“Never work with animals or children” is an old movie industry adage, and doing both while filming on location can make it a doubly-fraught business.

Yet this was the fate of one star of stage and screen who kept his cool throughout, even as a local child kept popping in and out of shots!

The recent passing of beloved Kiwi actor, Sam Neill, recalled to many locals the time he spent in the Central Tablelands, where he made a lasting impression with his courtesy, warmth, and affability.

A number contacted Orange City Life following Neill’s death earlier this month with recollections of his time working on the Bryce Courtenay mini-series, Jessica (which heavily featured both children and animals) filmed extensively at Lucknow, Orange, Millthorpe, and Carcoar during the autumn of 2003.

One long-time Lucknow local whose property featured in the rural scenes during the series, recounted a tiny intruder who kept popping into shots at the most inconvenient of times.

“Geoff Beasley and John Blunt’s places on Emu Swamp Road hosted filming for many days, and Geoff’s granddaughter, also called ‘Jessica’, kept appearing in the background of shots: climbing trees, throwing rocks in the dam, sitting on fences,” the local recalled.

“The crew were very patient, though, with the director saying at one point, rather frustrated at the delays, ‘can we just put her in the film and be done with it?’; Sam Neill and the crew were all very sweet,” they added.

Millthorpe residents also have fond memories of the series that utilised the village’s historic main street, with some added sleights-of-hand to hide modern touches, corrugated iron fencing, a Victorian verandah on the corner store, proving so popular, they became permanent features of the streetscape.

Locals also recall not only the long hours the cast worked, but also their efforts to engage with the locals and the efforts they made to oblige continued access to the village roads and stores.

“Children were invited down in groups from the local school to meet the cast, with Sam Neill making a special point of coming over to the kids and talking with them; he was very kind and approachable,” one parent remembered.

“I’d only just watched him, playing the town’s drunken solicitor, riding in and falling off his horse a number of times… he was obviously trained for it, but intentionally falling off a horse is still a tricky thing to do,” they added.(Neill’s role as Richard Runche sees him sober up and free the main character, Jessica Bergman, after she is wrongfully institutionalised and loses her child. Neil received the AFI Best Actor award for the part).

One of the former students also posted online a tribute after Neill’s death about his encounter with the actor, who he’d actually thought was the fictional paleontologist from a famed prehistoric movie series!

“As a dinosaur kid growing up, I was bowled over the time I briefly got to see ‘Dr Alan Grant’ in the flesh when Sam Neill visited my hometown to work on an unrelated television series that was partially filmed in the area.

“Not having much of a firm grasp of the difference between the screen and real life at the time, I felt like I had actually met the man who stood up to a Tyrannosaurus Rex in Jurassic Park armed with nothing but a flare!”

Another Millthorpe student had a far shorter meeting with the cast and crew.

“Our teacher also took us down to the filming in the main street, but we were too noisy and they couldn’t shoot, so we had to go back to school

“Miss, who was a real fan of Neill, was not happy with us!” the former student recalled.

The 2004 Channel 10 mini-series Jessica was filmed primarily across Millthorpe, Carcoar, and Orange with specific locations chosen to replicate the early 20th-century setting of Narrandera, where the story is actually set.

A largely humble, self-effacing figure, Neill's family is honouring his wishes with a private funeral service at his farm in New Zealand with no public memorial planned.

Footnote. Neil also starred in the 1994 film, “Country Life”, filmed partly in Carcoar. The Adrian Brody 2015 Supernatural thriller, “Backtrack”, featuring Neill, was also partially shot locally, but he did not appear in any of the Carcoar scenes. Due to his strong Carcoar connections, some locals declared him an “Honourary Carcoarian” in online posts after his passing.