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A few details on what the Tasmanian wilderness is REALLY like.


I've spent a fair bit of time in western Tasmania, including places that are over a weeks hike from the nearest road. So I think I'm qualified to offer a few pointers to the producers in the (unlikely) event they decide to make a sequel.

* Everyone calls the animals "Devils" in Tasmania, NOT "Tas's". After all, if you're in Tasmania I guess everything there is "tas".

* Tasmanian Devils are solitary mammals, but the giant devils in this film hang around in packs and look more like reptiles or salamanders or something, not the bad tempered furry critters that I know.

* Tasmanian mountains are very rocky but with lots of jagged dolerite cliffs and spires, with a few mountains made of schist and other hard rocks, NOT the fairly smooth looking cliffs shown in the few location shots in the film. Almost every mountain with a huge cliff is high above the tree line and does NOT have a forest growing at the top.

* The mountain they jump off called Devils Peak (or similar) in the film is almost certainly based on a Tasmanian mountain called "Frenchmans Cap". 12,000 years ago it was sliced in half by a glacier leaving a 1,500 foot high cliff.

* Even at the height of summer, at night it is almost never warm enough in western Tassie to be comfortable in just a shirt. Anyone out there dressed in so little would look very cold.

* There are almost NO handguns in Australia. The only people allowed to have them are sworn police officers and Olympic shooters. No park rangers would ever have them. It's rare for park rangers to even have easy access to a rifle.

* The vegetation is a combination of cool temperate forests, with a lot of heathland. The treeless areas can be split between rocky alpine areas above the treeline and peat-boggy lowland "button-grass" areas mostly composed of muddy glacial silt. While many of the trees in the forested areas are varieties of pine, they look nothing like those Canadian conifers shown in the film. There are also plenty of tree ferns, southern beech (nothofagus genus), the occasional eucalypt and wattle and a giant sub-alpine heath called Pandanus that looks like a palm tree growing in snow country.

* The idea of offering a bribe to a ranger is preposterous. Doing so would automatically raise the charge from relatively minor trespassing that would attract a fine, to major crime status. In any case American currency is unknown, so it's unlikely a ranger would know what the bloke offering the bribe had in his hand.

* Surprisingly they got the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife logo shown on their shirts and the door of the Four-Wheel-Drive just right, although the real one has different wording.

* Yes, the fake accents are utterly unrealistic. They really are shocking!

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stupid question but were the americans trying to be aussie and the aussies trying to be american , i never heard a real outback aussie accent but that would be strange in tasmania.i've lived 45 years in victoria and never heard the outback aussie voice.
does danica look good ?

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Well it was filmed in Canada, I doubt they had the budget to travel to Tasmania and hire anyone who sounds like a local.

The outback accent never really existed in the closely settled parts of Australia (such as Victoria). Most of those who affect it are trendy inner city types who (falsely) think it makes them sound more working class. A better indicator of a remote rural background is language that could be seen as rather archaic like saying "too right" when agreeing with someone.

Most of western Tasmania was never settled, it is too cold, wet and mountainous and the soils are too poor for farming. It has a lot of alpine wasteland, with cool climate rainforest and muddy bogs in the valleys. However the West Coast Shire has a remnant population from days over a century ago when the area had some of the richest tin, copper and zinc mines in the world. If you want to hear that old fashioned language with a drawn out accent, spend some time listening to the locals in a town like Zeehan or the less touristy parts of Queenstown.

Oh yes, you are right. Danica does look good. ;)

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Hearing an american attempting an Australian accent is like hearing fingernails clawing on a chalkboard to most Australians,they just can not do it because of the difference in how the "Vowls" sound along with the grammer however Aussies are able to do various accents from all over USA....

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