High Country is the latest crime drama to arrive on iPlayer and needless to say, we are already hooked. While the series unfolds in the brooding Australian mountains, fans have been left wondering where High Country was actually filmed.
High Country is the gritty new drama about Sergeant Andie Whitford (Wentworth Prison’s Leah Purcell), a city detective who is forced to relocate to the small town of Broken Ridge, near the mountainous Victorian Alps. However, the change of scenery isn’t the only thing she has to adjust to.
Despite the picturesque locale, it isn’t long before Andie uncovers the body of a young child and Broken Ridge’s many dark secrets.
With the entire first series now available to stream on BBC iPlayer, it’s hard not to binge-watch every hour-long episode of this taut thriller. While fans are gripped by High Country, many have also been curious about where the Aussie drama was filmed.
Where was High Country filmed and is Broken Ridge real?
High Country was filmed in the Victorian Alps, in Southeastern Australia, with the mountainous region being the perfect local for the crime drama.
As the series showcases the often brooding mountain landscape, it is easy to imagine that Broken Ridge could be a real place. However, the town is fictional and the crew had to use two key locations to create it on screen.
Over the 36-day shoot, High Country was filmed in the small towns of Jamieson and Olinda – which are roughly two hours apart. Their wooded landscape was the ideal backdrop for the gritty drama though, with the near-constant rain setting an eerie tone for the series.
While it looked great on camera, the rain caused chaos during filming with the production base, a football pitch in Jamieson, ending up underwater – according to The Sydney Morning Herald.
The cast and crew also had to deal with plunging temperatures as it was winter.
(Image credit: Sony Pictures Television)
Lead actress Leah Purcell, however, revealed that the setting appealed to her – especially as it is a big departure from how we are used to seeing Australia on screen.
Speaking about the series’ location, she told Concrete Playground, “Normally it’s the reds and the brown and the heat. I fell in love with the high country when I did Jindabyne and Somersault in that area. And I just went ‘gee, we don’t utilise this landscape enough’.”
The Wentworth Prison star added that viewers’ eyes will be overwhelmed because “the beauty in the landscape is just [so] phenomenal”.
She later explained that the setting also influenced her character, Sergeant Andie, saying, “It was one of the drawcards to High Country for me. And also because that landscape is so alive, it is a character within this show as well.
“It’s also important to Andie on a couple of levels. One, yes, as the detective, the sergeant trying to solve the mysteries — because is it just that these people took a wrong step on a trail in the bush? Or is there more behind it?”