The upcoming film, Ancestry Road, was shot across 17 days in Oatlands and the surrounding Midlands. We spoke with Melbourne-based director and writer Glenn Triggs about making the film in Tassie.

Why did you use Tasmania as a stand-in for Scotland? I had travelled from Melbourne to Tassie a few times over the years and always loved the small towns in the Midlands. It was only when I was writing Ancestry Road that it suddenly clicked that it may be a viable location for the film to double as Scotland. We had considered travelling to Scotland to film the movie, but the more we looked into what was possible in Tasmania we realised it would be far easier to make the movie there and get the same results.

How did you decide on Oatlands and Bowhill Grange? Oatlands was the first town we had stopped in to let our kids out for a stretch on the drive to Hobart. I was very taken by its European features. When I was looking for locations for the ‘farmhouse’ in the movie, I came across Bowhill Grange on AirBnB and fell in love with it. Not realising it was so close to Oatlands. So once I realised this, it sold the idea to me even stronger. Speaking with the owners Peter and Ruth all of a sudden made everything seem possible!

What was it like filming there? We had a beautiful production at Bowhill Grange and Oatlands. 80% of our filming was at Bowhill and the rest were at an assort­ment of locations including Campbell Town. It was just so nice to be in an area with no traffic, no pollution – just large open landscapes. Bowhill had mostly everything we needed, including accom­modation. All the interior room shots were filmed there – which really adds to the realistic nature of how the film looks.

Actor Gillian Unicomb’s Early Morning Misfortune

Gillian Unicomb’s first day on the set of Ancestry Road was an eventful one. A professional actor, she knows not to turn up late, because time is of the essence when it comes to making movies. “With all the money involved in setting up, the last thing you want to do is arrive with everyone standing around waiting for you,” she says.

Gillian arrived at her accommodation in Oatlands the night before, so she could be ready for her first scene at 7am. The next morning she was wearing her costume and ready to leave by 5:45am. “How glad I was I’d decided to stick by that maxim,” she says, for it was the middle of winter, and as she walked into the pitch black darkness of the early morning, she discovered her car encrusted in frost.

She immediately entered problem-solv­ing mode. “I need a bucket of water, not hot,” she thought. She restrained herself from racing back to the house. “Why risk falling on my bum on the ice and having to turn up to do my scenes as a limping wet-trousered idiot?” she says. She had time, after all. So in this freezing-cold morning she carefully trod back to the house to find a bucket and water.

Gillian returned to the car, chucked the water at the windscreen and scrubbed away. No sooner had she got rid of the ice, though, another layer formed. This happened again and again. Panic set in as time was slipping from her fingers. Was she going to be late on her first day?!

There had to be a new plan. She turned the car on, blasted the heater, scraped a small circle of ice off the windscreen, and started driving. She drove peering through that spyhole into the blackness, stopping frequently to wipe the windscreen and keep the patch open. “I could see into the fog that had blanketed the town. Even with a clear windscreen, visibility would have been close to not good at all,” she says. “No one else was silly enough to be out on the road at this hour.”

“Gradually, the ice began to melt. I saw the cluster of lights – telling me I was near – with absolute relief, and, arriving, not late, went up to greet everyone, smiling happily, as if I had not been a panicking mess such a little while before.”

“That’s acting.”