KATE Winslet emerges from the wheat-yellow plains of the Wimmera.
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Decked top-to-toe in 1950s haute couture and carrying a vintage Singer sewing machine, Winslet cuts an arresting figure on the patchwork landscape of western Victoria.
She is out of place yet somehow right at home.
Winslet plays the role of Myrtle “Tilly” Dunnage in the upcoming Australian film The Dressmaker, based on the best-selling book by Brunswick novelist Rosalie Ham who hails from the southern Riverina.
Ham could not have imagined a more fitting actress to bring her heroine Tilly to the big screen.
“I knew about it for a year but it had to be kept secret,” Ham confides.
APPROPRIATELY, it’s the nature of secrets – those kept and those revealed – in small towns that underpin The Dressmaker, a darkly comic story about love, revenge and high fashion.
Growing up in a small country town, Ham says there were the usual types: the town gossip, the sexual deviant, the secret cross dresser and the snob.
“In small rural communities you are conscious of and cushioned by a society in which you either succeed or fail very publicly,” says Ham.
“My parents divorced in the full glare of scrutiny when I was young but I didn’t feel insecure or alone for very long; there was a whole town that I knew and who knew me, and a neighbourhood that watched out for each other.
“People in small communities can be very forgiving and tolerant but if you do the wrong thing they will let you know.”
THE youngest of four, Ham describes her upbringing as “wonderful” on the family sheep farm, Lara Plains, at Jerilderie, still run by her brothers Neville and Geoffrey. (Her sister Jeanette moved away too.)
“It’s where the landscape of my imagination was formed,” she says.
“There was the freedom of the farm: I remember lots of days with play acting, creating games, swimming at the creek and building cubbies.”
After finishing secondary school in Melbourne in 1972, Ham returned to work in the southern Riverina to save money to travel.
“I was a checkout chick in Jerilderie before I went trekking around Australia,” she says.
“When I was 23 my dad said to me: ‘You’ve got to get a ticket in life’.
“So I worked in aged care for 25 years on and off; I learned a lot from older people.
“By the time I sat down to write I had something to say. The Dressmaker’s Molly is a bit dehydrated and a bit malnourished; she’s deaf and perfectly happy.
“I quite like older people; I always gravitate towards them.”
CALLING herself an “accidental novelist”, Ham explains The Dressmaker was shaped out of a misunderstanding.
In 1996 Ham enrolled in a scriptwriting program at RMIT University but on her arrival she found it was already full. Instead she signed up for a novel course believing she would study novels rather than learn to write them.
As a young girl she wrote letters, did well in composition and even toyed with a novel aged 11, but it all came together for her in Melbourne.
“When I sat down to write at RMIT I found I had a sense of story,” Ham recalls.
“I had to write a 500-word synopsis of a book; I had an idea and started writing it.
“It was only three weeks before I realised that this was the best ‘accident’ that had ever occurred to me."
Ham completed that novel The Dressmaker in three years before it was published to critical acclaim in January 2000. Her second novel Summer at Mount Hope was released in 2005 while There Should be More Dancing followed in 2011.
THE Australian landscape features prominently in Ham’s work while the universal themes of hypocrisy, lies and bigotry resonate with her broad audience.
“Suspicion, malice and prejudice are three things I find annoying about humans but it's rife among all of us,” says Ham.
“I hate the petty, nasty, tiny mind but at the same time it can be very observant – just not a particularly nice observation.
“In The Dressmaker I’m attempting to show how destructive and ridiculous it can be.”
Ham’s lead character Tilly returns to her remote childhood home town of Dungatar to right the wrongs of the past after years working as a dressmaker in the exclusive Parisian fashion houses.
Not only does she reconcile with her ailing, eccentric mother Molly (played by Judy Davis in the film) and unexpectedly falls in love with the pure-hearted Teddy (Liam Hemsworth), but armed with her sewing machine and sense of style, she transforms the women of the town and in doing so exacts revenge on those who did her wrong.
QUITE happily, Ham had nothing to do with the production of the film.
She used to catch the bus home from boarding school in Melbourne with the film’s producer Sue Maslin, who was raised at Pooginook Merino Stud, Jerilderie.
“We travelled to school together; I knew Sue got it,” Ham says of The Dressmaker.
Maslin, who completed her secondary education at The Scots School Albury, reconnected with Ham after 30 years as soon as she read the book.
“I loved the book; it says something about growing up on the plains,” says Maslin, who produced Road to Nhill (1997) and Japanese Story (2003).
“You might gossip and carry on but at the end of the day you do rely on each other.
“Tilly was sent away as a 10-year-old and returned to her hometown after 25 years.
“It’s really about how the fabric of a small community can pull apart the characters, even one of their own.”
THE Dressmaker has its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 14 and its Australian premiere in Melbourne on October 18.
As for the big question of what Ham will wear to the Australian premiere, her answer seems fitting.
“I will probably wear my standard black dress,” she says.
“I will hang out with the producers down the back behind the super stars like Rebecca Gibney and Shane Jacobson.”
Ham may feel out of place on the red carpet yet she’ll be right at home when the Australian plains light up the silver screen.
