Filming ranged across locations including Adelaide, Darwin, Jabiru, Kakadu National Park, Katherine, Nitmiluk National Park, and the Tiwi Islands. In all places, there was important liaison with the local Aboriginal communities, the producing team ensuring that approvals were granted to film and that due respect was paid to the original owners of the lands and the current residents of the communities.
Some of the Tiwi Island locals participating in the shoot thought they were attending Miranda Tapsell's wedding.
Of actor Gwilym Lee, who plays Ned, director Wayne Blair said: "There was something about this guy that was earthy, grounded, a little bit comically self-effacing, but also had this warmth and heart. Someone who could still step up to be a man when he had to."
The movie was developed from a series of lunchtime conversations between the film's two screenwriters. About four years previously, Miranda Tapsell and Joshua Tyler were teaching acting and screenwriting respectively, as well as lunching together each day. "He just started asking me about the kinds of films I watched," said Tapsell, who started naming romantic comedy films such as Nora Ephron classics When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993) and You've Got Mail (1998), and gems such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Notting Hill (1999). "I also thought about wedding films, like My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002)," Tapsell recalled. "And then when I started to tell Josh more and more about where I grew up in the Northern Territory, he said, 'Why don't we set a rom-com up there?'." Tyler added: "We liked a lot of British romantic comedies, but also some American ones like Two Weeks Notice (2002) and television like The Mindy Project (2012). We even talked about plays like 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'!. The romantic comedy's a very old genre in a lot of ways."
Of being and Indigenous writer and telling Indigenous stories, co-screenwriter Miranda Tapsell said: "The important thing, particularly with Indigenous stories, is that it's really important to see that we're not a monolith. We're not just one, this community is very multifaceted, there's lots of intersections. So it's really important for that to be reflected, and it's important that we get more Indigenous writers out there to tell their own individual stories."