Harry Potter star
I want to go back to Tasmania. It’s gorgeous ... I bought some very good gin at the market Miriam Margolyes
RENOWNED British actor turned Aussie citizen Miriam Margolyes was delighted by Tasmania’s beauty but appalled by its history when she toured the island state for the first time.
The 81-year-old chewed the fat – and some wallaby – with Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie, got a grim history lesson from Aboriginal leader Michael Mansell and unpacked Ulverstone’s homophobic past, all while searching for the answer to one question: Do Aussies truly get a “fair go” in this country?
Margolyes clambered into her campervan and hit the road to find out in her new documentary series, Miriam Margolyes: Australia Unmasked.
Her first stop? Tasmania. The British actor, who became an Australian citizen in 2013, was determined to rediscover the nation “behind the mask” and to understand what the “fair go” means to her fellow citizens today.
She travelled down from her home in the Southern Highlands of NSW to board the Spirit of Tasmania, but she told the Mercury her eight-week tour did not have the smoothest of starts.
“I was a bit of a disaster,” she laughed. “I was not a very good sailor. It was pretty rough, so I didn’t do very well.”
Margolyes – who lives in NSW several months a year with her partner, Heather Sutherland – had never traversed Tasmania, but had previously visited Hobart.
The veteran of both screen and stage won a BAFTA in 1993 for the film The Age of Innocence, but is most renowned these days for portraying Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter series.
Margolyes has also worked in Australia, appearing in Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries from 2012 to 2015 and performing on stage for the Melbourne Theatre Company in I’ll Eat You Last and The Lady in the Van.
And she is no stranger to documenting her Aussie road trips, with her series, Miriam Margolyes: Almost Australian, airing in early 2020.
The actor zigzagged her way across the north of Tasmania earlier this year for her new series – meeting locals in Brickendon, Penguin, Beaconsfield, Cape Grim and Ulverstone – before finishing up in Hobart.
She also snuck in a trip to Bruny Island.
Margolyes was singing Lambie’s praises after catching up with her in Penguin.
“It was gratifying to meet her,” Margolyes said. “She was really a very good egg.
“She had to fight to get where she is.
“I think that, generally speaking, she feels, and I think she’s probably right, that Tasmania is the poor relation among the states.”
Viewers get a seat at the patio table as Lambie cooks lunch for Margolyes, serving up what the actor believed to be lamb.
“It’s ‘roadkill’ as we like to call here it in Tasmania. It’s wallaby,” Lambie said in the first episode, laughing.
“I don’t think I would have eaten it if I had known what it was,” Margolyes told the Mercury.
“But, having eaten it, I
have to be honest, it was very delicious.”
The 81-year-old then treks to Cape Grim to meet Aboriginal leader and well-known activist Mansell, who helps
her to truly understand Indigenous Tasmanians’ grim history.
Mansell recounts how the English named a cliff “Victory Hill” after they massacred at
least six Indigenous men and women at the site.
But it is the openly gay woman’s trip to Ulverstone – once dubbed Australia’s most homophobic town – where
history hits close to home.
Margolyes said she was “shocked” to learn of the antigay rallies at the Ulverstone Civic Centre, which were broadcast across the nation as community leaders railed against decriminalising homosexuality in the 1990s.
“I haven’t met anti-gay bigotry ever in my life and I’ve lived a long time,” she said.
Margolyes says in the first episode that she believes Australians have to fight to get a “fair go”, but she admitted to the Mercury she has had it easier in this country than others.
“When you’re a wellknown face, all doors open.”
Margolyes then journeys from Tasmania to Victoria and South Australia to film two further episodes.
But the island state has not seen the last of the 81-yearold.
“I want to go back to Tasmania. It’s gorgeous,” she said.
And the first place she plans on returning to is none other than the Salamanca Market.
“I bought some very good gin at the market,” she continued. “I shall come back and get another bottle.”
Watch Margolyes travel Tasmania in the first episode of Miriam Margolyes: Australia Unmasked on ABC on Tuesday at 8.30pm.