Latin American fire and flavour meet English country-house chic in a charming hotel set in the New South Wales wilderness...
Pre Anzac Sunday dinner 🍲 with John and Farhana at Dinah’s Dinning Room.
This country estate started life as a guesthouse in 1892, built by postmaster George and schoolteacher Dinah Osborn to welcome travellers off the steam train at Bundanoon, a quaint hill station two hours by rail (and modern automobile) from central Sydney.
As we drove to the venue the South American colourful leaves on Antipodean trees were waving at us
“Arriving at the swank Osborn House hotel in New South Wales’ Southern Highlands we find a steel-framed dome, anchored on a hillside and hung with wagyu tomahawks, whole chooks and skinned pineapples. All roasting slowly over burning logs above the green infinity of Morton National Park.”
… Hispanic staff bring starters of empanadas …
Latin American flavour meet English country at Osborn House in the Southern Highlands
We are reading Sam Neill’s ‘accidental’ memoir - it is a real charmer – just like the man himself
Sir Sam Neill has played the leading man in films for the better part of half a century. He recently released his memoirs, Did I Ever Tell You This? I spoke to him this week.
Fitz: Sam, you’ll be pleased to hear I don’t want to focus on your recent revelations of severe illness with stage 3 T-cell lymphoma that you’ve mercifully come back from. But would it be fair to say that it’s facing one’s mortality that focuses the mind on what you’ve done with your time on Earth? And what you want to do with the decades that remain?
SN: “Decades” is good. I like that.
Fitz: Well, we are hoping for decades, yes?
SN: Well, that’s right. You’re never cured of these things, but you’re very pleased with the word “remission” and I’ve been living with that for a while, with regular chemotherapy that I will have for the rest of my life.
Fitz: That sounds grim. Do you feel crook for a day?
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SN: It’s twice a month and you have two or three crook days and then you’re back. You can’t taste anything and all that stuff. But once you’ve stopped, springing back to life is very good again.
Fitz: It must have been hard when first diagnosed?
SN: Finding something to do that looked like fun was important and that was writing. I’ve not been given to looking back much and never seen the point in it. I was forced to do it, and then I realised what a pleasurable business it was, looking back and becoming reacquainted with my parents. And I realised how much gratitude I had for the life I’ve led, which wasn’t really the life I’d expected at all – and how much fun a lot of it was and how much pleasure people have given me over the years. And how absurd all the twists and turns have been.
Fitz: Did you try and keep to a particular word count a day, or set number of hours writing, and then endless reworking?
SN: It was actually written very spontaneously and after a bit I called David Marr and I said “I’ve written 40,000 words”. He said “My dear boy, that’s an awful lot of words”.
Fitz: I would have said, “Sam, you’ve barely cleared your throat, and it’s time you got started!” but go on.
SN: I sat on it for a few months thinking “I don’t know if I want to read it again,” because I was scared of boring myself. Eventually, I had the courage to send it off to some publishers and I got these immediate enthusiastic responses and I thought, “Oh, maybe it should go out.”
Fitz: I remain amazed that after all these years living here you are still not a citizen, despite being practically one of us?
SN: I’ve got three citizenships: Irish, British and New Zealand. That’s probably enough.
Fitz: But beyond the paperwork of passports, I know you can finish this line: “Once a jolly swagman camped by a . . .” what?
SN: [Laughs.] Well, a small brackish pool infested with things that want to kill you. And from which it would certainly be very wise to boil the water before making a cup of tea out of a billy.
Fitz: You pass! Alright, try this: “There was movement at the station for the word had passed . . .”
SN: Around that pies are on now, at the station’s refreshment kiosk.
Fitz: Close enough. When the All Blacks play the Wallabies, is there not a small part of you that wants to cry out “Come on the Wallabies”?
SN: I shouldn’t be telling you this because you’re a Wallaby yourself, but a large part of me is actually quietly rooting for the Wallabies. I get bored with rugby when the All Blacks were beating everybody. And I guess the fact that my mate [former Wallaby captain] George Gregan is staying with me at the moment gives you some idea of where I am at.
Fitz: Richard Harris, the great Irish actor once said, “I’ll tell you this: two Golden Globes, one Grammy, five Grammy nominations, two American Academy Award nominations, two British Academy Award nominations, one Cannes Film Festival award, four gold records, one platinum record and so on. I am also a multimillionaire. And you know what? I’d give it all up tomorrow, the whole lot, for one Irish rugby cap. Just one.” Did you ever aspire to be an All Black yourself and did you play rugby?
SN: Of course I played. I had the very specialised position of “breakaway” and I used it to break away as soon as I possibly could, to find a part of the field where nothing was going to happen. No All Blacks cap for me.
Fitz: And yet nor was acting the obvious path? I was interested to read that you used to stutter. Were there any moments from your early life like in the film, The King’s Speech, where you’re in such agony trying to get words out that you’re sort of trying to recede into the background, dying of embarrassment?
SN: Yes, I was pretty silent as a child. I didn’t really want adults to talk to me because I wouldn’t be able to reply. And it wasn’t until I got to about the age of 14 or 15 that the stutter started to go away. And that coincided with getting some sort of confidence in my life as well. Stuttering can be an inherited condition, and I passed it on to one of my children. We took her to speech therapist as a very small child because she was almost entirely silent. Sometimes I wish she still was a bit [laughs] but that is fixed!
Fitz: Looking back, was it your performance in My Brilliant Career in 1979, playing the male lead Harry Beecham, that was your key breakthrough? And was that a pinch-me moment or did you always feel you were destined for stardom?
SN: Let’s put that one to rest: I was never destined for that. In fact, I never imagined I would have a career in the movies at all. That is just the way it turned out. Like all careers, there are breakthroughs and setbacks, that’s just the way it goes. But I guess you could put My Brilliant Careerdown as a breakthrough.
Fitz: Are you never intimidated by the fact that you’ll be unlikely to ever equal – and you can call me a shameless sycophant if you like – your performance in Dead Calm, with Nicole Kidman and Billy Zane, which was the best film there ever was.
SN: Well, I’m glad you liked it . . .
Fitz: I LOVED it!
SN: . . . loved it. It’s good to have one or two runs on the board.
Fitz: Looking back, are you glad you missed out on succeeding Moore, Roger Moore, in the role of Bond, James Bond, to Tim Dalton in the early 80s?
SN: Very relieved, really. I would have been stuck with being an “ex-Bond” for the rest of my life.
Fitz: Russell Crowe once said that he has enough of the working class in him that he never feels that he’s between films, and more than he is “unemployed”. Given how busy you are – shooting three films this year – I guess you are free of that feeling anyway?
SN: Yes, but I’m probably not as driven as I used to be. But I do love working. And I’m very comfortable on the set. I’m very comfortable to be working with my peers. That’s one of the great things in my life actually.
Fitz: You will have seen the controversy around Guy Pearce’s tweet of a fortnight ago, saying “If the only people allowed to play trans characters r trans folk, then r we also suggesting the only people trans folk can play r trans characters?” and his subsequent profuse apology. Your thoughts?
SN: I see your cunning plan FitzSimons, you are trying to get me into trouble here. I have nothing to say on this question. Innocent bystander. But at least let me say, I love Guy Pearce.
Fitz: Meantime, none of my business, but if you haven’t fallen in love with one or many of your leading ladies over the years, you’d have to be the first regular leading man in the history of cinema, not to have done so?
SN: Yes . . . I’ve done that before.
Fitz: How is Nicole?
SN: [Wild laughter.] No, actually, when we were doing Dead Calm I fell in love with a woman who would become my wife, Noriko Watanabe.
Fitz: A fortnight ago, I interviewed intimacy coordinator Chloe Dallimore. Have you had to call on the services of such professionals?
SN: As a matter of fact, I will be under the care of an intimacy coordinator on this current shoot [with Annette Bening]. I look forward to everyone being entirely comfortable . . .
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Fitz: My missus says, and I quote, “Sam has to be the most eligible bachelor on Earth”, something not often applied to 75-year-olds. It is of course none of our damn business whether or not you are indeed a bachelor - unless of course you want to spill?
SN: First of all, let me say your wife’s the nicest person to say such a thing. But yes, I’m certainly a bachelor. On occasion, someone nice will be kind enough to go out for dinner with me, but that’s about the extent of it.
Fitz: Is your knighthood one of the honours of your life, Sir Sam?
SN: Yeah. Well I first turned it down some years ago but [then I thought] it might look good on my CV when I check out. [Laughs].
Fitz: Does that make you a monarchist?
SN: Not necessarily. I don’t have any strong feelings about the monarchy to be honest. I know it’s out of date and everything but I can’t get myself to get worked up about it. There are worse things.
Fitz: Is there anything that makes you break out of your sunny persona and makes you turn suddenly savage? Do you never say, “This is f--ing outrageous, and I’m putting my name and fame to shame those who say it!” ?
SN: Well, I was very appalled by how Jacinda was treated and I get very angry about politics in America and guns in America. There’s a lot of things that upset me. And I will get very upset if Australia doesn’t vote for the Voice. I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance and I dearly hope that people start listening and show respect and do the Voice.
Fitz: Cut. Thank you, and please pass on my regards to your current date, George Gregan. Thank you, Sir Sam.
Twitter: @Peter_Fitz