“I have photos of me burnt to a crisp with my white hair, sitting in a little white singlet in a lot of desert somewhere near here,” she said.

‘Here’ is Horsham, Bilcock’s birthplace, and the city she returned to on Thursday for a special screening of The Dressmaker. 

Bilcock was three when her family moved from the area, but they returned for trips occasionally.

“My mother used to give us these spring journeys to the Grampians to collect blue tongues and stumpy tails for pets, which my brother brought home,” she said.

“They were always in our beds. He said the only way to tame a lizard was to keep it warm.

“I have photos of them all drinking milk from a plate with the cats.

“My mother was drawn back to this area quite often, but after that I hadn’t been back, so this is exciting.”

Editing duties did not allow Bilcock to return to the Wimmera when scenes for The Dressmaker were filmed last year.

However, she was responsible for sifting through the many scenes Wimmera people played a part in as extras.

Bilcock’s role in the film came through its director Jocelyn Moorhouse.

“I worked with her on How To Make An American Quilt, so we’re old friends and we get on very well,” she said.

“I worked with Sue Maslin on Japanese story, so we’re a bit of a small band down there in Melbourne. 

“I read the script and loved it. The cast they were getting together was terrific.

“I just joined the team as part of Jocelyn’s old favourites.”

Bilcock also knew Kate Winslet, having worked with her former husband Sam Mendes on Road to Perdition.

The film is based on Rosalie Ham’s novel of the same name, but Bilcock deliberately chose not to read the book. 

“I felt that would inhibit me,” she said.

“My first assistant had studied it at school and whenever I needed to say ‘That’s a little bit suspicious – is that in the book?’ or if they said ‘We ran out of money – we want to get rid of the second dress at the football’, I’d turn to her and say ‘What do you think about that?’

“And she’d say, ‘Well, it’s in the book and there’s a reason for it’. And we’d confer over various bits.

“I always try to look at everything and say ‘What’s here that’s working?’”

Bilcock said Winslet’s performance as Tilly Dunnage –  a dressmaker who returns to her rural hometown of Dungatar – was fantastic.

“Kate played it in a way that was extraordinary because her accent was non-existent – you don’t think about it,” she said.

“She had quite an interesting take on that character – I think she nailed it perfectly.

“When you put somebody with experience with somebody younger, like Liam Hemsworth, it’s a great help. 

“Everybody learns. She’s just as terrified of him being younger and he is terrified of her being older, and it gives a good dynamic.

“I think also when it’s such an ensemble cast, people tend to bond together well.”

Bilcock’s editing has earned her much critical acclaim, but it was not always a profession she envisaged for herself.

”I was an art student and getting a bit bored. I was doing a four-year course, and in the third year you were supposed to specialise,” she said.

“A very smart man called Brian Robertson introduced a film course and he asked who might be interested in doing film.

“I had parents who wrote and ran drama groups in places like Horsham and Bairnsdale as young teachers.

“I was interested in storytelling, so I became in the first year of the first Australian film school, which is Swinburne.”

Among the course examiners was producer and director Fred Schepisi, whom Bilcock started work with.

“I ended up in production first and produced TV commercials,” she said.

“I went to editing, and I somehow got stuck there.”

She stayed for about 15 months, then started cutting music documentaries before getting a job offer in London.

“On the way I stopped off in India. I then sold my ticket and stayed a year and worked in Bollywood,” she said. 

“I went overland to Europe and asked for my job. 

“They said, ‘I think you’re a bit late’.”

Bilcock returned to Australia, and was required to attend teacher’s college.

“I had a scholarship I had to fulfil. I taught art and film-making,” she said.

“I worked on The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith. From then on I started my own company. I ended up being recommended for the Meryl Streep picture Evil Angels.

“From there on it took off really.”

Bilcock explains editing as a problem-solving process.

“I actually quite like the thought that the best art needs limitations, and editing is a lot of limitations,” she said.

“You can be supplied lots of material and be required to reinvent it often, and turn it around. A film should have a beginning, middle and end, but I often put the end at the beginning.

”It’s a big puzzle to have a lot of footage and put it into some form that holds your interest and arrives somewhere.”

Though she has no penchant for horror, Bilcock enjoys being able to traverse many other genres.

With The Dressmaker, she got to experience a handful within the one film.

“It starts almost Shakespearean, then it crosses over to comedy, then it falls back into heavy drama, with the nice reoccurring jabs of humour and satire and melodrama – it’s got a lot of ingredients,” she said.

“The Dressmaker is quite a difficult piece because there are so many stories within the story.

“And it’s a dangerous story, because it’s a revenge story.

“You have to love your characters, even the ones that are bad.”