Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/103334
outtahere "Before the film came out, most people had no concept of the Victorian High Country and were surprised by how extensive, how beautiful and how demanding it was." This image and right: Mount Bogong in Victoria's Alpine Country; a wall of memories at Merrijig Hotel. 18 reveals Tom. "To this day, the question I'm asked the most is whether or not that was me going down the hill on that horse. I'm able to truthfully answer, 'Yes, it was!' " Geoff, a Merrijig resident, says, "One of the reasons the film worked so well is because it was made by people who spoke with the voice of the bush." He hired local bushmen to play other crack riders. "For many years I'd been coming up here to spend a lot of time with a local family. Riding out here, I learnt a lot of their stories and identified the mountain cattleman as a unique subculture of the Australian bushman." Banjo Paterson's celebrated titular poem describes Jim's audacious round-up of "the colt from old Regret", a contained event with no subplots that would have taken just 10 minutes of screen time. Geoff made a breakthrough on how to implement and expand on the story: "I thought to myself, 'What if the poem was the end of the movie and the events described were the resolution of the character and plot developments that preceded it?' " he says. To do justice to Paterson's romanticised view of rural Australia and convey the epic quality of the story, the endlessly rolling terrain of Merrijig became a major element in the film. The awe-inspiring landscapes were a suitably thrilling backdrop to the action. "Before the film came out, most people had no concept of the Victorian High Country and were surprised by how extensive, how beautiful and how demanding it was," Geoff says. Paying tribute to the land and the local bushmen, the world premiere of The Man From Snowy River was held in Mansfield in March 1982, where it was attended by then Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and met with spontaneous applause by the audience. It later became a number-one box office hit locally and a hit overseas. "It was patriotic," says Tom of the successful and quintessentially Aussie production. "Here was an Australian story made by Australian people with the Australian countryside seen in such a great light." Charlie adds: