No Petrol, No Diesel!

Big business and a struggling rural town collide in this good-natured movie, which was made with extensive community goodwill and a shoestring budget. Writer, director and policeman Stef Harris reunited the key cast from his debut movie The Waimate Conspiracy, but moved the action up the highway from Waimate to Temuka. Screen veteran Jim Moriarty and Helen Pearse-Otene play siblings fighting to retain the town petrol station against a slimy corporate negotiator (Mark Hadlow). David McPhail plays the kind-hearted cop caught in the middle. Harris based the script — very loosely — on his 2003 novel The Hydrosnipe.