‘I had seen nothing like it on Australian TV’: behind the making of New Gold Mountain
In conversation: Corrie Chen, Mabel Li and Christopher James Baker on the making of the SBS series New Gold Mountain. A behind-the-scenes look at how this period drama, wild west story and whodunnit came to life.
There was a moment from shooting the series New Gold Mountain that really stuck with director Corrie Chen. At the end of the first day on set, she recalls, the cast and crew were filming a walk-and-talk scene with the characters Wei Shing (Yoson An) and Cheung Lei (Mabel Li).
“There was something about these two Chinese people, one of them dressed in really traditional Chinese clothing, the other in this Akubra, walking through the Australian landscape,” she says. “I just felt really moved. I remember my first [assistant director] and I looked at each other, like, this is so beautifully unusual. And in television there’s rarely much time for surprise and to experience something so raw like that.”
Corrie Chen, Director of New Gold Mountain.
Making the unusual happen was always the game plan for New Gold Mountain. SBS says the four-part scripted drama is its most ambitious project yet, with good reason. It’s the story of the Australian gold rush, told from the perspective of Chinese miners and filmed in Cantonese and English. Set in 1857, following the discovery of a white woman’s body in a Chinese mining camp, New Gold Mountain is a period drama, murder mystery and wild west tale with Chinese cowboys all in one.
Li, who plays the character of Lei, a ruthless young woman sent from China to the Victorian goldfields by her father, says: “When I first read the scripts I immediately felt like I had seen nothing like it on Australian TV.”
It wasn’t just the gripping plot that piqued Li’s interest, but the chance to tell a Chinese-Australian story.
“When I told my family about it, my mum and dad kept going, ‘wait, what? Are you sure it’s an Australian production? With Chinese people in key roles?’” Li laughs. “There were several times that I was, like, I can’t believe that this exists. I can’t believe I’m in a period show in Australia that has Chinese people walking around.
Mabel Li plays Cheung Lei.
“Corrie said something I think just puts it so perfectly, which is that this show shouldn’t be so precious. But it is. And I feel that as well. I feel so amazed that this could happen, but I shouldn’t feel like that. It shouldn’t feel like a first.”
Directing New Gold Mountain is a job that Chen says she had been preparing for her whole life. The gold rush is something she was “obsessed with” as a kid; years ago she even described in an interview something similar to New Gold Mountain as her dream project.
She felt a great responsibility to tell the tale properly. Chen wanted to position the Chinese as the heroes of their own story and to really explore the culture clash that happened in the 1850s, as Indigenous Australians, the Chinese, English, Irish and Scots were all thrust together in the goldfields.
While New Gold Mountain is a work of fiction, the bones of the story were inspired by real life. Chinese miners really did flock to the gold rush, an aspect of Australia’s history often left out in whitewashed retellings.
Chen says: “A lot of our characters were very much inspired by real people.” The lead character, Wei Shing, was drawn from a real man, Fook Shing, who went on to become the first Chinese detective in the Victorian police force. One character, Frederick Standish, was based on a former real-life police commissioner; another, Lola Montez, was based on a famous old-world dancer who really did go to the goldfields in the 1850s.
The show was filmed across 33 days using over 80 cast and crew around Ballarat and regional Victoria, where the gold rush took place. Getting the details of this moment in Australian history right took work.
From the outset, writers worked with a historian to keep their drafts historically accurate. In addition, an adviser from the Chinese Australian Cultural Society consulted on details they’d need for the Chinese mining camp, a set that was built from scratch.
In pre-production, dialect coaches were brought in to help actors nail the English, Irish and Scottish accents that would denote different social classes. A Cantonese dialect coach worked with with actors including Li for months before shooting started to help perfect the sophisticated vernacular and grammar her character would have used.
And then there was the costuming. Lockdown meant that the art department and production designer had to source the bulk of the 1800s costumes online – no mean feat, but one that the crew pulled off.
“When I was in that costume, all the pieces came together,” Li says. “Because the costume just dictates how you move and you just immediately feel like you’re in that time.”
Christopher James Baker, who plays Irish immigrant Patrick Thomas, agrees.
“When you’re doing something like this and everybody’s in incredible costumes and it’s in amazing sets, it’s easier to slip into those imaginary circumstances, because it’s everywhere you look,” he says. “All of that becomes a really rich fertile ground to find character and nuance, because you’ve got a big sandpit to play in.”
Christopher James Baker plays Patrick Thomas.
For Chen, New Gold Mountain is a chance to not only entertain and represent, but to help all Australians see the full picture of our own history.
“I think increasingly Australian audiences are wanting to look back to our past in order to better understand ourselves in the present,” she says. “So much of the making of [Australia] existed in that time with the arrival of all these settlers from around the world, who took whatever they wanted from the land with no consequences and no remorse. I think a lot of those themes feel very urgent, very current and incredibly important to tell right now.”
Li says: “It’s an inherently Australian story. Also, Chinese-Australian cowboys: it’s a yes from me.”
SBS’s new four-part Australian drama, New Gold Mountain, is available to stream free on SBS On Demand.
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