In 2001, my then publisher, Barrie
Publishing, produced an Australian fiction series. They
were looking for stories with an Australian historical
background for a second series. It was at this time I
wrote Caught in a Cyclone, set at Christmas
1974, during Cyclone Tracy.
Before I could submit my manuscript,
Barrie Publishing decided not to pursue a second series.
Years later, I submitted Caught in a
Cyclone to Era Publications. The editors’
reactions surprised me. I thought it was a good story but
I wasn’t expecting seasoned editors to become so
enthusiastic and emotional over it. Caught in a
Cyclone was accepted and published in 2007.
My wonderdul partner, Rob, and I live in a
residential three bedroom home near the beach. We have a
large games room out the back. In the games room are a
pool table, dart board and Rob’s music recording
equipment. We like to play pool every night to relax but
also to discuss writing and our various projects. We
often use this recreational time to brainstorm, plot and
plan. And that’s how my book Caught in a Cyclone
became the basis of a feature film, now titled
“Cyclone Santa."
We knew that the book had to be developed
and expanded to become a feature film of approximately
120 minutes. We’d already spoken to Bernadette
O’Mahony from the Australian Children’s
Television Foundation (ACTF) and she’d given us some
valuable advice and ideas. We’d met with a local
producer and script editor, who had also given us a
couple of suggestions.
Advice, suggestions and ideas were
helpful. But we still needed a plot or plots for our
screen story. We were rather daunted and overwhelmed with
the prospect of coming up with the entire contents of a
movie. Where, oh, where to start?
Our location was obvious. We headed
straight to our sanctuary – the games room. While we
played pool, we discussed what we had. My book. That was
it. We had no choice but to start from there.
After speaking to Bernadette, we’d
decided to increase the size of the family that, in the
book, is at the centre of the drama. We added a young
son, Mikey, who has a fixation on a comic book character
called Commander Australia. Our family now
consisted of two parents, a daughter and a son.
In the book, the family are home together
when they get caught in Cyclone Tracy and experience the
worst night of their lives. We decided that the best way
to add drama and expand the story was to separate the
family – the adults. The obvious choice was to put
the father at work and keep the mother at home with the
children. So we did the opposite.
Next, we had to think of reasons why the
parents would be separated by distance at the time of a
cyclone. It seemed unlikely, unless one of them was
forced to work. Therefore the mother was at work and the
father was at home. We loved the idea of going against
the stereotype of the father being at work and the mother
at home. But why would a mother be forced to work on
Christmas Eve?
There seemed one obvious answer and that
answer suited the drama of a cyclone perfectly. We
decided that the mother would be a nurse at the Darwin
hospital. For fun, we made the father an electrician who
wasn’t able to find work due to the holidays, though
the family needed his income. Clearly, work would not be
an issue after the cyclone!
Once we’d placed the mother, Toni, at
the hospital as a nurse, we were able to develop a second
story line. We knew now how the two storylines would meet
at the end of the screenplay. Again, it seemed an obvious
choice – the Darwin hospital.
Enter Ben, Jam and Violet.
Ben is a contractor for Australian Royal
Mail, who flies a rickety biplane to Outback communities
to deliver the post. He is based on a real person.
In Outback Australia, Ben is approached by
Jam, an Aboriginal boy in need of help. His grandmother,
Violet, is seriously ill and needs urgent medical
assistance. The point of this second story line was to
force Ben to fly his tiger moth into Darwin during
Cyclone Tracy.
During my research on Cyclone Tracy, I
read a story about a man who flew a light aircraft into
Darwin airport before it was closed as a result of the
cyclone. We were amazed that someone could fly through a
cyclone and imagined the drama of doing so. We had to
include this element in our story.
Aboriginal twelve year old Jam has a
special place in our hearts and minds, mainly because he
will always remind us of playing pool together. When one
of us hits a lucky shot and the ball, no skill involved,
ends up in the pocket, Rob sings out, ‘Jam!’ We
were discussing possible names for our character. After
Rob made a fluky shot, I looked at him and said,
‘What about Jam?’
We have a friend called Bill who works in
Aboriginal Communities. Every time we saw him, he told us
stories about Australian Indigenous people and their
beliefs and culture. We were able to draw on some of this
information as we plotted Cyclone Santa.
The first thing we did, after
brainstorming the two stories, was write a treatment
– a 20 page synopsis or outline of the film. Our
evening in the games room had given us enough information
to complete the treatment.
Initially, we were overwhelmed at how to
expand my book Caught in a Cyclone into a 120 minute
feature film. But we knew that we had to try. So we just
did it.
We started with the characters and the
event Cyclone Tracy. Developing the characters helped us
come up with two intertwining plots. Once we knew more
about them, we knew how our stories were going to unfold.
After all, the story is about the characters –
it’s their journeys, their stories. In a way, we let
the characters define their destinies, based on their
agendas, with a little help from us.
