BIG PIG

On New Year's Day 1993 - I woke early (only slightly suffering the effects of the party the night before) with a whim to drive from Melbourne to Broken Hill (837kms) - to ultimately visit the outback but in particular find one location - a stretch of road that had featured in two of my favourite Australian films.
So I did - but not before recording my original copy of the Razorback soundtrack from vinyl to cassette along with Sugarland Express theme, Midnight Cowboy and others and charging the huge battery of my video camera - the old style that rest on the shoulder & took full size VHS tapes (my current camera is smaller than the battery that thing used to take).
Anyway 10 or so hours later I arrived, checked in at a Brokenhill pub hot and tired, and with my eyes shut I could still see the white lines of the road whizzing by. Needless to say I smoked a one paper number in my room & passed out to Iva Davies pumping out some weird & familiar sounds on his Fairlight synth.
The next morning I made up some wild story to the desk clerk that I was scouting locations for a new road movie & could he point me in the direction of Silverton (as it turns out there is only one main road there & back - LOL !)
I drove out of Broken Hill around 10am heading towards Silverton, temperatures (in Celsius) were already in the low 30's and rising.
Memory and reality often blur - but Silverton or 'Gamulla' as it was named in the film exceeded my expectations and was just like I remembered . . . barren, dusty streets, stone ruins, one pub with a wide verandah and the odd stray camel. I almost expected brothers Benny & Dicko to be inside the pub playing darts and causing trouble but alas it was empty except for the publican and a couple of dogs. The walls were literally lined with photographs from the various productions that had been filmed in and around the location - a film collectors dream.
I spent maybe an hour just wandering the ruins and filming the wide open landscapes on offer being sure to recreate as many angles as I could.
Before I could say "Theres something about blasting the sh*t out of a razorback that brightens up my whole day" I was back on the road and heading further away from civilization (what little there was) and careered towards my final destination.
I came over a rise and slammed on the brakes - a herd of kangaroos bound across the road in front of me and sped off along the ridgeline - it was a magnificent sight - that was until I turned my attention back to the road . . . I was stopped at the top of the last ridgeline over looking a vast flat wasteland that stretched on for couple of hundred kilometers. There was nothing out there. Desolation.

I was here at last, my eyes followed the long road and my mind wandered off into the desert . . .

The last of the V8 Interceptors hurtled by me, Max behind the wheel, engine roaring, chased by mohawk biker Wez and his gang . . . I better move the car off the road - less than 90 minutes from now an escaping 18 wheel tanker filled with sand might just crush it.
Across the way through the camera's lens I saw the silhouette of the razorback, against the blazing sun, skirt the ridgeline and disappear - anytime from now it would be ripping the door of my car and gorging itself on my flesh and bone. If I survived the attack maybe I could pop in at Sarah Cameron's (the late, beautiful Arkie Whiteley) on the way home for a quick one.

Fond memories . . .

Finally Razorback has come out on DVD (in widescreen thankfully) - with a bunch of extra's; trailers, grisly deleted scenes (the gory bits) & a recently filmed 70min doco. Though a pity there's no commentary track from director Russell Mulcahy and that interviews with David Argue (Dicko) & Bill Kerr (Jake Cullen) were not done for the doco. None the less - RAZORBACK has a treasured spot in my collection of homegrown flicks and adds another element to my growing horror collection.



I didn't mean to call you meat loaf, Jack !