Where was Netflix's My Brilliant Career filmed? One small town carried most of the shoot — in the dead of winter
Netflix's My Brilliant Career looks like endless sun-drenched turn-of-the-century Australia — but the production story behind those frames involves one tiny wine-country town, a record-setting budget, and a shoot scheduled at the least glamorous possible time of year. Here's where the series was really filmed.
My Brilliant Career looks warm. All that golden light, those rolling paddocks, Sybylla galloping around like an outdoor cat who refuses to come inside. Which makes it very funny that the whole thing was shot in South Australia starting June 2025 — the literal middle of the Australian winter — with the cast presumably radiating period-appropriate longing through chattering teeth.
The town doing the heavy lifting
The production's main base wasn't Sydney or Melbourne. It was Penola, a town of about 1,300 people tucked into the Coonawarra wine region, a solid four-hour drive from Adelaide. For a few cold months, a village best known for cellar doors became the center of the most expensive TV production its state had ever seen — and the locals noticed. Café owner Ian Perry told the ABC during the shoot: "We've had a lot of crew members come in" — a genuine boost to trade, with the town now betting the real tourism wave arrives with the streaming crowds.
A 1,300-person wine town hosting Netflix's biggest-ever South Australian production, in winter. The café owners were the first winners.
The full map
Penola anchored it, but the shoot sprawled:
- Yallum Park, the heritage Victorian mansion near Penola (built 1878–1880, once hosted a future King George V), playing Sybylla's grandmother's intimidating estate;
- the Barossa Valley, providing the paddocks, farmland, and general "vast unknowable bush" energy;
- Adelaide Studios, where the ballrooms, drawing rooms, and every candlelit confrontation were built indoors;
- plus heritage corners of Adelaide itself standing in for turn-of-the-century town life.
The Receipts
By launch day, the South Australian Film Corporation's numbers were genuinely silly: roughly A$19 million pumped into the state, around 600 locals employed, 410 local businesses engaged — the single biggest season of television ever made there. Star Philippa Northeast, meanwhile, has described the shoot as relentless, going the entire production without a single day off.
So next time the series serves you a dreamy summer vista: that's a freezing June, one very busy small town, and a lead actress who never got a Saturday. Cinema.
