Unbeknown to the crew the abandoned mine where they chose to film had actually been the site of the real life murder of a woman. The filming prompted a protest from locals who erroneously thought the film was about those events.
A very eerie coincidence occurred for the second unit crew sent out to get footage of the Wolf Creek Crater. Since the location was many hours from any town the small crew decided to camp out in their car at the site after shooting. During the night a mysterious stranger showed up in a truck to investigate. The stranger indeed looked very much like the character of Mick Taylor, right down to the rustic truck. The stranger left, but the crew was so spooked that they drove an hour down the road before finally stopping to camp for the night.
At one point during the shooting of the scene where Mick (John Jarratt) is torturing Kristy (Kestie Morassi) whilst Liz (Cassandra Magrath) looks through the window, director Greg McLean wanted to get a shot of Cassandra's POV, so he cleared the crew out of the shed in which the scene was being shot, leaving only the two actors inside. When he called action, they began playing the scene, however, after a minute, Mclean became convinced that Jarratt had gone too far and that Morassi's cries for help were genuine. He burst into the shed only to find both actors stunned at the disruption. Morassi was fine - it had simply been the intensity of her performance which had fooled Mclean.
There had been no rainfall for ten years in the area where the backpackers park their car before setting off for the crater, but it started raining as soon as the crew arrived. In the end, director Greg McLean was happy it rained, as it added to the ominous atmosphere of the scene.
As it was originally filmed, the scene in which Ben (Nathan Phillips), Liz (Cassandra Magrath) and Kristy (Kestie Morassi) are sitting around the campfire, and Ben is telling the story about the alien lights, was over seven minutes long, and shot entirely in one take.