We arrived in Cooma in the dead of the night, at the eve of a 491-kilometer drive totaling 4 and a half hours.

Cooma looks like the quintessential remote town out in the middle of nowhere. Built literally around the Monaro Highway (which, after a dip off a knoll and a name change becomes Sharp Street) the town sits on undulating terrain, and comprises low single-storey buildings that line the sides of wide, unmarked two-way roads. Peek out as you drive past these buildings and you will see shopfronts that are a throwback in time; a barber’s, two or three diners, a visitors’ center, a post office, et cetera.

‘You know this town is okay when you don’t see a tattoo parlour,’ Vamptress quipped as she gazed out at the slumbering town.

Not a single soul appeared to be awake. We were looking for a motel by the name of Bega Valley something-something. After many futile cruises around the town, we pulled into a gas station, the only sign of life in a town of darkened buildings. I could not help but feel we were like moths drawn to a flame.

‘Hello?’ I hollered as I stepped into the store, Reminisce a step behind.

An elderly man with a head of white hair neatly combed back and a pair of thick glasses emerged from his office. ‘How’s it going?’ he said.

‘How do we get to Bega Valley? We’ve been circling the roads and we can’t find it.’

‘Sure, I’ll tell you,’ he said. Then, strangely, he gave me what I thought looked like a smirk. With a hand planted on the counter and his body angled, I thought for a moment he was trying to pose like Tom Cruise in Cocktail. Perhaps this was a town full of budding actors.

The station owner turned and gestured out his window.

‘Go down two intersections and make a left,’ he began. ‘Then go all the way down… ‘

I heaved a sign of relief. We must have missed it somehow.

‘… for a 100 kilometers or so… ‘

My heart sank. Next to me, I heard Reminsce’s jaw hit the floor.

I could not remember what the old man said next, for I found myself staggering out of the store. I knocked on our driver’s window.

‘It’s hopeless. Apparently a 100 kilometers is nothing to these folks.’

What transpired was this: the owner of the motel in Bega Valley had reassured Reminisce that his establishment was in Cooma. Apparently the directions he had given our producer was such:

Get off Monaro Highway and into Cooma. Look for Councillor Street and make a left. We’re just around the corner; you can’t miss it.

How convenient that the motel owner left out the negligible extra kilometers.

Reminisce emerged, defeated, from the store, and said: ‘The guy says there’s a motel up ahead whose owners live in it. We can go there and knock on their doors.’

We cruised down past two intersections and were promptly lost. From nowhere a security car pulled out of a lot. I walked up to him and asked for directions. The security personnel, most likely a local police of sorts, kindly offered to lead the way. After we had pulled into the carpark by the motel, Reminisce and I made our way to the front. Despite our rapping on the glass door, no one came to the reception.

It was near three in the morning. We were all tired, and the weather has dropped to a bone-biting 10 degrees or so, a temperature I was sure was designed to freeze the asses off these T-shirts-and-jeans motley crew of tropical creatures fully expecting a warm summer night.

The producers huddled for an emergency assessment of the situation. It would be pointless to make the extra 100 kilometers, in light of the short amount of time we would have between arriving in Bega Valley and starting the shoot day. A decision was made: we will sleep in the cars for the next 4 hours before daybreak, and we will check-in into this motel.

The news were disseminated, along with profuse apologies, to the rest of the cast and crew. Reminisce looked utterly white; I could not tell if it was because of the cold or because he felt ill about the screw-up. Perhaps, and very likely, it was both.

And so that was how this circus came to town and found itself stranded on a quiet carpark in the winter chill, with warm rooms and beds ten feet away, and having to have the members of its troupe spend the night sleeping upright in their hired wheels.

As I leaned over a sole tree which stood beside the parking lot, and brushed my teeth, I laughed deriliously. My laughter drifted across the lot and into the night. And I was sure it would echo back – perhaps many years down the line – one day when we look back, older and wiser and forgiven, at this night.

Again, in a fluke of luck, the overcast skies that I woke up to this morning fitted perfectly with the mood of the scenes we were to shoot today.

While the weather held steady at approximately 26 degrees Celcius, a chilly wind swept through the city the whole time. Which was a false sense of security, for it was only after the day’s shoot that we realized we were all sunburnt.

Our crew was much smaller today. One of the Sydney crew members was given the day off to rest in light of the six-hour drive we would be taking tonight, while Reminisce – with Vamptress as his navigator – went off to find a place to park the production vehicle and, later, to pick-up the prop car from Williams Street.

We wrapped up at King and George, and trekked down to the Town Hall for some insert shots of the male lead. That took less than an hour. Then it was back to the Hungry Jack’s outside Cole’s Central – which has become our production base somewhat – to rendezvous with Sara and the stylist before we were to regroup with the others at Bathurst and George, from where we would be leaving the city.

Our drive out began at a quarter past 8, two hours later than we had planned. The delay was in large parts compounded by the fact that most streets in Sydney are one-way; miss a turn and it’s a kilometer more before you could go back to where you were at before.

We weaved our way through the city in the rush-hour crawl. All the while we were mindful that our prop car – with the male lead at the wheels and Sara riding shotgun – was right on our tail. After one wrong turn, we finally got on the M5, southbound for Canberra.

‘Congratulations,’ my Sydney producer beamed. ‘We are out of Sydney.’

‘Cooma, here we come,’ I whispered to myself as I stared out at the dimming sky.

The day began early for Reminisce, Vamptress and I. The first thing we did was to meet up with our Sydney team and collect the production vehicle. Thereafter we drove out to the equipment rental house in North Sydney.

I performed the necessary camera and lenses check which would normally have been the responsibility of the camera assistant. Alas, we could not afford the luxury of one on this runaway production of ours. In my years in the business, I had always made sure I knew how to carry out the roles of other crew members, especially those in the lighting and camera departments, even if my role as a director meant I would never have to. From system calibrations to loading film magazines, I knew enough to carry the task out, and more importantly, to not screw up. So, a piece of advice to budding filmmakers: know everyone’s role because you never know when such knowledge will serve you well.

Later, it transpired that the vendor’s point-of-sale system did not take to foreign credit cards very well, and we lost two hours in between trying both our cards and making a flurry of calls to our respective banks for authorization. But that was eventually sorted when the rental house kindly offered to take a half payment first.We spent the day shooting in the Sydney central business district, alternating between the intersections of Market and George, and King and George. It was a smooth shoot; the sun was out which suited to the nature and look of the scene we were shooting.

One of the things I realized about the difference between shooting in Singapore and a country like, say, Australia is how nonchalent passerbys in the latter country are to the presence of a camera on the street. Australia is a laid-back country and it shows in the attitude most of its denizens display. Back home, people would steal sidelong glances at the cast, crew and camera as they weaved a wide berth around. Not here. We had people coming up to the talents and complimenting how great they looked, or hanging around the shooting crew and asking about the production, or simply saying ‘how’s it going?’. Of course, there were the occasional hecklers and shot-muggers who, I must add, seemed to have uncanny timing to do exactly that while the camera was rolling.

And what was all the more impressive was the fact that establishment owners had no problems whatsoever with our presence outside their stores. In Singapore, a camera crew would not last five minutes before a security personnel would saunter out and bark his disapproval.

A point in case: once, as we were trekking our way down Market Street, we decided to stop at a cafe housed on the ground floor of a shopping mall. There was a sole security personnel in the lobby. Seeing how we had camera equipment on us, he stepped forward and said: ‘I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to film here.’

‘We’re just getting a coffee,’ I said.

‘Oh, sure. Go right on ahead!’ came his cheery reply.

And that was it. It might not seem much, but the huge difference lay in the fact that the security guy actually apologized before stating his ground. Had the episode taken place in Singapore, the exchange would have been as follows, as was what I had encountered before in a major shopping mall:

‘Eh, hello! Stop! No filming!’

‘We’re not filming. We’re just going to get a coffee.’

‘You are not allowed to shoot here, understand?’

‘Like I said, I’m just getting a coffee.’

We wrapped relatively early at 6pm. Even as there was still more than enough available light for the next hour, the sun has set behind the many skyscrapers in the area and has cast the intersection we were to shoot at in half shadow and half light. A lighting nightmare. We would have to pick-up the other scenes tomorrow.