![]() ![]() 5Coiba Scientific Station (COIBA AIP), City of Knowledge, Panama, Panama.4Centro de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, Universidad de Panama, Panama, Panama.3Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life, New England Aquarium, Boston, MA, United States.2School for the Environment, University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, United States.1Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panama, Panama.Ningaloo Nyinggulu premieres Tuesday, May 16 at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.Hector M. And if we hadn't made Ningaloo famous 20 years ago, it would be gone already, so you have to elevate a place's social value, it's sadly sometimes it's financial value, as an intact system in order to get the kind of status required to protect it." Bad things happen to places over the horizon. "But if you don't tell people about a place and it stays secret, then - and anyone who's in Western Australia in particular knows this - bad things happen in the dark. "People have asked me how do you feel about exposing this fragile and wonderful place to public scrutiny on a global scale?" says Winton. Throughout the long and difficult days producing the documentary, Rees says he and Winton wrestled with whether they were writing a love letter or a eulogy to the place that is particularly vulnerable to climate change and a warming planet. Winton was at the centre of the original Save Ningaloo fight 20 years ago and is the patron of the campaign to secure World Heritage status for Exmouth Gulf. ( Supplied: Blue Media Exmouth/Violeta J Brosig) Warming ocean temperatures threaten vulnerable reefs like Ningaloo. His beautiful words alongside stunning cinematography is quite a treat for the senses." He had never written a documentary for the screen before so it was a fascinating and privileged journey to work through that with him – as he realised that the pictures can do some of the work, unlike in books. "But unlike a journalist or a scientist, it wasn't simply a transfer of information he can bring, but also a feeling – a sense of the place that connects us emotionally in a way I think TV often doesn't quite achieve. As he says in the show, he has lived, loved and fought for Ningaloo for several decades, so it was a case of bringing that passion and knowledge to the screen," says Oliver. "Tim Winton is undoubtedly one of our greatest writers, but he is also a deep thinker and hugely passionate environmentalist. ![]() ( Supplied: Blue Media Exmouth/Violeta J Brosig)ĪBC's commissioning editor Stephen Oliver, who has a deep affection for Ningaloo after living for a while in WA as his wife, a marine biologist, did post-doctoral research on the reef, believes Winton has brought a unique perspective to a natural history documentary. But I did it out of a sense of duty to the place which I love and has given me some of the greatest experiences of my life."īaiyungu woman Hazel Walgar shared the history of Traditional Owners while watching an archaeological dig in a cave in Cape Range National Park. "Also, I've spent 40 years of my life doing what I can to dodge being in the media so I was a bit reluctant about television. I was always going to be the only one on the boat or in the cave who didn't know what they were doing but I'm the person who has the most focus on them, so, that's kind of embarrassing. Also, for me, as a sole trader for 1,000 years, having to work with 'committees' and so many fingers in the pot, trying to make something a bit poetic out of something that can look pretty prosaic on paper was terrifying. You don't just write one script, and then revise it, you an aspirational script, a recipe for what you'd like if you can get all the ingredients, and then two years later you end up writing a script based on what ended up being 2,000 hours of footage. "I don't have any qualifications to write a natural history series, I've never done it before, so that was a bit terrifying in the sense of how do I do this? With natural history there's quite a bit of scientific information that you have to convey – there might be five or seven scientific papers and you get 20 or 50 words. "It felt that I was doing it in survival mode, in perpetual panic," says Winton. ![]() ![]() Used to working on his own as a writer, Tim Winton found it confronting having the cameras focused on him. ![]()
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