Erin McWhirter

Daily Telegraph 

13 May 2009

How a guy and a girl became a winning duo on stage and screen, writes Erin McWhirter.

THERE really is nothing quite like feeling the wind in your hair. However, when you are feeling it as you bob up and down on the open sea aboard a naval vessel, it's a sensation that can also be accompanied by the overwhelming threat of nausea.

Not so, it would seem, for Lisa McCune. It’s 6am off the coast of far north Queensland’s picturesque Mission Beach, and filming is well under way for season three of Channel 9 navy drama Sea Patrol.

McCune walks on to the jetty, a coffee for herself and the hair and make-up artists in hand, to greet her fellow cast and crew as the sun rises over the ocean. The actress is in high spirits and it’s not hard to see why.

Not only does the four-time Gold Logie winner have her husband of nine years, Tim Disney, and children Archer, 8, Oliver, 6, and Remy, 3, with her on location, she’s enjoying rediscovering the character of straight-shooting Lieutenant Kate McGregor.

“Filming in far north Queensland is the highlight of this job,” says McCune, 38, who became a household name playing Maggie Doyle on long-running police drama Blue Heelers for almost a decade.

“There are exhausting 12-hour days in soaring heat, but somehow all the hardships are manageable because of the extraordinary environment. We laugh a lot on set and everyone is just so up. How could you not, being here?”

Rounding out this picture of showbiz bliss is the fact that McCune’s leading man is her friend Ian Stenlake, who plays Lieutenant Commander Mike Flynn, the captain of Sea Patrol’s HMAS Hammersley.

Since the pair first appeared in a revival of the stageshow Cabaret in 2002, they have become one of the country’s most durable double acts, both on stage and screen.

With the duo set to return to the centre of things in the new series of Sea Patrol, they have also been charming local theatre goers with their portrayal of an initially mismatched couple in the musical Guys And Dolls, currently enjoying a successful run at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre.

On a day off from sailing the high seas, Stenlake, accompanied by his youngest daughter Tahlula, wife and fellow musical-theatre star Rachael Beck and cradling a beer, calculates that when Guys And Dolls wraps production at the end of this month, he and McCune will have spent almost two years in each other’s acting pockets.

“The truth is we hate each other but that’s what gives us good friction in our roles,” he jokes of their relationship, which in some ways almost resembles a second marriage.

“When you look back at the first job we did in Cabaret together, we were a bit stand-offish,” Stenlake says.

“What I love about doing Guys And Dolls and Sea Patrol is you turn up on the set of a theatre show, singing at each other and portraying totally different characters.

“It’s such an enjoyable process. In a way it’s like we are our own ensemble and just keep playing these different roles together. We will just see how much more we can do.

“Lisa is so generous ... she is truly a star in this country and you just feel so privileged to be working beside her.”

Back on the ship, it’s another world. Crew and cast suck on lollypops to alleviate seasickness as real naval staff give McCune and cast members including Jay Ryan, Saskia Burmeister and Kirsty Lee Allan pointers on how to keep things looking authentic.

Sea Patrol has received both praise and flak from the Australian Navy. Last year the show came under fire from naval officers who claimed the program’s raunchy plots were making a mockery of the service.

“The amount of sex on the show is simply a bloody joke,” complained Naval Association
of Australia president Les Dwyer.

The new season, Sea Patrol III: Red Gold, follows a 13-part story which revolves around a poaching incident which leaves eight men dead. By the end of the series, the mystery as to how they died will be solved.

With huge respect for naval officers, McCune says that as an actor it’s her duty to ensure the commands and signals of the service are portrayed accurately.

“That’s really important to me,” McCune says. “The navy is right beside us as we work out at sea and their skills and patience is always above and beyond.”

Preparation for the day’s shooting begins during a half-hour ride from land to the vessel they film on, with hair and make-up crews setting up work on the ferry – an occupational hazard that can result in eyeliner and mascara being applied a little less accurately than usual.

Worse still are those with weak stomachs who are heading to the floating set.

“I nearly got thrown up on by someone yesterday,” McCune says. “It was so rough and there was no hope of cleaning it up so I had to sit next to vomit all day. Some days you’re fine and others you’re not.”

Now working on season three, McCune says the cast have become accustomed to their sometimes rocky work environment.

“You can be doing some really heavy storyline and suddenly you are swaying and feel like you’re drunk, so there are lots of laughs when that happens,” she says.

Thundering through the ocean at high speeds to shoot the series’ more action-packed scenes, McCune admits playing stuntwoman fills her with the adrenalin she needs for such dramatic showdowns.

“It’s a lot of fun,” she says. “You are boarding at high speeds and the other day we had to do shooting, boarding and dialogue and your heart is just pumping.”

Having once felt like a fish out of water in his role, Stenlake is relieved that after three seasons, everything has fallen into place.

“The first series was daunting and it’s like shooting a 12-hour movie, it was out-of-control,” Stenlake says.

“A lot of us were thinking, ‘How are we going to do this?,’ particularly when I was doing 145 scenes out of 148.

“I’d never seen a workload like it. But at the end of the day I put in the work and prepared as much as I could and this is the result. In a funny way it gets easier.”

Sea Patrol, Mondays, Nine, 8.30pm