in the back courtyard of the pub as a handful of peeps who appear to have been drinking what goes on the fire engage in typical bush swaggering drunken tall tale telling. occasionally in the breaks more rocket fuel is thrown into the re-purposed tractor shovel which serves as the incendiary base. noone bats an eyelid, even those with third degree burn scars. the flames burn hard and high as the stories rise in a simultaneous and unbelievable crescendo as everyone around me sips back on midis.  

i realise my mistake as i gaze down at my oversized schooner, when questioned what my next drink will be in a disapproving manner. they drinks midis out here? the logic is simple really. urban legend has it that the beer is dosed with extra preservatives to get to the bush which increases the alcohol percentage. so they drink smaller glasses.... my witty observations are received like a lead balloon and i gracefully err to the status quo, and start drinking midis. wow that exercise to the bar twice as frequently really burns the alcohol off...

the moral temporarily escapes me. but flawed logic does not. face glowing, i settle in next to the searing flames, footloose & fancy free to uncover the essence, the soul of this town. 

the best stories are always shared around a fire.

sun sets on the mish

the mission. a name which inspires jeremy irons & robert de niro on movie screens & rabbit proof fences closer to home. a shameful collective history of hoards of indigenous people the world over shepherded into reservation like communities on the hub outskirts by whatever colonist flavour of the day accompanied by justifications in triplicate.

euphemistically renamed "willow bend village" this precinct of condo is one of many littered all over regional australia as a reminder of the not so recent segregation of black & white in australia. in condobolin only fifty years ago an impenetrable chain in the local cinema separated the aboriginal patrons from the rest. do not feed the animals.

now affectionately known as "the mish" by locals, i was privileged to drive through & walk around under the auspices of film location scouting what is now essentially a quiet outer rim suburb adjacent to the winding river known as the coogee & a preferred haunt of indigenous youth in the summer months. the place of escape, return and coming of age. 

although the street pot holes are reminiscent of district 9 there were no barricades here, but a quiet semblance of supportive community & people just getting on with life. still it was hard to take photos, mostly my phone stayed where it should. in my pocket.

the church is long since deserted. government installed solar panels gleam like sulking hot coal soldiers all in a line on the identical roofs quietly harvesting the ample sunshine which the residents flock hungrily to block out the winter cold, shunned with ironic pumped-up air con inside. 

faceless walls with no windows salute the rising sun to peer over fences into the undeveloped wasteland where errant eucalypts gallantly grow like weeds in the scorched earth. noone can see from inside. the beginning has been witnessed already, it is to the setting sun in the west the houses look.

world famous in condobolin

copyright: condobin argus

so here's a really unflattering pic of me & a handful of talent lurking in the depths of the outer regional rim of NSW. my students. we were thrown together under an intensive timeframe & created a film together a week ago for the play now act now programme [it will be up on the site from september 01].

it was a lot of fun, they blew me away with their passion for story telling and we made the local paper. not a lot happens in this small town.

there is actually something that looks like tumbleweed blowing down the mainstreet but it has massive prickles. the scarred indents in my legs & arms bear testament to this fact after scrambling along the ground, mobile phone in hand with jack [on the far left] under the blustering sky like a paratrooper in search of the perfect shot. which we got.

i'll update when the film officially goes live. we could use your votes. if you like it.

condo casks

last week i was in condobolin, or condo as the locals call it, rural NSW about seven hours west of sydney as the crow flies.  this is the drink of choice when they get thirsty. often on the street in groups on squashed cartons for seats. a sense of community of sorts in a small interbred town full of stories & insurmountable pride.


there's a lot of social issues in this place which mostly revolve around drug & alcohol abuse. unemployment & school dropout rates are high. high school stats indicate that 48% of the population are aboriginal but the census tells a different story. another renegade town on the edge of the regional abyss. there are different rules out here. shades of cyberpunk satellite towns: gateway to the wild badlands.


at less than one dollar a litre it's easy to imagine a lot of late night soul searching at the bottom of the shimmering bladder. cheaper than petrol: which is sniffed at epidemic proportions further to the west and north. nothing down there but broken dreams.