KANGAROO DUNDEE
BBC Natural World ‘Special’
BBC Natural World ‘Special’
BBC / BBC Worldwide / Animal Planet 2x1 Hour
A quirky, humorous and touching film. A 'love-letter' to one of the world's weirdest creatures; captured with a cast of human characters and stories that only Australia’s red-hot centre of Alice Springs can assemble.
This captivating, smash hit BBC Natural World Special, is told by an extraordinary man called Brolga who dedicates his life to saving, mothering and teaching red kangaroo orphan joeys in preparation for release back to the wilds of the Australian Outback.
AWARDS
WINNER BEST PEOPLE AND NATURE AWARD: Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival
WINNER BEST SERIES: International Wild Life Film Festival
WINNER BEST MUSIC SCORE: International Wild Life Film Festival
GRIERSON AWARD NOMINATION: Science and Natural History
SHOWREEL
REVIEWS
CAITLIN MORAN
THE TIMES
Unless I’m very much mistaken, this week saw the birth of a new heart-throb/TV fancy-piece: Brolga – just “Brolga” — a typically tough, laconic Australian, who lives in the OUTBACK raising orphaned, baby kangaroos. Yeah, that’s right — he’s a ripped 6ft 7in Aussie dude, He’s into animals-and he’s Sexy. This then is Horn Free.
He is David Attenborphwoargh."
CLIVE JAMES
THE TELEGRAPH
As if to prove that human contact with nature can be less intrusive than the crazed travelling circus of a celebrity TV programme, Kangaroo Dundee (BBC Two) brought us a tall Australian hero called Brolga. You would have thought that Brolga was already an exotic enough nickname, but the show’s producers wanted to call him Kangaroo Dundee for purposes of billing. Brolga’s special thing, you see, is kangaroos; and it is a piece of standard showbiz wisdom that any Australian male well known for a special thing must have “Dundee” as the last part of his professional name. Crocodile Dundee, Kangaroo Dundee, or — as in my own case – Television Criticism Dundee.
Let’s just call him Brolga. A long way out in the outback, Brolga looks after infant kangaroos, known as joeys, that have been orphaned on the highway after a speeding road train hit their mothers. What the joeys must have, if they are to grow to maturity, is a convincing substitute for motherly love. Brolga provides this. “It’s important for me to take them to bed.”
Snuggling up to Brolga, the two joeys, Ruby and Rex, are soon thriving. Apparently it is also important for Brolga to “swap saliva” with them. This bit reminded me of the late Barbara Woodhouse, who used to swap saliva with horses, but in Brolga’s case the activity at least looked a bit less dangerous.
Rex, however, is quite likely to grow up into a big and burly male aggressively keen to protect his girlfriends; and in that case he had better not remember you for having once been so eager to swap saliva with him. He might rate the exchange of bodily fluid as a reflection on his manhood. But until that day, Brolga and his trainee kangaroos need each other. “The love they give back to me… makes me feel wanted.”
This might have sounded mawkish if you had never seen kangaroos bouncing around in the open air. When I was young it was still a universal sight. I remember once looking out the window of the train north from Sydney to Armidale, and the whole landscape turned into a soft rug and rolled itself towards the horizon, as about a million kangaroos took off at once to get somewhere where the train wasn’t. They were magnificent, and when tiny they were deliciously cute. Alas, they were also a pest, but that’s another story: the story about man’s impact on nature.
CREDITS
Presented by: Brolga (Chris Barns)
Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
Directors: Andrew Graham-Brown and Tom Mustill
Photography: Andrew Graham-Brown
Film Editors: Nigel Buck, Graham Taylor and Rick Holbrook
Post Sound: Wounded Buffalo
Executive producer: Chris Cole
Series Editor: Steve Greenwood
KANGAROO DUNDEE
AND OTHER ANIMALS
An AGB Films production for BBC NHU / BBC Worldwide / National Geographic (2x1 hour)
Deep in the heart of Australia near a town called Alice Springs lies a sanctuary for orphaned Red Kangaroos. Run by an unlikely mum, Brolga - AKA Kangaroo Dundee - this series follows the realisation of a dream to build the first wildlife hospital within 1500 km of Alice Springs, in the shape of a Kangaroo, naturally!
This natural history documentary follows the work of tough Australian Chris `Brolga' Barnes, who has dedicated his life to rescuing and raising orphaned kangaroos in the outback near Alice Springs. This two-part film follows Brolga as he expands operations by opening his doors to a whole new bunch of animals, including a trio of camels, a southern hairy-nosed wombat called Pete and three emu chicks, as well as building a wildlife hospital.
REVIEWS
JACK SEALE
RADIO TIMES
Moisturising a wombat. Bottle-feeding a camel. Blow-drying a kangaroo. Storing three emus in the laundry room. Yes, we’re back with Australian animal rescuer and international sex symbol Chris “Brolga” Barns, as he expands his sanctuary near Alice Springs.
Since he first introduced himself and his orphan charges in a Natural World Series in 2013, Brolga has married — bad news for all those viewers who sent him proposals — and, with help from his wife Tahnee, as well as local vets and a network of nearby wombat-fanciers, he delivers another hour of gentle compassion and astonishing cuteness. It’s sumptuously filmed on the infinite outback landscape, too.
CREDITS
Director, Cameraman and Executive Producer: Andrew Graham-Brown
Researcher: Elsa McKee
Camera Assistant / Sound: Ewan Dryburgh
Editor: Rick Holbrook
Series Editor: Roger Webb
KANGAROO DUNDEE SERIES
An AGB Films production for BBC / BBC WW and National Geographic (6x30 minutes)
Brolga (aka Chris Barns) is the 6ft 7in strong but sensitive Aussie star of the extraordinary BBC series Kangaroo Dundee. Brolga lives in a simple tin shed in the outback where he raises orphaned baby kangaroos. It is a sad fact of life that kangaroo mothers are at the mercy of speeding cars in this part of the world - killed on the road, their young still tucked up in their pouches. These young joeys holding on to life, have been given a second chance thanks to the kindness and dedication of Brolga, who carefully retrieves them and nurses them back to health.
REVIEWS
SAM WOOLASTON
THE GUARDIAN
It seems that Chris Barnes – Brolga – is a bit of a hit with the pom ladies after the first series of Kangaroo Dundee (BBC2). It's not hard to see why, frankly. A gentle, handsome, rugged giant of a man, he lives a simple life in the outback, nursing baby kangaroo orphans. Their mummies have generally been run over, by road trains, or by speeding Aussies so overladen with Fosters they were unable to stop (if they even tried to). The joeys in the pouch often survive, cushioned inside their maternal airbags. Imagine the trauma, though.
Brolga is their mum now. He sleeps with them, bottle-feeds them throughout the night, teaches them to somersault into pillowcase pouches. Now we've reached the second episode of series two. Series two! But it is oddly compelling television, and charming, too, and not only for Brolga fanciers. Anyway, he's toilet-training little Rex and Ruby, tickling their bits until they widdle. "Kangaroo wee cuts through all the grease and grime on the floor," he says. "It's the cleanest part of the shack." Who needs Flash?
This is what worries me about all these English women who have apparently fallen for Brolga, may even be racing down under to steal his heart and live out their days under the stars with him. Have they thought about the wee on the floor, the stench, the heat, the five-foot brown snakes and clouds of flies? It's the flies that would do it for me – not that I'm thinking of moving in myself.
"The girls would probably think: where do I plug my hairdryer in?" Brolga tells a local DJ who's quizzing him about his new celebrity status. "Or where's the loo? Basically you take your shovel and a dunny roll, hide behind the termite mound round the back, and that's it, you know."
To be honest, I'm quite surprised he even has dunny roll. "I'd give it a week," he says, about how long any potential Mrs Brolga would last. Maybe he's just better suited to living with kangaroos. And some things – Brolga included – are best appreciated on television.
SARAH RAINEY
THE TELEGRAPH
Standing in a remote spot in the Australian outback, looking out across grassland and ochre-coloured earth, Chris Barnes is gazing at the sky. “It’s dusk here,” he says, speaking on a crackly mobile from his home in Alice Springs. “The sky is streaked with orange and purple. It’s so beautiful. All around there is nothing – just me and my kangaroos.”
Ladies, meet Kangaroo Dundee, the star of the BBC2 documentary of the same name, who has become Britain’s most lusted-after animal lover. Thousands of us were left swooning when Barnes first appeared on our screens last weekend, all rakish blond hair, wistful blue eyes and khaki-clad biceps. We oohed and aahed as he nursed kangaroos back to health; we sobbed when Daisy the joey died in his arms; and, oh, how our ears pricked up when the 6ft 7in hunk said he wished he had a woman to share it all with.
In a matter of days, the founder of the Alice Springs Kangaroo Rescue Sanctuary has received 2,000 messages from female fans across the UK, including 10 marriage proposals. “Absolutely gorgeous… and the roos are cute, too,” gushes one on Barnes’s Facebook page. “If I wasn’t married, I definitely would,” writes another. Donations have flooded in from France, Holland and America, raising more than £13,500 for his rescue centre.
More than 9,000 miles away, Barnes is bemused by the female attention. “Listen,” he drawls, in a deep, husky voice that has made Britain’s women weak at the knees, “I’m just an ordinary bloke living out in the bush.
CREDITS
Directed and Filmed: Andrew Graham-Brown
Executive Producer: Andrew Graham-Brown
Editor Rick Holbrook
Commissioning Executive Producer: Tom McDonald