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Private Notes
This film journeys through the puzzles that nature used as it designed and shaped the Australian continent.
The story criss-crosses the continent discovering the world’s oldest living organisms and how sea fossils three hundred million years old came to be on mountain tops, hundred kilometres from the ocean.
We will see how a comet from beyond the stars struck the earth a hundred million years ago with the force of two hundred thousand atom bombs. And we’ll learn how Australia’s animals developed into unique species found nowhere else on the planet.
The passage of time and power of the elements have levelled mountains once as high as the Himalayas and made others to look like ancient cities preserved in stone.
These puzzles of nature have created "mysterious Australia".
Ted Egan takes up the Snowy Mountains story a hundred years after Australia’s favourite poet Banjo Paterson immortalised a young mountain horseman in his epic poem “The Man From Snowy River”.
Ted Egan’s film is the most comprehensive story ever made in The Snowy Mountains. It features the pioneering development and lifestyle of the mountain’s people, including the historic construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme.
Filmed over the four seasons, the story also includes an aerial kaleidoscope of the high country from spring to winter with spectacular displays of wild flowers and fragile alpine wilderness.
Norfolk Island is an eight by six kilometre paradise set in the blue waters of the South West Pacific Ocean about 1500 kilometres east of the Australian mainland.
The island was secured by the British in 1788, just a few weeks after the settlement at Sydney Cove. It was abandoned after a few years, until 1824 when it became one of the most terrible and feared of England’s penal settlements.
Norfolk’s historic buildings and scenic hills belie the bloody past. But the graveyards and the chronicles testify to the brutality and terror of those awful years.
The Island was abandoned for a second time. But it was re-settled by the descendants of The Bounty Mutineers who moved there from the more isolated Pitcairn Island in 1856.
The first part of the Australian continent to be touched by the morning sun is the sentinel peak of Mt. Warning, the core of an ancient volcano.
In the rugged mountain ranges and eroded valleys that surround the peak of Mt. Warning are some of the world’s most beautiful rainforests, just a short journey from Surfers Paradise, Australia’s tourist playground.
Sandwiched between the ocean and the outer rim of the volcano there exists an incredible potpourri of people and lifestyles.
On Ted Egan’s journey from the mountain to the sea he meets up with people whose passion is to live a lifestyle far removed from what is offered in the great cities.
He visits O’Reilley’s Guest House on the Lamington Plateau, coffee, tea and macadamia nut plantations near the coast and looks at the wonderful birdlife that the rainforest protects.
Torres Strait is a treacherous waterway between Cape York, the northern most tip of the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea. The shallow strait is dotted with islands and coral outcrops.
From Possession Island at the southern extremity, Captain James Cook formally laid claim to the Australian colonies in the name of England. Later the Queensland Government moved to take control of the islands of the strait and their people.
Once the islanders’ currency of trade was human heads and headhunting raids between the islands and the mainland of Papua New Guinea was a part of life. But Christianity is now well entrenched throughout the island communities and headhunting days are over.
On this journey through the islands, Ted Egan meets up with some old friends, sees dugout canoes being built and meets the keeper of the legendary Drums of Mer.
Like many of the early explorers and settlers who pushed their way into Australia’s centre marvelling alternately at the grandeur and then the utter desolation, Ted Egan is captivated by the Centre.
This journey through Central Australia begins by looking at the country from the early European adventurer's viewpoint and compares their attitude and capacity to exist with the desert aborigines.
We will see Lake Eyre full with water and an abundance of birdlife something that has happened only a couple of times last century.
Ted’s journey takes us over the brilliant red McDonnell Ranges in a hot air balloon and then through the picturesque gorges that cut through the mountains.
At Uluru, he encounters a thunder storm. He then flys over Katajuta (The Olgas) and circles nearby Mt. Connor, which he calls the forgotten mountain and ends up viewing what every tourist comes to see, a brilliantly colourful sunset at Uluru.
