On the Terrace: Heading Back

On the Terrace, , , , ,

In our second episode of On the Terrace, host Vaya Pashos talks with two of Night Terrace’s creators, writer Lee Zachariah and star Petra Elliott (Sue), about episode two: “Starship Australis”!

Anastasia and Eddie have returned to Melbourne – or have they? The stars aren’t quite right, the locals seem a bit weird and the calendar is a way off… Join Vaya, Lee and Petra for a chat as they decode the Aussie slang, Neighbours references and definitely-not-political commentary in one of the most Australian episodes of this Australian comedy series.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:51 — 23.9MB)

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This episode of On the Terrace was recorded at Stove Monkey cafe at 191 Clarendon Street in South Melbourne. Episode two of Night Terrace, “Starship Australis”, is available on BBC Radio 4 Extra for 30 days after broadcast. You can also listen to episode one for free, and purchase the rest of the series, via nightterrace.com or the Splendid Chaps Bandcamp store.

Show Notes

  • Bouncer was the name of the Labrador who was a feature of Neighbours for over 1,400 episodes between 1987 and 1993. Supposedly more popular and better paid than the human cast, Bouncer lived at four different addresses and had many families before going to live on a farm. You can read a detailed Bouncer biography at Neighbours fan site The Perfect Blend.
  • The correct spelling is “cataclysm”.
  • Lee is pulling your leg, of course; as well as his own show about film, The Bazura Project, his comedy writing credits include political satire for shows like The Hamster Wheel and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell.
  • The year before it was used in “Starship Australis”, a first publication of “Click Go the Shears” was discovered from 1891, making it very much in the public domain. The tune is not original, but was re-used from the American Civil War song “Ring the Bell, Watchman”. By contrast, the song “Kookaburra” – which appears in the 2006 Doctor Who episode “Fear Her” – was written by Marion Sinclair in 1932. It’s still under copyright until seventy years after her death, and in 2009 the current copyright holders sued Australian band Men at Work for plagiarising the song in their 1981 hit song “Down Under”.
  • The origin and indeed meaning of the Australian phrase “get a dog up ya” are shrouded in mystery. One popular interpretation is that it’s an invitation to drink a beer, and the “dog” comes from the expression “a hair of the dog that bit ya”, i.e. drinking some alcohol as a hangover cure.
  • The National Broadband Network is a government infrastructure project to provide all of Australia with a high-speed Internet connection, primarily through fibre-optic cabling. It’s…been going on for a while.
  • Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to Australia’s big things. There are at least six Big Apples. Night Terrace co-creator Ben McKenzie grew up in Ballina, home of the Big Prawn. (The “Big Engine” in the episode is not from Earth, but is a “Big Thing” replica of the Starship Australis’ spaceship engine, built during the journey to Borealia to give the artists on board something to do.)
  • The “cultural cringe” is the tendency of Australians to consider their own art and culture inferior to that of other countries, especially the United Kingdom. Versions of the same phenomenon are also found in New Zealand, Canada and Scotland, among other places.
  • This Migration Edge article gives a good explanation of the “Australian Migration Zone” and the change made by the government to exclude the Australian mainland from it. It’s even more confusing and ridiculous than it sounds.
  • Francis Greenslade is best known for his work with Shaun Micallef, including The Micallef Program, Welcher & Welcher, Micallef Tonight and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. Chris Taylor is one of the creators and stars of Australian comedy group The Chaser, who started with a satirical newspaper before branching out into television.
  • “The Beast Below” is the second episode of season five of Doctor Who.
  • Neighbours vs Time Travel is the 2017 Neighbours Halloween mini-series, still available on YouTube.
  • Definitely don’t click on this link to “Bouncer’s Dream”…which actually aired on television as part of a Neighbours episode in 1990.