‘Dallas with Dingoes’: On the set of Netflix’s outback drama, Territory

Here’s a fun drinking game to play while watching Territory: every time someone says, “Marianne is the biggest cattle station in the world”, throw back a shot. By the end of the first episode, you’ll be as hammered as Graham (Michael Dorman), the emotionally and physically abused alcoholic son of brutal Lawson family patriarch Colin (Robert Taylor).

The real Marianne is Tipperary Station, a massive property on the edge of Litchfield National Park, a couple of hours’ drive south-west of Darwin. And on the day I visit the set of the big-budget Netflix outback drama series, there’s a funeral under way.

Colin Lawson’s eldest son and presumed heir has died (it happens in the first minutes of the first episode, so this isn’t really a spoiler), thus setting in train the battle for succession that plays out over six beautifully shot episodes.

“I feel ultimately all the great dramas are family stories, whether it’s Shakespeare or Succession or Game of Thrones,” says director Greg McLean, whose previous forays into this part of the world have been in the realm of genre (the Wolf Creek franchise, the crocodile creature feature Rogue). “This definitely falls into that category of being a generational family story set in a location people haven’t really seen explored in this way before.”

Cattle mustering in front of the historic homestead of Marianne. The building was constructed for the series.Credit: Netflix

Tipperary may not actually be the biggest cattle ranch in the world, but it certainly is enormous. It and two neighbouring properties are owned by Melbourne barrister Allan Myers (who also owns the hatted Royal Mail Hotel restaurant in the Victorian town of Dunkeld, where he was born and raised). Collectively known as the Tipperary Group, its 72 paddocks each average 30 square kilometres. It has accommodation for up to 200 people, its own general store, a mango plantation and an airstrip big enough to land a Boeing 727. People tend to get around the place by helicopter. There was once even a zoo here.

Lunch this day for cast and crew and extras – many of them real-life workers on the station – means seating and feeding more people than I have ever seen on a film set. The scale of it really is mind-blowing.

And so was the challenge of shooting here, in heat so extreme that McLean would cover himself from head to toe and barely move, just to preserve his energy. “I looked ridiculous,” he says, “walking around with a parasol like a 19th century lady. People were laughing at me but I said, ‘I’ll be standing from 5am to 6pm so the more I can keep the sun off me, the better it’s going to be, even though I look like a goofball’.”

Tipperary is a working station, which meant “they were doing real cattle musters while we were filming our pretend work”, McLean says. “It was challenging to bring worlds together like that – there was some cynicism about ‘these Sydney and Melbourne wankers coming up here trying to represent us’, but by the end, when they saw how hard the crew worked and how tirelessly we were committed to making something that was really good and represented that world correctly, they were won over. I think they were sad to see us go in the end.”

The most obvious reference point for Territory – which was still called Desert Kings when I visited – are those big flashy American dramas about ranchers or oil barons and their empires. If Home and Away veteran Ray Meagher were in it, you’d maybe call it Yellowstone the Flamin’ Crows, I suggest. “Or, as I would jokingly say on set,” responds McLean, “back to work on Dallas with Dingoes.”

All the great dramas are family stories, whether it’s Shakespeare or Succession or Game of Thrones.

Greg McLean, director

The landscape is a key player in Territory, giving its impressive cast – which also includes Anna Torv as Graham’s wife, Emily, Dan Wyllie as her brother (and sometime cattle rustler), Hank Hodge, and Sara Wiseman as a Gina Rinehart-like mining billionaire – a serious run for their money.

“My God, it’s a cinematographer’s dream,” McLean enthuses. “It’s such a unique place. The landscape, the history, the power dynamics, the reality of what’s going on in the NT, which I don’t think Australians generally pay enough attention to. It’s a fascinating place to go to and to examine, to look at. I could talk about it forever because I’m just in love with it.”

The series was created by Ben Davies, whose background is in factual television (his most enduring work is Bondi Rescue), and writer Tim Lee, who spent months in the NT meeting people who informed the characters he would bring to life in the series (it’s produced by Easy Tiger, the company behind Jack Irish, Colin from Accounts and Scrublands, and Ronde, Davies’ company).

Territory rattles along at a cracking pace, and somehow manages to make the complicated interplay of native title, pastoral lease and mining lease in the Top End seem the stuff of gripping drama. And if its array of hard-drinking, brawling, gun-toting and Stetson-wearing cowboys at times leans towards caricature, McLean insists it’s all anchored in the reality of the place, and the people who live there.

“We push certain elements of it but at the same time, there are aspects we didn’t push at all. We had so many more stories … this is the more believable version of things that go on. The NT is a really crazy place, and if there are future seasons, there’s endless material for drama, I tell you.”

Anna Torv as Emily Lawson and Philippa Northeast as her daughter, Susie.Credit: Netflix

For Sam Corlett, who plays Marshall, grandson of Colin Lawson, the world of the Northern Territory was far removed from the New South Wales Central Coast, where he was raised and still lives.

“The folks working on the station were people from all over Australia,” he says. “They say you’re up there if you’re either ‘wanted’ or not wanted. That’s a badge of honour up there.”

Corlett is rapidly emerging as one of the most sensitive and in-demand actors of his generation. His first role was in Robert Connolly’s 2020 hit, The Dry, where he played the young man whose death haunts detective Aaron Falk (Eric Bana). His biggest role to date has been as the Icelandic seafarer Leif Eriksson in the Vikings spin-off series, Vikings: Valhalla.

They are both roles in which his character is found in, and sometimes against, the landscape, and Territory was an extension of that into a vastly different environment.

“There are moments where time seems longer up there, and there’s a great sense of peace and relationship with the land,” he says. “Then there are other times where it’s two opposing forces, human and nature, and you really need to be hard to exist up there.

“The early mornings [on set], you’d see these old blokes coming with their cattle to help the extras – they’d just got their coffees and they were so stoked on the day – and they definitely find it hard to interact with city folk. They’re not used to communicating about things outside what they know. There’s some real hardness that has to come, an ability to adapt.”

Sam Corlett as Marshall and Michael Dorman as his father, Graham. Credit: Netflix

In his hard-as-nails grandfather’s eyes, Marshall has the potential makings of an heir to the station – certainly more than his father, Graham, whom Colin treats (literally) as a whipping boy. But Marshall isn’t interested in becoming that sort of man. Not that he’s entirely sure what sort of man he would rather be instead.

“The father-son archetypal relationship that I got to explore with Michael Dorman, and he got to explore with Rob Taylor, has such antiquity to it,” says Corlett.

In talking with Lee about his character, they teased out the reference points. “We talked a lot about the Arthurian myths, we talked about Henry IV, the element of the resistant prince, and then you have King Lear there – you’ve got all the elements of great storytelling throughout history,” he says.

McLean has his sights set on slightly more rough-and-tumble company. “I still think Crocodile Dundee is one of the greatest things Australia’s ever produced, and what that movie did for the Australian character internationally, I’d love this show to do a similar thing,” he says.

“The goal was to create a living, breathing, textural representation of the Northern Territory that’s so enticing and seducing that people want to go back and back and back into that world,” he says.

Would he like to go back into it?

“I would love to see more Territory, but it’s entirely dependent upon people falling in love with it.”

Territory is on Netflix October 24.

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