Back then Producer Bill Leimbach was supposedly looking at overseas actors like Americans James Franco and Casey Affleck and Poms Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston and said the film script was almost finished.

Mr Leimbach reckoned he probably couldn’t afford Aussie actors under consideration, Chris Hemsworth and Joel Edgerton, while he said Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman and Geoffrey Rush were too old.

In Orange last week canvassing for council funds he says he’s now looking at Anthony LaPaglia, Michael Caton, Bryan Brown and Xavier Samuel.

In the meantime historian Jonathan King, who wrote, directed and produced the documentary, Waltzing Matilda: The Song That Shaped a Nation, says an American or Brit playing Australia's most quintessential bush poet would be a cultural scandal.

As an Australian historian he says he would be appalled and he thought most Australians would be appalled that such a beloved Aussie hero could be portrayed by a foreigner.

IF the producers can rake up the money for the Banjo film, Orange would like to be involved in some small way but in all his poems he never wrote a word about the city, something that would have given us a better link.

Banjo’s mother came here to stay with his great uncle James Templer for his birth in Narrambla Homestead on February 17, 1864, and he was baptised there 23 days later on March 11, 1864, by Reverend Robert Mayne, the rector of Holy Trinity Church at Orange, who had married his parents at Boree the previous year.

His birth was registered at Orange Court House and it was there in the 1940s that clerk of petty sessions Dick Sheridan found Banjo’s birth certificate among courthouse records showing he was born at Narrambla.

And Mr Sheridan’s historic credentials were beyond question. He was a director of the National Trust of Australia, formed Orange and District Historical Society, was its foundation president for three years, treasurer for three and then patron until at least 1971.

But Banjo’s connection to Orange has been muddied by the Emmaville cottage set-up near the Botanic Gardens.

It’s unbelievable how anyone came to the conclusion he was born in this hut when for 69 years Banjo Paterson Memorial Park off Ophir Road has marked the site of the old Narrambla homestead that’s been widely accepted as his birthplace.

There’s an obelisk that was unveiled in the presence of his widow Alice in 1947, a plaque and bronze bust and the park is heavily promoted everywhere as Banjo’s birthplace.

So, if the movie gets off the ground and its makers decide to give Orange a mention as his birthplace, good luck.

But whatever happens, let’s hope any movie doesn’t result in the same TV shemozzle made by the ABC about Emmaville cottage.

THE council is not sure what it will do with the land it bought on the corner of Summer and Woodward streets.

The old shop and house that was there has been demolished and despite council’s indecision on the land’s future, there’s one huge benefit already.

Drivers approaching the roundabout from the east can now see other vehicles on the right as far back as the Woodward Street traffic lights and it’s made the corner 200 per cent safer than what it was.

So let’s hope nothing gets built there to again block off driver vision.

WHY do journalists and cartoonists in metropolitan newspapers persist in likening country people to some sort of farming hicks?

They portray us as slow-talkers who wear big hats with corks and tweed coats and drive utes with dogs in the back and tragically in this electronic age this repeated image becomes fact to many city dwellers.

For too long the agenda of life out here, somewhere in the never never, out past Penrith, that mythical place the back of Bourke, of Akubra hats, flannelette shirts, moleskin trousers and four-wheel drives, is being controlled by city people

 The Telegraph this week ran a photo of actor Chris Hemsworth who, the article said, had “swapped Hollywood for hay bales on his family’s farm and despite looking right at home on the farm, there wasn’t a plaid shirt or Driza-Bone in sight with Hemsworth showing off his muscles in a singlet and boardshorts ...”

Oh dear. Here we go again.

Do we now all wear plaid shirts and Driza-Bones?      

This sort of Sydney-centric bias is doing real damage to the image and drive of country NSW.

THAT mobile speed camera has been working overtime in Woodward Street, in front of Elephant Park, the safest and widest section of roadway in Orange.

It’s been there night and day, as early as 7am and as late as midnight, “saving lives” as Roads Minister Duncan Gay persists in saying.

Are the private contractors working the camera on a quota or a bonus or is the straight section proving to be a cash cow for the government?

Wouldn’t it be better somewhere out the road where it could genuinely save some lives?

THE NSW government is looking at moving police from suburbs where crime has fallen to suburbs where crime has soared.

Orange police spend a good deal of their time in the south east and north east parts of the city and not so much in the west.

The other day the radio base sent police to Larela Circuit in Westlea to check on a loiterer and the officer asked for a cross street.

We don’t know that area, he said. We don’t usually go there.

Obviously it’s a pretty crime-free suburb.