DIRECTOR Scott Hicks's new movie The Boys are Back will prove especially evocative for expat South Aussies as the screen fills with summer, hot and dry; with long beaches where sand merges with a glistening horizon and with quiet coves cuffed by flaxen hills.
But this is no Australia epic, rather an intimate and very charming ensemble piece that just happens to make a star of South Australia's Fleurieu Peninsula.
Stretching from the rolling vineyards of the McLaren Vale south to Cape Jervis, taking in a sweep of beautiful beaches and at times a dramatic and inaccessible coastline, the Fleurieu also reaches east across verdant farming country to the historic river port of Goolwa.
It is South Australia's summer playground, crammed with McShacks in parts, but in many ways calling to mind a more old-fashioned style of holiday when white-bread sandwiches, slapping on the zero factor tanning oil and cooling off under the sprinkler were all OK. At Aldinga you can still drive on to the beach (an issue of some contention at the moment) and, on searing hot summer afternoons, bathers await the late dusk to deliver a sea breeze, erecting striped tents, dinner tables and cricket wickets around their cars, like some sort of zinc-daubed nomadic tribe.
Across the peninsula at Goolwa, hub of a small wooden-boat industry, a 19th-century paddle steamer is docked at the river wharf where the Steam Exchange microbrewery, located in the old railway goods shed, crafts a canny selection of brews, including the rather good India Pale Ale. From this dock, suitably fortified, visitors can explore the Coorong and Lower Lakes.
This is a part of the world Hicks knows well. He began his career here as a runner on Storm Boy, which was filmed in the Coorong, and he and his wife, producer Kerry Heysen, have a beach house overlooking the Southern Ocean and a vineyard not too far away in the Adelaide Hills.
"The Boys are Back was an opportunity for me to set a story I love into a landscape I love and understand and feel a part of," Hicks says.
"I've always been fascinated by the hills near Willunga. My first feature film, Freedom, had its climax set in those hills ... it is something to do with their rounded shape, the way that the light falls on them late in the day; they are sculptural and seductive."
Cinematographer Greig Fraser's camera certainly loves them, lingering on the golden, wind-whipped grass and the voluptuous fall of the dry land to the movie's quaint homestead set or tiny Myponga Beach.
A summer holiday on the Fleurieu can be many things, from the fashionable enclaves of Port Elliot and Middleton (where fish and chips, served in paper cones, washed down with a chilled McLaren Vale ros aac on the beach in front of The Flying Fish Cafe are mandatory), to mucking about in boats on the river near Goolwa, surfing the sometimes big swells near Victor Harbor, or dropping out in the quieter towns of Normanville and Myponga.
Add to this a lively food and wine culture - the Willunga Farmers Market is one of the best in the country - and it's easy to understand the allure of a region where vine meets sea.
Accommodation ranges the gamut but the new digs of choice are at the Australasian, a circa 1858 pub in downtown Goolwa where proprietors Juliet Michell and Deborah Smalley have effected a stunning makeover to provide a boutique hotel that operates more like a private club.
The Australasian boasts an outstanding DVD library (Smalley is a self-confessed movie addict) specialising in Australian, New Zealand, Asian and cult classics. (Hicks would be pleased to see Shine heading the large catalogue.) With just five guestrooms and a private dining room (open to the public Saturday nights), The Australasian makes the perfect Fleurieu bolthole, providing buckets of style but with an emphasis on comfort.
During an exhaustive six-year renovation the hotel was all but rebuilt within its historic shell. The tiny, 19th-century cell-like bedrooms were knocked together to offer individually decorated suites, all with a contemporary Asian sensibility: deep tubs set on raised platforms, Chinese armoires concealing high-definition televisions, mirrored mini-bars stocked with South Aussie wines and, in some rooms, open fires fitted with eco-smart burners.
Throughout the light and airy hotel (two decks give town and river views), the walls are hung with beautiful Japanese kimono and obi, part of Michell's private collection, and her passion for Japanese culture is reflected throughout, from the neatly folded yukata on the bed and Japanese beer in the minibar to the copper rain chains decorating the building's honey-stoned exterior. There's even a small Japanese-themed garden planted with the spiny sedge that's used by the region's Ngarrindjeri women for weaving.
While the hotel was being renovated, Michell used what little spare time she had to train as a chef and her food is very good, served in a groovy, ground-floor dining room and bar that would not look out of place on Shanghai's Bund.
Not surprisingly the Mod Oz table d'hote menus are Asian themed. On the evening that I visit, Japanese soup with steamed prawn balls is followed by a tender orange and miso-marinated duck (served with edamame, black beans and garlic stems) and green tea pannacotta.
The South Australian wine list is well considered; Rockfords Frugal Farmer, somewhere between a ros aac and a red, served chilled, is an excellent addition.
Breakfast is delivered on an old-fashioned trolley (the poached eggs snug under proper silver domes) and popped in the room without intrusion. The Australasian is located downtown with a bottle shop next door, the quaint cottages of Little Scotland across the road and the pretty Goolwa wharf a five-minute walk away. It's a good base from which to explore nearby Port Elliot and Victor Harbor (where one of the world's last horse-drawn trams operates across to Granite Island) or forage among the Fleurieu's many excellent restaurants. Vine-side try Fino in Willunga, The Kitchen Door at Pennys Hill winery and d'Arrys Verandah, perched hilltop in the d'Arenberg cellar door. Waterfront, look no further than a fish pasty or bowl of cockles at the bustling Aquacaf, spilling out of an old kiosk on Goolwa's Barrage Road.
Port Elliot's Flying Fish has a smart beachfront dining room as well as a take-out cafe while the jaunty Star of Greece, perched above the cliff-cuffed sands of beautiful Port Willunga, doles out wiggling fresh squid caught on the beach below.
Restaurants and tourists thin out as you head south to Myponga Beach, on to Carrickalinga (offering great views of the South Coast) and the very charming Normanville. Top to bottom, the Peninsula is crisscrossed by narrow country roads; old farmhouses are set among rambling roses, deep gullies are planted with elm and poplar and hillsides dotted with dairy herds. And then there are the vines sweeping to the sea.
Two of the characters in The Boys are Back own a vineyard, a deliberate Hicks conceit. "To give them [the characters Barbara and Tom] an occupation I understood, running a vineyard, was great," Hicks says.
The vineyard concerned, DogRidge, has a seven-day cellar door operation on Bagshaws Road, McLaren Flat. Together with his beachhouse, Hicks's vineyard, Yacca Paddock, serves as a sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of the international film business.
"Coming back here is very important to the creative process," he says. "Travelling so much can be disintegrating; you have to feel centred somewhere."
Raised in Africa and England, arriving in South Australia when he was 14, Hicks has found that centre on the Fleurieu.
Christine McCabe was a guest of the South Australian Tourism Commission
