Skippy the Bush Kangaroo

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
DVD cover
Also known as	Skippy
Genre	Children, teens and family
Created by	John McCallum
Written by	Ross Napier (49 episodes)
Directed by	Eric Fullilove (38 episodes) Max Varnel (36 episodes)
Starring	Ed Devereaux Garry Pankhurst Ken James Tony Bonner Liza Goddard
Theme music composer	Eric Jupp
Country of origin	Australia
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	91 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	John McCallum (1 episode)
Producer(s)	Joy Cavill (47 episodes) Lee Robinson (38 episodes) Dennis Hill (33 episodes)
Location(s)	Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park Waratah Park Earth Sanctuary
Running time	25 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel	Nine Network
Audio format	Monaural
First shown in	Australia
Original run	1966 – 30 March 1970
Chronology
Related shows	The Adventures of Skippy

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is an Australian television series for children created by John McCallum, produced from 1966–1968, telling the adventures of a young boy and his intelligent pet kangaroo, in the (fictional) Waratah National Park in Duffys Forest, near Sydney, New South Wales.

Ninety-one 30-minute episodes were made over the three seasons of production. At the time of first screening, Australian television was still in black and white, however, the show was filmed in colour on 16 mm film to increase its international marketability, especially in the United States and Canada, where it aired in syndication between 1969 and 1972. The Nine Network readily repeated the series several times after Australian television switched to colour transmission in 1975.

The series was dubbed into Spanish in Mexico, where it is known as Skippy el canguro, and has been distributed to most Spanish-speaking countries, including Cuba and Spain, where it became very popular. The series crossed the Iron Curtain and was aired in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, and is still being broadcast in Iran.

Cast

The main characters were:

• Ed Devereaux as Matt Hammond, the Head Ranger of Waratah National Park
• Garry Pankhurst as Sonny Hammond, Matt's younger son
• Ken James as Mark Hammond, Matt's elder son
• Tony Bonner as Jerry King, flight ranger (helicopter pilot) (exit No.78)
• Liza Goddard as Clarissa 'Clancy' Merrick (entry No.9 exit No.75), the teenage daughter of a ranger stationed at another section of the park. When her father is transferred to a park in northern New South Wales, Matt invites Clancy to stay with the Hammond family so that her music studies are not disrupted by the move north.
• John Warwick as Sir Adrian Gillespie, Head of the NSW National Parks Board
• Elke Neidhardt as Dr. Anna Steiner, a German doctor and playing a support role
• Morgan Brain as Sgt. Bernard Gillies
• Skippy was played by at least nine different kangaroos

Episodes

Main article: List of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo episodes

Plot and setting

The show's star was Skippy, a wild female Eastern Grey Kangaroo befriended by Sonny Hammond, younger son of the Head Ranger of Waratah National Park. The stories revolved around events in the park, including its animals, the dangers arising from natural hazards, and the actions of visitors. The boy's mother is said (in Episode 48 "The Mine") to have died shortly after Sonny was born.

The series was shot in northern Sydney at the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park and the adjacent Waratah Park (now known as Waratah Park Earth Sanctuary).

Permission to film and build structures in the park was given by the then NSW Premier, Tom Lewis AO, before the Skippy series began filming in 1967, to showcase the new NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service government department he had just established.

The sanctuary has much of the original film set including the 'Ranger Headquarters' and descendants of the kangaroos used in the series. The series appeared in over 80 countries and its theme tune, composed by Eric Jupp, is one of the best-known and recognisable Australian tunes. The lyrics of the extended version (the B side on the record) were written by Ted Roberts.

The clicking sounds made by Skippy are vocal sound effects, rather than the natural vocalisations of a kangaroo, with chocolate, chewing gum or grass (and in some cases, an elastic band around the lower jaw,^{[citation needed]}) used to make Skippy move her mouth. Between nine and fifteen kangaroos were used for each show. The apparent manual dexterity was often achieved by using separate arms in the hands of human operators.

In 1969 a movie-length Skippy and The Intruders was released.

Later history

The series was revived in 1992 as the short-lived The Adventures of Skippy using an entirely new cast including Andrew Clarke and Simon James, plot and location with several children, including Craig 'Tommy Lee' Di Topp, as the stars. This version also aired on Animal Planet in the United States in 1997.

In September 2008, actor Tony Bonner sued the production company seeking residuals from merchandising and DVD sales from the series.

On 17 September 2009, a documentary Skippy: Australia's First Superstar was broadcast on the ABC in Australia and the BBC in the UK. The documentary was produced by WA-based documentary production company Electric Pictures.

Also in 2009, the Nine Network began to rerun the series in a graveyard slot in the early hours of the morning.

Recently the series reruns on angeltwo and KTV.

References in popular culture

The original series was parodied in a recurring sketch as part of the British comedy series Goodness Gracious Me under the title "Skipinder, the Punjabi Kangaroo": the parody redubbed scenes from the original Skippy. Its writer, Sanjeev Bhaskar, tried to put Skippy in Room 101.

External links

• Skippy at the Internet Movie Database
• Classic Australian Television -Skippy
• "Skippy" - Memorable TV
• Skippy the Bush Kangaroo at the National Film and Sound Archive
• Documentary - Skippy: Australia's First Superstar - ABC Documentaries and Electric Pictures, 2009
• Skippy the Bush Kangaroo at TV Tropes