Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘Territory,’ conflict arises in a family as the enemies close in to lay claim to their legacy. The family in question are the Lawsons, the owners of one of the biggest cattle farms in the world, Marianne Station. The place is under the command of Daniel Lawson, but his sudden and tragic death throws his family into turmoil over the issue of succession. The outsiders see this as an opportunity to strike when the family is vulnerable and get the farm for themselves. The greed is understandable, considering the vast land that Marianne encompasses. At one point, it is considered equal to the land of Belgium, which makes one wonder if there really is such a family farm with the breadth of a small country covered by it. SPOILERS AHEAD
The Fictional Marianne Station and the Bull Bar are Recreated in Real Places
‘Territory’ is a fictional story following the drama within a made-up family named the Lawsons. This makes Marianne a fictional territory as well. However, to bring the place of such grand scale to life on the screen, the creators of the Netflix series had to rely on real cattle farms in the Northern Territory. While the story is not based on any particular cattle station, comparisons have been drawn with the real Anna Creek Station of South Australia, which boasts a land bigger than the scale of Slovenia. It is one of the, if not the, biggest cattle station in business at the time and was also subject to some radical change in hierarchy and ownership in the mid-2010s. But while its problems were limited to the legal and political issues, things are much more intimate in the drama surrounding Marianne Station, as things get much more personal, with people even losing their lives and limbs over it.
Because the entirety of the show takes place in the Northern Territory, this is where the crew set camp for the majority of the filming process. The real farm called the Tipperary Station worked as a stand-in for Marianne. Its expansive grounds allowed the crew to take in the aerial views and set the tone of the story by presenting a gorgeous backdrop to the story. The airfield that appears on the show also belongs to the Tipperary Station, which was great because the crew needed helicopters to chart the place and shoot various scenes.
The show’s creator, Ben Davies, revealed that the place was so big that it would take them about 40 minutes to get from the turn-off to the station’s gate. They were glad to land the location as it was “something with such expanse and scale [that they were] looking for to sell the vision of the world’s biggest cattle station.” Instead of finding a different place to stay going back and forth to work, and adding up hours on transportation, the crew decided to camp in the grounds of Tipperary Station itself. They set up camper vans with other necessities, like a mess kitchen, while also getting some of the station’s already built quarters to stay there. More than 200 cast and crew lived as such for about the first four weeks of the shoot before they had to pack up and move on to the next location.
To make things more authentic on the screen, the show hired the station hands as extras, who also helped them figure out the kinks and make sure that the realities of living on a cattle farm were accurately depicted. There were several other locations where the crew had to spend several days, if not weeks, to get the requisite shots. But there were also times when they had to rely on sets, majorly for the interior shots. The fictional Bull Bar that appears in several scenes of the show was one of the interior locations, where the crew had a proper set where they could work with relative ease, compared to the harsh and trying environment of the open country.
Read More: Netflix’s Territory Ending Explained: Does Colin Find Out the Truth About Dan’s Death?
