Miss Fisher Australia Tour (99)
In Miss Fisher & the Deathly Maze online game, Episode 2 Cleopatra’s Curse, Hugh went after Dot to Broome and spent a (mostly) romantic evening on Cable Beach with his wife. The newlywedded couple talked about their future while doing a cookout. Hugh bought some fish from a bloke on the foreshore, wrapped it in paper, and covered it in dry ashes with hot ones on top. Half an hour later, it turned into a mighty feast. He revealed that he did cookouts like this all the time at Anglesea when he was a boy but apparently never told Dot about it before. When she expressed her surprise, he responded “Maybe there’s a lot you don’t know about Hugh Collins”. Really? Hugh “Open Book” Collins was capable of keeping something from his sweetheart? He had worked for Jack “Man of Mystery” Robinson for a while, and I guess it was bound to rub off.
So, where is Anglesea? It is located on the Great Ocean Road in the Surf Coast Shire local government area, about 115 km (71 miles) south of Melbourne. According to Wikipedia, the small seaside town has a population of around 2500, but “There is a surge in population during the summer months, reaching a peak around Christmas and New Year's Eve, as many Melbourne residents arrive for the holiday season.” It took me a second to wrap my head around the sentence as I forgot that Christmas and New Year fell in the summer season in Australia.
Hugh didn’t get a chance to elaborate his childhood story, which set my imagination wide open. When he said that he did the cookout there “all the time” as a boy, did it mean that he was originally from Anglesea, or it was a popular holiday spot for the Collins family? Did they still visit there after his father’s death? How could they afford family trips? Was the elder Mrs. Collins a career woman too? How else could she have supported the family? If that’s the case, why was Hugh so against Dot keeping her job after they got married? In any case, it tells us that Hugh spent a lot of time near waters growing up, so there is no surprise that he became an excellent swimmer/diver as showcased in S2E3 Dead Man’s Chest.
