Seven Worlds, One Planet
SUNDAY / BBC1
I’m entranced by this stunning Sir David Attenborough series, which this week focuses on Australia’s animal kingdom, including the cassowary, one of the most dangerous birds in the world.
Cuddly koalas and cute kangaroos are likely the first species that spring to mind when thinking about Australian animals.
But, as this week’s fourth instalment of Sir David Attenborough’s epic BBC1 natural history series Seven Worlds, One Planet reveals, there’s much more to the country’s wildlife than that – and the story of how it got there is just as fascinating.
TV Times caught up with Emma Napper, who produced the Australia and Asia episodes of the landmark documentary, to find out why Oz is the perfect home for animals…
Why is this continent such a fascinating place for wildlife?
Australia used to be attached to Antarctica. But it was cast adrift at the time of the dinosaurs, and isolated for millions of years. As a result, the weird and wonderful animals marooned here are like nowhere else on Earth. It’s a continent of weirdos!
This episode was filmed over 256 days. What were your personal highlights?
In Australia’s jungles, a cassowary, one of the most dangerous birds in the world, stands 6ft tall. Inland, kangaroos and wombats brave snowstorms, and gum-tree forests are filled with never-before-seen predators. In the continent’s red-desert heart, reptiles drink through their skin, and flocks of budgerigars swirl in search of water. On secret islands, Tasmanian devils roam, while, offshore, thousands of sharks gather for a rare event.
What can you tell us about cassowaries?
The cassowary is Australia’s ostrich. When dinosaurs became extinct, cassowaries took their place. They are incredibly secretive, and hard to spot. You don’t see them until you’re stood next to them – and then they get cross! The females stand about 6ft tall, the males are more
like 5ft. But they can rear up above head height and have claws longer than a velociraptor’s! They can also run up to 30mph, jump 5ft in the air and swim. So if you surprise them, you’re done for! We managed to film a male looking after his chicks in an ancient forest. It is a magical place – you’re literally looking at what dinosaurs would have seen!
What was the hardest species to capture on film?
Dingoes. When we started, we were told we wouldn’t be able to get anything, because they were just too frightened of humans. Dingoes roam across hundreds of kilometres, and the area was so vast that we needed two crews to cover it. Then we added a drone, which dingoes were okay with, and eventually a helicopter! We had to get to know a pack and, in particular an individual female, to tell their story. We found this beautiful white female. We filmed for eight
weeks and the resulting film shows you an animal that has hardly been seen on TV doing an incredible piece of hunting.
Is there a piece of footage you are particularly pleased with?
Drone technology can make a big difference. We filmed a shark aggregation [gathering] that only happens every 15 years. It’s sharks on a bait ball – a tightly packed spherical formation of fish – off the west coast of Australia. If you were filming that from a boat, you would just see a lot of splashing and some fins. Get a drone up in the air and suddenly you can see the sharks’ tactics. And you can see the bait ball at one point was 15km long! We have shots of thousands of sharks coming together – and, to me, that’s the magic of the drone!
It is a magical place – you’re literally looking
at what dinosaurs would have seen!