''Wild Down Under'' is a

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

nature documentary A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or television documentary, series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures. Nature documentaries usually concentrate on video taken in the subject's nat ...

series exploring the

natural history Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

of the

Australasia Australasia is a subregion of Oceania, comprising Australia, New Zealand (overlapping with Polynesia), and sometimes including New Guinea and surrounding islands (overlapping with Melanesia). The term is used in a number of different context ...

n continent, first transmitted in the UK on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

in September 2003. It was broadcast in Australia under the title ''Wild Australasia'' in February 2004. In Canada, the show aired as episodes of

The Nature of Things ''The Nature of Things'' (formerly, ''The Nature of Things with David Suzuki'') is a Canadian television series of documentary programs. It debuted on CBC Television on 6 November 1960. Many of the programs document nature and the effect th ...

under the ''Wild Australia'' title. Each of the six episodes features a particular environment and, using a combination of aerial photography and traditional wildlife footage, reveals how physical forces and human activity have transformed Australasia from a lush green wilderness into an increasingly dry and harsh continent, troubled by unpredictable weather but still home to a huge array of creatures found nowhere else on Earth.. ''Wild Down Under'' was co-produced by the

BBC Natural History Unit The BBC Studios Natural History Unit (NHU) is a department of BBC Studios that produces television, radio and online content with a natural history or wildlife theme. It is best known for its highly regarded nature documentaries, including '' T ...

, the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is ...

(ABC) and

Animal Planet Animal Planet (stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American multinational pay television channel focusing on the animal kingdom owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. First established on June 1 ...

. The series was produced for the BBC by Neil Nightingale and executive-produced for ABC by Dione Gilmour. The music was composed by Adrian Johnston and performed by the

BBC Concert Orchestra The BBC Concert Orchestra is a British concert orchestra based in London, one of the British Broadcasting Corporation's five radio orchestras. With around fifty players, it is the only one of the five BBC orchestras which is not a full-scale sym ...

. The series was narrated by Australian actor

Matt Day Matthew Day (born 28 September 1971) is an Australian actor and filmmaker. Early life Day was born in Melbourne, Victoria. When he was 11 years old, he went to live in the United States with his father, a newspaper correspondent, where he b ...

. The series forms part of the Natural History Unit's ''Continents'' strand. It was preceded by '' Wild New World'' in 2002 and followed by '' Europe: A Natural History'' in 2005.

Production

''Wild Down Under'' is one of the most comprehensive surveys of Australasia's natural history ever filmed, with production of the series taking three years.BBC ''Wild Down Under''
/ref> The aerial photography used extensively in the series was shot by Damon Smith. As well as mainland Australia, the production team visited other locations across the continent for the fifth episode, "Island Arks", including

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...

Lord Howe Island Lord Howe Island (; formerly Lord Howe's Island) is an irregularly crescent-shaped volcanic remnant in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, part of the Australian state of New South Wales. It lies directly east of mainland Port ...

and

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

Episodes

Broadcast dates refer to the original UK transmission.

Merchandise

A DVD and book were released to accompany the TV series: * A Region 2 and 4, 2-disc DVD set (BBCDVD1321) featuring all six full-length episodes was released on 27 October 2003. The bonus features on the DVD include an edition of ''Wildlife on One'' (''Possums – Tales of the Unexpected''), a fact file and the featurette ''Wild – Penguin Paradise''. A Region 4 DVD with the same content was released under the title ''Wild Australasia'' in 2004. * The accompanying hardcover book, ''Wild Down Under'' by Neil Nightingale, Mary Summerill, Hugh Pearson and Jeni Cleversy, was published by BBC Books on 18 September 2003 (). The foreword is written by

Tim Flannery Timothy Fridtjof Flannery (born 28 January 1956) is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist, conservationist, explorer, author, science communicator Science communication encompasses a wide range of activities tha ...

. In Australia the book was released under the title ''Wild Australasia''.

References

External links

* * *
''Wild Australasia''
at

ABC Online The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal Public broadcasting, public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the Australian Government, federal government and is administered by a government ...

{{BBC Continents Series BBC television documentaries Documentary films about nature 2003 British television series debuts 2003 British television series endings