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Actor Hunter Page-Lochard Explains Why Black Summer Bushfire-Inspired ABC FIRES Drama Is Therapeutic Viewing

 


It was a time when actor Hunter Page-Lochard got a glimpse of the kind of experience traumatized firefighters have on the front line.

Playing the role of a volunteer firefighter named Mott in ABC’s new drama series FIRE, Page-Lochard was filming a scene for the first episode in the bush around Melbourne.

Actors wearing firefighters' clothes standing on the road near a fire truck while the film crew films.
Eliza Scanlen and Kaden Hartcher film a bush scene.(

ABC TV: Ben King

)

Special effects specialists had created a campfire surrounded by smoke with flames snaking around the trees.

Real firefighters employed as production consultants were watching.

“As you enter the scene, you can see how [special effects experts] wrap fire blankets and gas coils around real trees and there’s a real fire so it’s rigged to look very real, but as an actor do you think it’s is real, however?

“It looks very ‘Hollywood’, I can see the gas tanks right there.

“But then you leave the set and talk to the fire department and they have tears in their eyes saying how real it looks, that it actually looks like the first fire they went on.

“So there were little PTSD moments like that during the shoot,” Page-Lochard recalls.

“And then when you step back onto the set and they call for action, you don’t have to do anything because it’s just been confirmed how real it is.

“[Fellow actor]Eliza Scanlen and I really focused on asking the fire department for the smallest details, like do we wear helmets in the cab of the truck? Because it was so important for us to make sure we respected them first and foremost. “

FEUX, a six-part anthology series starting on ABC TV and iview tonight, was inspired by the stories of people who experienced the catastrophic bushfires of the black summer of 2019-2020, which made 33 dead, saw doomsday scenes of people sheltering on beaches, destroyed thousands of homes and buildings, burned millions of acres and covered towns far from the burning bush in choking smoke.

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Thousands of residents waited on Mallacoota Beach as a fire front approached the town.

“I was watching the fires on my Christmas vacation and felt so helpless and helpless,” said co-creator and executive producer Tony Ayres.

“I had a friend who got caught in a fire and only survived by jumping into the neighbor’s basement.

“Our showrunner and co-creator Belinda Chayko was actually in the thick of it, hosting people because she lives in North New South Wales, and she had a lot of friends who had lost their place or who had had terrifying experiences.

Headbutt from Tony Ayres.
FIRES co-creator Tony Ayres says theater is a compassionate way to explore people’s traumatic experiences.(

ABC Television

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“And I thought, what can we do as storytellers? How can we contribute to this debate, to try to understand what happened and also to try to understand the experiences of people, what people really felt, because I think most people in cities were outside the experiment.

“Theater is a compassionate medium, so if we can kind of step into people’s shoes and share a moment in their lives, we can hopefully feel compassion.”

The program follows the impact of this long and scorching fire season by following two young volunteer firefighters, Mott (Hunter Page-Lochard) and Tash (Eliza Scanlen), who nearly died fighting a fierce fire in Queensland, then travel to New South Wales. and Victoria to fight the fires that burn over the Christmas and New Years season.

Woman with hand to head and man in tractor cabin at rural background.
Miranda Otto and Richard Roxburgh play the role of dairy farmers who lose their property and half their herd.(

ABC TV: Ben King

)

A stellar cast also includes Richard Roxburgh, Miranda Otto, Anna Torv, Sam Worthington, Sullivan Stapleton, and Noni Hazelhurst.

Page-Lochard also a regular Play School presenter watched much of the disaster unfold from afar in far north Queensland where he was filming, but upon returning to his Sydney home he recalls being deeply concerned about the amount of smoke hovering over the city and the potential impact on the health of her newborn daughter.

“It was scary, it was apocalyptic, and I think what gave him the apocalyptic feeling was that everyone was feeling the same,” he says.

“While worrying about the smoke over Sydney isn’t as hard as being stranded on a beach because you’re surrounded by fires, the fact that we’re affected by this smoke from a fire that affects these people on a beach in some way has connected us all metaphorically, no matter how intense your experience is. “

With the trauma of the black summer flames quickly overtaken by more than 18 months of relentless stress of experiencing a global pandemic, Page-Lochard believes the program offers an opportunity for long-awaited emotional healing.

“I see it as a therapy session,” he says.

“Because of the way we tell stories, we don’t focus on the negativity of the f *** – ups, we focus on the people who have come together to save each other and to save the wild .

A young girl kisses a man in the remains of a burnt down house.
Sullivan Stapleton and Ameshol Ajang in episode six of FIRE, which brings the series to its climax.(

ABC TV: Narelle Portanier

)

“I think it’s confronting the comeback [to that time] but it’s not a confrontation in a way where you want to put it out, it’s a confrontation in a way where it’s therapeutic, where it’s a sigh of relief.

“You shed a tear because you didn’t allow yourself to shed a tear during the actual fires because you switched to COVID.

“So I feel like this is a pretty important time to show it because people just shifted that stress to the next big thing, the pandemic, and no one has really been able to share this heartbreak over the loss of human life and loss of land.

“I think it’s going to be cathartic.”

The series faced many challenges while filming COVID restrictions and lockdowns, flooding of rain while filming outdoor fire scenes and the producers were keenly aware of the need to be sensitive to the trauma suffered. by communities directly affected by the fires.

Co-creator of ABC FIRES TV show Belinda Chayko on set in 2020
Co-creator Belinda Chayko on set with Sam Worthington.(

ABC TV: Ben King

)

Producers worked closely with major fire agencies including CFA in Victoria, NSW RFS and QFES, the Queensland Volunteer Firefighters Union, and hired a CFA recommended fire consultant to ensure an authentic portrayal of the disaster and to say that I had positive feedback on the filming scripts and the first viewings of some episodes.

They also wanted the cast to reflect a diverse Australia.

Miranda Tapsell, Hunter Page-Lochard, Luke Carroll and Matthew Doyle holding hands while standing behind Play School toys
Play School’s 2019 episode Acknowledgment of Country was co-written by presenter, actor and director Hunter Page-Lochard.(

ABC

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“I think this [show] is revolutionary, ”says Page-Lochard, a descendant of the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali clan of the Yagembeh nation in southeast Queensland.

“I applaud Belinda Chayko for doing the color blind cast well.

“Colorblind casting can sometimes be misunderstood.

“[Producers] can overcompensate and add all these diverse characters into a show and freak out and go, ‘I don’t know what to write for these guys so I’m just going to write it all down to relate to their culture rather than just letting them be characters.’

“But Belinda chose an Aboriginal actor to play a firefighter.

“She didn’t choose an Indigenous actor to play an Indigenous firefighter.

“She did it in a subtle way where being native isn’t the goal, he’s a firefighter, end of story.

“Additionally, you will notice in the first episode that [my character] Mott’s family is a lot more positive than Eliza’s character’s Caucasian family and you never see that on screen, so I really take my hat off to Belinda. “

As another fire season approaches, Tony Ayres is hopeful that FIRES will spark a conversation about the lasting effects of Black Summer and the ever-present threat of another.

“I hope this show will give us the opportunity to talk about the lingering traumas facing rural Australia in particular,” said Tony Ayres.

“For a lot of people in cities, COVID has replaced fires and we are not engaged in what other people are still facing, for the rest of us it is a forgotten experience, and I think it is It’s really important that we don’t forget about this experience.

“And I hope the show gives people a reason to talk about why the fires happened, what the underlying reasons are, this climate emergency we find ourselves in, what can we do when does it happen again?

“These are urgent questions because I think it is inevitable that we will have to face them again.

“We need to talk about it now.”

FIRES premieres on ABC TV and iview on Sunday September 26 at 8:40 p.m.

Sources

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2/ https://www.abc.net.au/news/backstory/2021-09-26/abc-fires-about-black-summer-bushfires-hunter-page-lochard/100491742

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