The Legend of
Mad Max
A Silverton resident tells
Oliver Pfeiffer about the huge
impact of Mad Max 2 on his life,
while a star from the iconic
movie franchise shares his
behind-the-scenes insights.
With its vast,
rugged landscapes, largerthan-life characters and fast-car fixation, Mad
Max is so quintessentially Australian it's almost
impossible to think of another film series that so
superbly defines a nation.
It's this phenomenon that lured self-proclaimed
Mad Max 2 film fanatic Adrian Bennett all the way
from Bradford, Northern England, to Silverton,
New South Wales. "It completely changed the
direction of my life," Adrian says of the impact that
a double-bill screening of Mad Max and Mad Max 2
had on him back in 1982. "It grabbed a hold of me
and hasn't let go since."
That's no understatement. Seeing Mad Max
2 inspired Adrian to import a Ford Falcon coupe
from the States and rebuild it into a replica of the
Interceptor driven by Mel Gibson in the movie.
But the clincher came when the father of four
took a family trip to Australia to visit the film's
locations in Broken Hill, NSW, and the Mundi
Mundi Plains lookout in Silverton. "I was just so
blown away by it all," Adrian recalls. "Nothing had
changed from the film. There was such a feeling of
familiarity that I didn't want to go back to England!"
The visit made such an impression on Adrian
that in 2009 he persuaded his wife to move the
family to Silverton. They now live just four and
a half kilometres from where the celebrated
opening and closing chase sequences were filmed.
