In recent years crocodiles have made quite an impact. 10 people have lost their lives. Living in the far north of Australia has been described as living inside a giant game park. no fences between man and beast, with the balance tipping more and more in the crocodiles favour. Jack Absalom talks with people of the Northern Territory’s top end about their experiences with an increasing crocodile population.
Essentially this program is all about safe caravanning and an extraordinary journey into a fascinating part of outback Australia. This journey takes us from Broken Hill in far western New South Wales through South Australia’s wheat belt on to Port Pirie and Port Augusta, across the Eyre Peninsula towards Ceduna. We will meet farmers, miners and fishermen. Bet you didn’t know that the best bait to catch King George Whiting is a mollusc called a razor fish. Bet you also didn’t know that Dutch explorers mapped this coastline in 1627 and they were going to settle there some 70 years before The First Fleet ever left England. The novelist Jonathon Swift, who wrote Gulliver’s Travels, used these early explorers’ maps to create the setting for his story. Hence the area being known as “Lilliput”, after the tiny Lilliputians who captured Gulliver.
Just eleven years before european settlement at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, Captain James Cook had his only real meeting with Australian Aborigines at Bruny Island just off the southern coast of Tasmania. It was a meeting destined to change the fate of two distinct groups in the human race. Jack Absalom’s breathtaking journey into Tasmania’s spectacular and scenic south west wilderness looks at both the distant and recent past and the struggle for the survival of the wilderness.
Jack Absalom’s glossary of expert advice for travel and survival in outback Australia or for that matter for survival in any remote desert climate. Survival he says is a matter of common sense and preparedness. In this film Jack demonstrates the techniques for safe travel that he has developed in his many years in the outback. This program recreates a simple vehicle breakdown and highlights the potential for tragedy.
Strzelecki was an early Polish explorer and surveyor. His name is given to one of the most desolate regions of the Australian continent, north to Cooper's Creek where in ancient times thousands of Aborigines lived in a paradise surrounded by desert and where many early English explorers of the continent perished but where true bushmen achieved remarkable feats.
The most infamous bush track runs for 540 kilometres through the centre of Australia. Its history is the story of personal hardships and tough pioneering people. Once goods were carried to remote cattle properties by camel and only in recent times was a road made across the sand dunes. Jack Absalom recalls the old times, meets newcomers to the Birdsville Track and has some sound travel advice.
At the western end of treacherous Bass Strait, King Island is noted in the history books for the frequency of shipwrecks on its rocky shores. But in recent times it is getting a reputation for the quality of it’s tender beef and gourmet cheese... not to mention the “characters” that the so called ‘forgotten island’ has attracted in recent times. Jack Absalom found it one of the most friendly places he’d visited and concluded that its name should be changed to ‘the magic island’.
From his home at Broken Hill, Jack Absalom retraces the journey of the English explorer Charles Sturt who was convinced the centre of Australia contained a vast inland sea. Sturt’s journey was one of great hardship as his party was drought bound for over 6 months at one location, ravaged by scurvy and attacked by wild Aboriginals on whose waters the party had camped. The story tells of the gold rush following Sturts explorations, of the perils still to be encountered and some novel direction finding techniques.
English adventurer William Dampier sailed along Australia’s North West coast in 1688. He called it the most barren spot on the globe but noticed that the compass showed a powerful attraction to a range of mountains to the south. For the next 250 years that powerful attraction was ignored, until in the 1960’s it was found there were vast reserves of iron ore, today it is thought there is enough to supply world needs for 400 years. Jack Absalom’s journey into the Pilbara unearths many of the regions treasures. You also get to travel on some of the giant iron ore trains that carry the economic treasure to the ports and onto giant cargo ships headed to Japan and China.
The original jewels of the Kimberley in Australia’s far North West were the hardy pioneer cattlemen and women who crossed the continent with their herds to establish themselves as kings in grass castles. They were followed by gold prospectors and farmers who opened up the mighty Ord River irrigation scheme. The newest jewels are diamonds. They were discovered by the new prospectors who are now reaping rich rewards for the millions of dollars they spent prospecting for their jewels.
This time Jack and the team pack their swags and head north into desert country. Beginning in the Gawler Ranges Jack heads north towards the old Woomera Rocket Range, stopping off to meet some of the local pastoralists. And learning about aboriginal Water Markers and how tribal aborigines found their way across the vast dry country, going from one watering hole to another. Travelling further to the north Jack reaches the Woomera Rocket Range where British scientists tested their rocket armoury post WWII. We learn about treating snake bite, getting fresh water out of a salt lake and emergency welding before arriving at the tiny opal mining town of Andamooka.
Every gold rush seems to begin with stories of people up nuggets by the handful. Hundreds of years after this happened in Western Australian desert the twin towns of Kalgoorlie and Boulder are still gold rush towns. Rainbow's End is a nostalgic journey with Jack Absalom in the richest square mile of real estate in the world. Jack traces the 'golden rainbow' that the early that early diggers followed on their quests for the lucky strike that would set them up for life. We meet up with some of the characters that inhabit the goldfields and hear of the great gold strikes and gold swindles.