Creswick Favorites

Favorite thing: This building wasn't used in the filming, but I include a photo of it just because it's one of my favorites, and quite unique in town for its European shutters.
Shops in the town which were not used but were located anywhere near the filming sites just had their 'Creswick' names covered or removed.
I was confused for a while to see that for an American town, they also had to remove the 'American' sign from the American Hotel! (But I guess, in Australia there are no hotels named The Australian Hotel, so there might not be any American Hotels in America either!)

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Favorite thing: For the movie filming, Creswick scored itself a temporary American style Pawn Shop, complete with patriotic red, white and blue balloons in the window, an assortment of the usual appliances found in such stores just about world wide, with one interesting and amusing addition: sets of snow skis lined up in the window.
Amusing because nobody has ever skied in this town that I know of...a little hard to do with only 5 mm of snow at best, though twice in my life we've had enough snow for a day to build snow men.

At the end of filming, in photo 2, the Pawn Shop returns to its previous state, the abandoned shop which until a few years ago was Cosy Corner Milk Bar and Takeaway,. It's one of the oldest buildings in town.

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Favorite thing: This was a very interesting Antique store during the movie...established about 1522...but of course it's not real, just a convincing jeweller's shop in the Salem's Lot movie.
In modern day times, this building is now a Real Estate agent's office.

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Favorite thing: This is the Returned Serviceman's League building in the main street, before the filming began...

Second picture: A few days later, no more canon, flag poles, rocks, etc.
Now it is a convincing Grazioso's Funeral Parlour for the movie...complete with fake (foam sprayed) snow.

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Favorite thing: Red Heap cafe (at the time little more than an outside facade, with a rather glaringly painted bright red roof) within a matter of days, changed colour schemes inside and out to become Norton's Cafe, a convincing looking American style cafe, for the film.

Favorite thing: This is one example of Miners Cottage style which you can see if you take a walk or drive down Creswick's Melbourne Road, one of the oldest parts of the town.
Miners cottages are generally older than the Victorian houses, and often started out quite small. Other rooms were then added on at the back as needed, such as a laundry, toilet, or extra rooms as more children came along.

Favorite thing: This scene was done outside the Post Office and American hotel during some of the last nights of filming.
One or two huge helium balloons with interior illumination were used to represent the moon (and then the in one scene the zombies would come out from different directions and converge on the rotunda)
The light these balloons gave out all by themselves to illuminate the set was amazing!
On the second last night, they even attracted many bats, like moths to a flame, which I thought was amusing and rather suitable (though these were't vampire bats!)

Favorite thing: The Forestry School autumn foliage is rather pretty..and the lack of foliage in winter allows you to see Tremearne House much more clearly than usual. The buildings here belonged to the old Creswick Hospital until around 1912, when the Forestry School began. Tremearne House had been the first doctor's grand Victorian style residence.