You are in charge of costumes and production design. That sounds like a huge undertaking for a film like this.
“It was huge and I did find myself having a few tears in the car park at Fox Studios (in Sydney). There are lots of big containers there and on a number of occasions I had a bit of cry behind them but I pulled through and we got it all done… it really has been a mammoth task.  There is just so much detail and Baz is extremely exigent about the look.  He is really focused on the detail and the texture of the film and is as interested in a box of matches someone is using to light a cigarette as he is in one of Nicole’s costumes. So I have to be on top of that kind of detail.”

What did you set out to do?  What were you going for in AUSTRALIA, in terms of the look and design aspects of the film?
“I see my job as helping the director tell the story and in costuming, helping the director and the actors tell the story. I try to amplify a story point, a character motivation. Instead of directly telling the audience, I am trying to show them the story. So ultimately my aim is to clarify the intentions of the director and try to make his vision work in a practical sense. On this particular movie, it is a historical epic so the characters are fictional and there is a huge amount of research to pull the visuals into line. Obviously we are not making a documentary but we are portraying historical events that happened, like the bombing of Darwin.  Ours is a fictional story but nevertheless, Baz always insists that we start with the absolute facts. So in one sense I am very lucky because I am one of the first people to whom Baz tells the story.”

Of course you were involved in the inception of the idea? 
“Yes, Baz has wanted to make an epic movie with Australia as one of the main characters for the 20 years that I have known him. But about four years ago, he got all his close collaborators around him and started to tell us about the story that eventually turned into the movie AUSTRALIA. In a sense, I do have a lot of preparation time because I am part of that first telling of the story and I am given tasks to do very early on. I started visual research many years before we actually made the film and I had a costume workshop with Nicole in Nashville eighteen months before we actually started shooting.  In fact, from that session there were three costumes that ended up being in the film.  One was actually the one we used in the arrival scene.  It’s a blue and cream nautically themed suit that Nicole wears when she arrives in Darwin, having taken the flying boat.”

We began with colors and did a huge amount of research, presenting mini boards to Baz, showing him the kind of life there would be on the wharf for example. We did hundreds of fittings to show him how we would dress all these people. Then there was the supporting cast; we needed to think about the design supporting the characters and illustrating the story. That carries through right up to the principal cast. We had to think about their development over the course of the story.   Nicole undergoes a transformation, as does Hugh, so their costumes change. Then characters were in distress at times so we needed a number of the same costumes.”

Can you talk about Nicole’s costumes?
“She starts out as a very rigid Englishwoman and as a result of coming to Australia and meeting the Drover, she changes. She embarks on a huge life-changing experience, taking two thousand cattle across incredibly harsh terrain. She transforms from an aristocratic woman to a much more relaxed person.  She reveals herself. She’s the same person when the movie starts as when it finishes, but she has found herself. At the start she is still a very independent, forward thinking person, she’s a woman in 1938 who is willing to get the flying boat by herself all the way to Australia. I hoped that the costumes would reveal her progressively throughout the film.”

So the costumes mirror the changes she goes through?
“Yes, she starts off as a contained woman but loses all her reserve and has to create her own style.  She is already modern.  She rides horses.  She doesn’t ride side saddle but she starts to wear more relaxed clothes.  She wears jodhpurs and a shirt to work at ‘Faraway Downs’. She is coming into that look that was championed in the 30s by Chanel and by designers like Claire McCardell in America -- that sportswear look.”

How much fun is it working with Nicole? Obviously you have worked together before.
“It is fantastic, Nicole is an extremely good actress, a very intelligent woman and a great collaborator and she also looks fantastic.”